Eighteen months ago I discovered a Rule of Five buried deep within some Economic History Research I had embarked upon. This Rule of Five provides a monetary explanation for the English Industrial Revolution and may one day get the attention of Economic Historians. But don’t hold your breath. These things take time. Old professors must die off before new ideas are embraced. This one’s for posterity. Hello Posterity!

The 35000 word essay England’s Economic Politics for a new century is the size of The Rise & Fall of the Swedish Green Party (1972-1998). The Ivan Illich footnoting approach gives me twelve appendices and another 35000 words. The text is divided into 24 chapters…the Rise & Fall was my model…and three parts…Theory, Reality and Strategy.

The first part discusses the thinking and premises underlying my world view…where I am coming from. The second part offers insights into the Microbusiness Sector. The third part discusses strategy and proposes a grass-roots debt cancellation strategy and a local approach to the Ownwork and Microbusiness Investment problems.

The list of contents looks like this. Prologue. Part I: Theory - Page 5: Orthodoxy & Heresy; Political Economy; Money Talks; Kings; Land; War Business; Debt Laundering; Clean Slate Doctrine. Part II: Reality - Page 19: Commercial Credit; Work Experience; Ownwork; Business; Accounting; Poor or Penniless; Owning & Renting; Monetary Dispatronage. Part III: Strategy - Page 30: Business & Banking; Money & Time; Bankruptcy; Local Front; Slate Cleaning; Bailiwick Bonds; Enterprise Equity; Order of Gaian Knights; Epilogue.

The appendices include Lies & Truth from Mesopotamia and a Clean Slate Handbook. The other appendices are: About the Author; The Artist as a Young Man; Human Ecology; Structural Sociology; The Duke of Buen Consejo; The Royal Prerogative; Tea-Time at Marshbeck; Energy Economics and Prices & Economics.

I need money like everybody else. Drug smuggling would be ideal; time outlay very low; money returns very high. But I haven't got the bottle for it...and the downside is bad news too. I am told there are grants for what I do but 25 years ago I made a decision to ignore them. I was living in America and noticed that the American Alternative Movement came in two flavours...people who got on with it and people who had meetings, formed committees, collected patrons and applied for grants. The world has changed…and donations are not the same as grants.

So on Monday 11th October 2004 I rather boldly added a Request for Donations to the frontispiece of my manuscript that went like this. ‘The first edition of English Economic Politics for a new century by William Shepherd is to be published in Swedish. £ 5000 is required for the translation. To discuss donations contact Academic Inn Books.

Hope springs eternal so there is also a PayPal button on the cesc website…all monies managed by William Franklin & Sons Limited. Patrons can be sent a receipt and may find themselves mentioned in weblogs and dispatches If they prefer anonymity then the modern way is to give interest-free non-repayable loans. I will be dropping in excerpts from the manuscript from time to time…including The Rule of Five. For today here is an extract from the prologue.

‘The job of government is to enable ordinary people to get on with their lives. An underlying theme running through this essay is that government needs to reinvent itself by remembering what it is for. I am wary of categories but in this essay I complain that the microbusiness sector has been overlooked in the growth of guaranteed incomes and is discriminated against in the creation and distribution of money. The biggest challenge government faces is to dismantle the Central Banking Mechanism.

Over the next few decades another key job for government is to remove obstacles to business. But the business I talk about takes place wherever two or three people are gathered together to do good work. This is the only business government should care about...the busy-ness of ordinary people. The rest can and will look after themselves. Real people have moral duties. Judicial persons do not do morality...the notion is ethical nonsense. The legal rights of real people should override those of judicial persons.

Twenty five years ago I read Critical Path by Buckminster Fuller. I don't believe everything I read in books but Bucky did a lifetime of ownwork and knew a thing or two. He had a chapter on Self-Disciplines. Never advertise your work. Turn ideas into working models. That sort of thing. Some had to do with money. His bottom line was straight from our Christian Gospels. Don't worry! Keep working! Be happy! Consider the lilies of the field and the birds of the air! The Lord will provide! You find this scary? So do I. It gets worse. For Buckminster Fuller the work of any little individual could be for themselves and for immediate gratification or for everybody and for all time.

God's cosmic calculus provides greater rewards the more your work is for all the people all the time. Meanwhile Providence supplies money on a just-in-time basis...just in the nick of time. Is this Old Nick? Why would a Good Lord do that? When I want my faith tested I'll let Him know. And I wondered why Greek Heroes railed at their gods!