As you may remember, Gillybob, we have mutually commiserated in the past about the trials and tribulations of running a small business. I am lucky that I am now out and I would say to anyone; self employment? yes, employer? no. Everyone, including many of my staff, seemed to think that I was coining it in, the truth was that like you, I broke the law every month by not paying myself the legal minimum wage. As to increasing the minimum, I am wholeheartedly in support of it, BUT many of those who are in support are not prepared to pay the increased costs, preferring instead to buy goods made cheaply (and with exploited labour) overseas, or to pay people in cash in the brown envelope/cash in hand economy. There is a lot of hypocrisy, on GN we have read of people boasting about how little they pay for clothes in the dreaded Primark, conveniently shutting their minds to the cruel labour practices involved in producing those clothes, let alone the jobs being lost in the skilled UK sector.