A Shocking Sign of The Times!

Dear Members,

I hope you are all well, and managing to survive through these crazy times.
I have been working on the new Website Directories page, slowly adding more counties, and advertisers (long job!). I have already managed to create 12 county pages so far.

While doing this work, I was utterly stunned by the number of businesses that have simply closed permanently, and shut down their websites. I estimate that between 40% and 50% of the businesses, which I collected from Kompass.com (a big international directory), are now dead in the water. I knew things were bad, but I had no idea of just how bad things had become. There was around 6 million businesses in the UK pre-pandemic, and I know that this number had fallen to around 5.6 million last year. I hate to think what the number is now!

It was also the range of businesses that have closed down which shocked me, which includes almost every type of business there is (including shops, restaurants, offices, garages, plumbers etc.). Even website builders, graphic designers, and other businesses that generally work from home (low overheads), have shut down.

As is my nature, I am still positive about the future, but I will be glad to see an end to these troubled times, even though it is hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel at the moment, with the price of everything ballooning, as we slowly come out of the pandemic.

Regards
Max
NSBO