David Rose, CEO of Growthwire, had launched a scathing attack on business secretary Peter Mandelson and his "sustained ability to deliver spin over substance". 

Rose said 'Mandelson's recently announced £75m Capital for Enterprise Fund supported by BERR along with HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group and The Royal Bank of Scotland will have negligible affect on anything," says Rose, who runs an early-stage investment newswire. "The average deal value in this market is £250,000, meaning that some 300 of the best performing SMEs will be assisted. Even in normal economic times, between 20,000 and 50,000 SMEs are seeking this kind of equity funding. What's going to happen to the other 19,700 to 49,700 capital-starved SMEs?'
 
Rose goes on to say that 'Growthwire forecasts 100,000 bankruptcies and repossessions from failed entrepreneurs over the coming three years and to beware any suggestion from the business secretary that banks will somehow be ‘forced’ into lending to SMEs, especially those banks that have been funded by the tax-payer,'.
 
He also hits out at Mandelson's suggestion that people should use their redundancy payments to start a small business: "This intimation was made two weeks ago and demonstrates the government’s profound naivety and ignorance of the small business culture and what motivates the UK's four million entrepreneurs," says Rose. "People start a business to fill a gap that they see in a market, not because they have been made redundant and need to find some other way of making a living. The last thing anyone should do with their redundancy money is 'start a small business'."

Rose reckons sustained intervention from politicians and legislators ("none of whom have ever created wealth by risking their own capital and assets in starting a business") over the past two decades is one of the major causes of our current problems.

_{Given the positivity for the immediate future identified in the latest O2 Business Confidence index reported here is David Rose right?}

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