Government ministers and even some parts of the media  seem to be upbeat about the positive economic prospects in the UK saying that “the worst is over”.

Yet the financial indicators seem to point towards a different scenario. I came across a man in St Albans yesterday who has been out of a job since January and the city is in one of the wealthiest areas of the UK and only thirty five minutes from London.

Then again perhaps a better indicator of what the future holds could be the number of companies re-locating their head offices outside the UK in order to save the costs of future taxes.

McDonalds the US company, which opened its first restaurant in London in 1974, joins
other large US corporations that have based their European operations in
Switzerland, including Kraft, Procter & Gamble, Colgate Palmolive and
Yahoo. Google also chose Zurich for its European headquarters, despite
having a large office London.

Even home-grown UK companies have moved to
more favourable tax regimes. The list includes Regus, the temporary office
supplier, advertising giant WPP and
pharmaceuticals company Shire which are both relocating their headquarters
to Ireland, and Brit Insurance, which plans to move to the Netherlands.
Investment company Henderson set up a new parent company in Ireland.

The one person I do know who won’t be moving to save money will be the poor guy made redundant last January that I met earlier.