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Helping Mother to Cope

When both parents must work in order to pay the mortgage, they certainly need help. Keeping the schools open for longer, appears to be a very great help, allowing both parents greater freedom to work, longer hours and earn more money to buy a better home for the benefit of the children. This looks as though it is also of benefit to the state. More production, more exports and greater national wealth.

But there is a mystery, which we do not notice.

We are looking at a standard of living that was not even achieved by millionaires when I was a boy. Only the university possessed a computer. Our phone at home was Keynsham 149. Very few of us had a telephone. Not many families owned a car and the cars available, were so cold and uncomfortable as to be almost unwanted. On Monday we did the washing and for a family of seven, it was a lot of hard work and a nightmare during the winter.

If I could go back now to the days of my childhood, armed with a modern digital camera and a mobile phone, I should be a VIP of VIPs. But if we had to depend on charity to survive we would have been the lowest of the low. The pressure of modern living is such that we need state aid as Sure Start to the day and Kelly hours at close of day, in order to survive.

It seems as though we pay a terribly high price for living in the year 2005. Fewer families are able to keep pets, because the pressure of modern life is too high. That could be a deprivation, which actually threatens our survival. It might be a lot better to forgo the apparent bliss of Kelly hours and live with less stress. Live our lives at a more leisurely pace. Earn more for what we do, so that we do not have to do half as much, as we do and yet have more for doing less.

The reason that this is possible, lies in the fact that we have slipped into using credit as a substitute for money. That practice doubles the work load for everyone. Credit is borrowed money, on which interest is paid. But it is far worse than that, credit is money, which did not exist until it was accepted as a loan, at which point credit becomes a loan of money.

Therefore, not only do we pay interest for the use of credit, but we assume we have borrowed someone else's money and eventually they will want it back.

Gordon Brown and Miss Kelly are both determined to keep the show on the road and all of us working as hard and as fast as we can, perhaps without realising. it is for the benefit of the bankers who supply the credit, which cost them nothing.

If you take this briefing sheet as a wake up call, to the fact that you're working not for yourself or for your family but for the banks, it will be possible for you to its ease off the stress of your life, to such a degree that one breadwinner per family could earn all that is needed and wanted, with two or three days' work, each week.

No more gridlocked roads. No more heavy taxation. No more mental illness caused by stress and no more crime. We'd find ourselves living in a totally new world, that we didn't even know could exist

Doctor Edward C Hamlyn MBChB