TURMEL: Your Majesty should reconsider LETS
BUCKINGHAM PALACE
Mr. J. Turmel, Abolitionist Party of Canada, Box 111, Ottawa, Canada, K2C 3L4.
6th January, 1997.
Dear Mr. Turmel, I am commanded by The Queen to thank you for your letter of 11th December with which you forwarded your book on your Abolish Interest Rates Project. Her Majesty appreciated your thoughtfulness in writing to her as you about your project. The Queen does not, however, wish to take up your offer to open an account as part of the LETSystem Scheme, though she was interested to know of your efforts in establishing it. Thank you for writing as you did, and I hope that you enjoyed your recent visit to this country. Yours sincerely, Simon Gimson -------------------------------
Feb. 19, 1997
HRH Queen Elizabeth II, Buckingham Palace, London, UK.
Your Majesty: I appreciate acknowledgment of the Abolish Interest Rates Project and my help in establishing the Local Employment Trading System, the popular computer software which permits the Unemployed and Under- employed to Trade Employment Locally, Nationally, even Internationally. Your Majesty will note from the picture on the cover of this letter, I was at Buckingham Palace, though not for long, with the same "Abolish Interest Rates" placard you saw on your 1983 visit to Ottawa but with LETS now on the other side. While in London, I was shocked to see something I had never seen before - old ladies sleeping in the streets. I was saddened at the thought that my first Petition of Right on how the LETS employment- creation software could help those suffering old ladies could not have included the most recent information I found on the support of LETS in the UK. Enclosed is my UK LETS Mission Report on trying to forge an all- party LETS coalition before the upcoming general election and Pauline Morrissette's Trip report for her view of events. For simplicity, all 2,500 Greencurrency systems are based on Greenhours linked to the national currency. As you'll note from the report, in the UK, 1 Hounslow LETS standard Greenhour is worth 6 Greenpound "Cranes." In Canada, 1 Greenhour is worth about 12 Greendollar "Ecos". In the United States, 1 Greenhour is worth 1 "Hour." They trade the international standard of time with no currency name. Just Hours. Governments have supported LETS in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the United States, as well as in the UK where Local Employment Trading Systems have been funded by over one quarter of the 400 Local Authorities as an "anti-poverty" program. There are a couple of thousand Local UK politicians who have already somehow supported LETS. The growth of LETS around Europe is similarly spectacular. Please note articles from the Nov 29 1996 Liberal Democratic Party newsletter where they proudly take credit for using LETS as an anti-poverty machine in Stockport. In the same edition, Leeds Metropolitan University Professors Colin Williams and Gill Seyfang urge Liberal Democrats to help LETS grow faster. They've accepted LETS in two policy papers. You can imagine my joy at then finding the almost full page of stories on LETS in the Jan 6 1997 UK Guardian titled: "Election Battleground" "More than a token revolution" and then have BBC1 do an piece on LETS a few days later. To make LETS the battleground in the upcoming general election, I and my UK political LETSers had faced the daunting task of canvassing each candidate in all 650 ridings "Yes or No on National LETS?" But no more. With the calling of the Wirral South federal byelection, the seas have been parted and we only have to see if we can make "Yes or No to National LETS?" the election battleground in one riding first. In my last federal campaign in Hamilton East, five or thirteen candidates signed a petition for a National Canada LETS. I have found out about pro-LETS UK politicians from the Tory, Labour, Liberal Democrat, Green, Referendum and Islamic parties and my goal has been to produce an all-party LETS coalition before the upcoming general election. I have no doubt there will be many more pro-National-LETS parties in the upcoming Canadian general election as I have no doubt that we will see a pro-LETS political coalition in Wirral South. Pauline Morrissette, a Canadian LETS pioneer, is now in the UK to put the question: "Yes or No to National LETS?" to every candidate in the Wirral South byelection and every leader. Would Your Majesty grant Pauline an audience to present her report on "LETS: the election battleground" before Mar 10? She can be reached at 0171 328 3701. To demonstrate how LETS would fund the realm, I am sending Your Majesty half a year of John Turmel's time