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Getting trains back on the Rails

Getting the Railways fit for Purpose

24th January, 2007

In India during the last Great War, we saw long distance trains, so overcrowded that passengers were on the roofs of the carriages and standing on the running boards, clutching the open windows. Unless we act now, this summer could see the same on franchised commuter trains!! To franchise the transport of commuters, is to regard the passenger as troublesome livestock that cannot be packed into containers. But “they” would, if they could, make it financially viable to do so.

So what is wrong, that barbarism returns twice daily, in order to get commuters from Bath to Bristol and back again. This is what is wrong!!. Economics without ethics, and without sanity. When we do not know how to create and issue extra new money and then use the law to enforce the use of credit instead of money, economics is no longer fit for purpose. Is it hard to believe and even harder to understand that explanation? Then let me tell you why!

We human beings have great difficulty in understanding what we cannot believe and find it virtually impossible to believe what we cannot understand. Money is the root of all evil, or appears to be, merely because the economists have failed to define the word money and yet pretend to use money as a means of exchange. We have a consensus, set in stone in the House of Commons, that if the Government were allowed to create and issue new money, we should have runaway inflation.

That would certainly be true if any politician in Britain today advocated paying off our debts with new money. We now owe several trillion pounds, more money than has ever existed. If we paid off those debts with the existing money we have, there would be no money, not a penny left and we would starve to death in the midst of plenty.

Do you see how difficult it is, to believe and understand these simple truths. It is actually so difficult, we come up with an easy answer; forget about money and use credit instead. That is now a polite word for debt and there is plenty of debts. Why does the plight of the commuter scream at us, to wake up and see the truth? Because their plight helps us to see through the fog of confusion, created by a form of economics which has no integrity and no sanity.

Barbarism could be defined as humanity reverting to man as a beast or animal and going insane as a result. A deadly accurate statement.

Look at those carriages, festooned with humans like thee and me, racing through tunnels and no room to lie down on the roof.

Let us examine the solution. Money is a means of exchange in which we can trust that it is fit for purpose. What is that purpose? It is to act as a means of exchange for that which we need to exchange.

We need to exchange that which we create for that which the other chap creates, that we need. To be fit for purpose, money must truly represent the value of what is being exchanged. How do we assess that value? By the cost of making its appearance in the market place, financially viable.

Simple stuff, only dishonesty and lack of integrity makes it confusing.

Therefore when we need a canal or a road or railway to get what we need, to and from the market place, these facilities become public services for which we allow ourselves to have a Government. We tell our Government to provide them and to create and spend the requisite money for that purpose and that purpose alone. That is all the Government is there for, and if it fails on the job by creating debt instead of money, this civilisation races away like an army of crazy rats into oblivion.

There is no need for that, it is much too uncomfortable. Better by far to return to Fair Trading, integrity and common sense.

Doctor Edward C Hamlyn MBChB