Railways and coal mines 3

It is important for the new railway to have a good ticketing system. It must be possible to go to any station and buy a through ticket to anywhere in the country, and to major places in Europe. This should also be possible on the internet, and of course to be able to buy a through ticket from Europe. The prices need to be reasonable, I would think about 10 pence a mile on average, except for peak times.
All government aids and tax breaks for travel will be confined to train travel where this is possible. Pensioners free travel will of course be allowed on the train.
The post office will use the train, and will offer a service of 2 day delivery, by train and not by air. The railways will offer a parcel service for collection at the station. This is a great convenience  when no-one is at home all day for a parce to be delivered, much easier to collect it from the station on the way home from work. All professional internet and catalogue sellers will be required to offer this service as an option. They will have to arrange to deliver their parcels to their nearest station. Foreign sellers can just send by post as normal, addressed to the customer c/o the station selected. There will be a requirement for coal to fuel the trains and this will be provided from British mines, private or publically owned if neccessary. The investment neccessary for the building of the railways and purchase of the Engines and rolling stock can be financed by the issue of a railway bond by National savings, paying interest at 3% free of tax, with a limit per person of 50000 pounds. The railways will be owned by a company whos share will be wholly owned by the government, so the bonds will be a loan to the company but guaranteed by the government.

Getting out of recession

Much has been said about Keynsian economics recently. Keynes is the economist who proposed government spending on capital projects with borrowed money to boost economic activity. There is an important point point the Brown government missed, and that is, borrow to spend “on capital projects”. The coalition seems to be cutting back on spending shrinking the economy and still borrowing. Banks cannot be described as a capital project. Railways and coal mines can. I will explain in the next post.