at work accounted for through my Abolitionist Party LETSystem. That's 12,000 paper Greendollars (G$100:#6001-6120) which any Abolitionist will take in exchange for work if we may pay Your Majesty's taxes with them. I know no one in Canada who will not work for any paper which they may use to pay Your Majesty's taxes. And this currency is offered interest-free. I have urged all Local Employment Trading Systems to consider a voluntary levy of a similar half-year pre-paid Greencurrency tax to the credit of Your Majesty by all unemployed workers. If each underemployed LETSystem member in the UK contributed half a year's tax up front we could work for, 50,000 members times 1,000 hours of work, that's 300 million Greenpounds of purchasing power for the Crown from only one tenth of a percent of the population. If the whole unemployed population were to prepay half a Greenyear in tax with LETS currency, your coffers would be filled with Greenpounds from around the nation which would pop out of poverty into full employment almost overnight. Enclosed is an article in 1994/5 Planetary Connections detailing that His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales was a guest speaker at the 1995 Findhorn conference with pro-LETSer Jill Jordan and Abolitionist Margrit Kennedy who wrote the book "Interest- and Inflation-free Money." Perhaps Prince Charles attended those lectures or read the materials and could be of assistance? I would submit that with these new developments, the benefits of Your Majesty's help in establishing a National LETS by joining the network of Local LETS are too great not to be reconsidered. Your Majesty may have been ill-advised as the coming interest-free LETS world is a matter of life-and-death import which mandates its immediate re-consideration. As the UK Guardian headline predicted, this will be an "election battleground" and Your Majesty would not want to be committed to the wrong side of this technical issue without much greater consideration. Perhaps this would be time to seek the advice of a technical inquiry on the Banking System done by technically qualified individuals, Your Majesty's Royal Society of Engineers. I am not addressing Your Majesty as a politician telling my Leader of State what I'd like to see. I am a Banking Systems Engineer, probably the first, addressing the Captain of our Ship of State on how the instability causing all the financially-induced extinction and destruction that surrounds us can be eliminated with the newly engineered design of the Local Employment Trading banking software upgrade which can solve the problem of the paupered old ladies sleeping outside Your Majesty's bedroom window. Only direct financial connection to the Crown through a LETS can do that. Evidently, connection through the current banking middlemen has not. I am a candidate for Director of the National Capital Freenet's 60,000-member database where there will be a Mar 11 1997 vote on installing the LETS. Abolishing Interest with LETS is the Issue of the New Millennium. I pray Your Majesty tunes in on the discussion and chooses to lead rather than follow as we build a LETS infrastructure for the United Kingdom and Commonwealth. I have just learned that Your Majesty will be visiting Canada in June, the same month as a potential federal election. If I am not elected Prime Minister for the right to bring you up to date on recent developments on LETS, would Your Majesty grant me an hour to so nevertheless? Respectfully yours, John "The Engineer" C. Turmel -------------------------------
JCT: For anyone UK citizens who want to see LETS Employment- Trading created nationally with employment for everyone able and willing to work, you must let your fingers do the walking to Wirral South. Where does the Wirral South candidate from your party stand on "Yes or No to National LETS?" Add to the calls trying to find out? Where does the leader of your party stand on "Yes or No to National LETS?" Add to the calls trying to find out? It would be greatly appreciated if some our Commonwealth cousins could find out and post which UK politicians are in favor of National Employment Trading and which are not. And why not? Australia's press has called LETS an "economic life-boat" and I bid you haste in building up YOUR life-boat LETSUK as I hasten to build up MY lifeboat LETSCA. I will send a copy of my book "The Adventures of John Turmel and Poker Power Tools," to the first person who posts the answer to the question "Yes or No to National LETS?" from any Wirral South federal candidate, party leader, or other member of the the Royal Family since we'll soon know the answer from Her Majesty.