It is understandable that someone who has just been made redundant wants to look on the bright side and decides it is the perfect opportunity to start their own business.

It is equally understandable why governments, eager to remove them from horrifying unemployment statistics, give them every encouragement – vocally if not practically.

It might be imagined that those, like the contributors to this blog, who support free enterprise, and make a living out of it, would support that.

Not necessarily.

While it may be a good idea for some – perhaps most – to become their own bosses, governments are being positively irresponsible in persuading others to set up businesses that are doomed to fail.

1   Running a business demands that you are able to concentrate all your attention and your energy on it when required. Many have family or other obligations that may conflict with this. As a result, they are not there for the business when it needs them – and often fail in their family or other obligations too.

2   Some people simply have no head for business and no amount of “training” can make up for it. Note that business savvy is by no means the same as academic intelligence – a disproportionate number of self-made multi-millionaires are high school drop-outs, while the bankers and bureaucrats who got us into the current economic mess are some of the best-educated people in the world. However, no amount of hard graft can make up for a failure to grasp the few basic principles on which all business depends.

3   Anyone who goes into business because the government encourages them is not going to be able to cope with the harsh truth that the same government will then put obstacle after obstacle in the way of their success and their survival.

4   Many whose experience of life is limited to an inadequate education, followed by secure employment, have no idea of the initiative, flexibility, and endurance necessary to run a real business.