When Gordon Brown revealed Sir Alan Sugar (as he was then) was to become the latest member of his celebrity troupe of advisors I wasn't alone in wondering exactly what the government's new Enterprise Tsar/Champion would get up to. Would he be banging on the doors of bank managers demanding that they lend to small businesses or maybe he'd be watching Lord Mandelson's every move? He could be but one of the jobs he has revealed he is doing is prowling the corridors of the government's flagship advisory service Business Link.
The network has come in for a lot of stick over the past fews years (not least from me) so it isn't surprising to discover that Gordon Brown is interested in what the now Lord Sugar thinks of it.
Speaking at the Technology Strategy Board's Innovate '09 conference last week, the peer, who was in a feisty mood, said he had sat on in a mentoring session between a Business Link official and a wannabe entrepreneur. Unluckily for both parties, the client's business idea focused on the electronics sector which the Amstrad founder knows a thing or two about. Watching the mentor advise the businessman, Lord Sugar said, he worked out that the idea was "rubbish" pretty quickly although the mentor was "not qualified to make the same decision".
Although a small and very specific anecdote it's disappointing to find out that such inadequacies still exist in the Business Link system. We're still waiting for the full details of the government's new simplified network to come into force but who knows, by the time that is meant to happen there could be a new political party shacked up in Number 10 and we'll have to start all over again. Whatever happens at the polls though, let's hope Lord Sugar is doing the rounds and pointing his famous finger at those business advisors who don't make the grade.
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