By silicon.com, 4 January 2005 16:45
NEWS 05.01.2000: The millennium bug has been blamed for the increased number of business failures in 1999 in the UK.
Research by Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) shows that an increasing number of companies were using the bug as a pretext for not paying bills on time, often causing critical cash flow problems for small businesses.
Philip Mellor, senior analyst at D&B said using the excuse that the cheque is lost in the computer was as commonplace as claiming it was lost in the post.
05.01.2004: By the time the majority of us had returned to work in January 2000 the overwhelming realisation was that it was very much the same world it had been in 1999 - despite the end of the world hype that surrounded the millennium bug.
Planes hadn't fallen out of the sky when the clock struck midnight. Our bank accounts hadn't all been wiped out and the emergency services, hospitals, stock markets, shops, phone companies and assorted other earmarked victims for Y2K meltdown had all weathered the storm.
The extent to which rigorous planning had restricted any chaos will never be fully known, but despite the apparent non-event of New Year pandemonium it didn't stop the bug being wheeled out as an excuse, which was the business equivalent of 'the dog ate my homework'.
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