Latest / Best of Business / Mike's Minute: Look further than the headline

Transcript

Mike's Minute: Look further than the headline · Best of Business

• 0:09
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• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Big headline. Headline was 3,000 hospitality businesses gone in a year.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: That was your headline, 3,000. Now, that's what the media
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: not only does, but they love it. They would perceive
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: it as bad news. They can't peddle bad news enough.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: But in the numbers are the real story. The 3,000
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: is made up of closures and liquidations. A closure is
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: can mean nothing more than a person leaving the country
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: or closing one establishment to open another. Happens all the time.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: It's not a sign of anything other than mood or inspiration.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Important to also remember that there are more openings than closures.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: That's the real story of hospo. So in essence, the
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: hospo scene is actually growing. Not that the headline about
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  Speaker 2: 3,000 closures would ever tell you that. It's also, ironically,
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: perhaps an insight into the reality of hospo, which is
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: a very easy entry into business, given a lot of
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: hospos are sort of a hole-in-the-wall sandwich bar type thing.
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  Speaker 2: Often migrants comes and goes. So on one hand, we
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  Speaker 2: are growing. On the other, it's an in and out
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  Speaker 2: sort of operation that's not really reflective of a wider
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  Speaker 2: economic story. Now, the next part of the stats dump, liquidations,
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  Speaker 2: they tell us are up 42% year on year, 42%.
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  Speaker 2: Now that sounds bad until you hear the next number,
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  Speaker 2: which is 1.3%. The 1.3% is the percentage of businesses
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  Speaker 2: that actually end up liquidated, which of course is hardly any. 98%
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  Speaker 2: or 98.7% are not liquidated. So the 42% is off
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  Speaker 2: an extremely low base, and not if you were being
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  Speaker 2: honest worthy of a headline, don't you reckon? But remember,
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: the key here for the media is all about bad news.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: Want a worse one? Takeaway liquidations. They're up 143%. Shocker.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: Except remember, takeaways is a subset of overall liquidations, and
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  Speaker 2: the liquidations only represent 1.3%. So imagine how small the
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: actual number of fish and chip bars that this involves. 143%
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  Speaker 2: of what? So the narrative... If a headline is all
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  Speaker 2: you ever see, you will believe we're in a dump.
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  Speaker 2: It's a mess. Things aren't improving. And yet the truth
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  Speaker 2: is a whole different thing. And in these numbers in
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  Speaker 2: the narrative is the modern day story of news and information.
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  Speaker 2: What's real versus what you think is real. It sadly
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  Speaker 2: requires work on your part to get to the real story.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: And in this case, it is nowhere near as bad
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  Speaker 2: as they make out. In fact, almost entirely the opposite.
• 2:29
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• 2:33
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