The search is on for the UK’s most inspiring female entrepreneurs, as the annual NatWest everywoman awards are launched on 1May at the House of Commons.

The awards, now in their sixth year, recognise and reward the most successful women, of all backgrounds and ages, who are leading the way in UK business, and acting as role models for others wanting to go it alone.

Women make up 51% of the UK adult population, but only constitute 27% of the self-employed*, and these awards are an opportunity to celebrate those that are bucking the trend and achieving success, to help address this inequality.

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From Businessweek: Assuming you've saved some cash, there are a few steps you can take to weather the economic downturn, and even flourish.

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David Griffiths had been working as head of marketing for Europe in a market-leading payments company called Bottomline Technologies for five years – all the while thinking of how he could get to run his own business again.

The first company he had owned had specialised in developing and selling high-end web-based tools. Now he was impatient to get up and running again, and worked out that buying an established business offered the best route.

“To be honest, I wanted a faster start,” he says. “I’ve done it from scratch before and it takes a year and a half to get things going, and can be quite painful.”

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From the BBC: The UK economy is set for a "rapid, painful adjustment" over the next two years, according to an influential economic forecasting group.

Growth will fall from 3.1% in 2007 to 1.8% this year and 1.5% in 2009 unless the government acts decisively predicted Ernst and Young's Item Club.

Employment will hold steady while manufacturing will reap the benefit of the strong pound, the report said.

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From The Times: Four pubs are shutting down each day as licensees give up the battle against cheap supermarkert beer and falling trade.

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Online shoppers are abandoning their baskets before buying because of website complications, according to a leading online entrepreneur.

Websites taking too long to load and failing to stock the right products are two of the biggest bugbears of online shoppers, says Paul Nadin, founder of The Review Centre, a consumer review website.

"Shopping online is easy and quick, or so we are led to believe, but some consumers are finding the process too lengthy and complicated,” says Nadin.

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...If only you had it!

People often seek professional advice about speculative proposals that they believe could make them money, if only they had funds to turn their ideas into action.

Chris Baguley, managing director of short-term funding specialist Bridging Finance Limited, gives some popular ideas a reality check.

Professional advisers are accustomed to being approached by clients who believe they've just stumbled across a business idea that they believe is 'the greatest thing since sliced bread'.

These approaches often come from otherwise rather cautious individuals who bemoan their inability to fund the opportunities that have come their way.

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From TheStreet.com: For Brian Kurth, a six- or even seven-day workweek is nothing unusual.

In fact it's the norm for the 41-year-old business owner, who also admits he doesn't get much sleep.

"I'm usually up until midnight, and back up at 5am," says Kurth, owner of Portland, Oregon-based VocationVacations - a company that allows people to test-drive dream jobs. "But it's not work if you love it."

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Few places can be as different from their reputation as Glasgow.

To some, the city still conjures up images of some of the worst slums in Europe.

But Glasgow is far more than an urban jungle. Architecturally, it is one of the UK’s most beautiful cities, partly the result of the efforts of one its most famous sons, Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

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Cutting prices might seem reasonable given the state of the economy, but doing so could backfire over the long run, argues a columnist in BusinessWeek.

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From Businessweek: Are small business owners reeling from the effects of the credit crunch and the overall downturn or brushing them off?

Depends on whom you ask.

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From Yahoo!: The internet, as we know it, could be obsolete within a decade.

Forget dial-up; forget broadband: The future, it seems, is The Grid.

It's the brainchild of CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research based in Geneva.

It's there that Sir Tim Berners-Lee first invented the internet, so it's appropriate that the next stage in its evolution should emerge there.

But what is the Grid?

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From US Today: Recessionary gloom is hitting Main Street, as confidence among small-business owners plunged last month to its lowest in nearly three decades, according to a survey of the National Federation of Independent Business.

The NFIB's Small Business Economic Trends survey in March fell to 89.6 — the lowest quarterly reading since 1980, and the lowest monthly reading since monthly figures were started in 1986.

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From More Than Business: British businesses faces a tax hike of over £4 billion over the next three years, with small companies likely to be among those most affected, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has said.

In its analysis of Treasury figures, the CBI states that companies will pay an extra £1.84 billion in tax in 2008/09, £1.24bn in 2009/10, and £1.13bn in 2010/11 as a result of fiscal measures which came into effect yesterday.

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Britain’s 58,000 pubs are central to its society.

Ask any tourist about the appeal of the UK and pubs are likely to crop up, while Eastenders and Coronation Street wouldn’t be the same without their boozers.

The archetypal country pub, complete with ivy and timber frame, is the dream of many in the industry.

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Expanding your business is one thing, but expanding into another country has a million problems associated with it.

Not only are there likely to be language barriers but there will be cultural barriers too.

Bachir Mihoubi is CEO of FranCounsel Group and provides some of his experience of international expansion to writes for Franchising World magazine.

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From Businessweek: Author Gregg Vanourek on applying entrepreneurial principles to your life, why a recession can be a good time to start a business, and more.

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From The Times: Innovation: How do you grow a ‘light-bulb moment’ into a business?

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From The Australian: As the latest small business survey finds business expects a recession, a leading forecaster blames men for recessions and argues that women are the mainstays of the economy.

This comes as another survey shows that almost a third of the nation's chief executives have gone negative on their business outlook over the three months and that the Reserve Bank of Australia and the commercial banks have applied the interest rate thumbscrews.

But does the RBA, which today considers another interest rate rise, know or care what men are thinking?

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