A response to 'Devil in the detail' event

So you can get something for nothing! I'm still struggling with that, but I guess it depends on what is offered, who is offering it, and who it is offered to.   I should continue to respond to casual offers in the post of thousand pounds prizes by binning them because I don't know the organisations offering them, and they are not interested in what I am going to do with it.   As a Christian I should recognise that God offers us undeserved salvation - something for nothing - so why am I struggling with this?   On reflection, if I ask for the loan of capital from a bank to start a business, we have all agreed that it will not be "for nothing" - I will eventually have to pay it back. It is actually the anticipated realisation of profit I will eventually make, so the bank needs to be confident I will make that profit. It may not be "something" to the bank because we have been told that it is just figures on a balance sheet. But it is "something" to me because it represents the concrete equipment and labour I need to get started.   If this is what banks are for (and Douglas Coe gave a clear historical explanation that it is), they have lost the plot.   So maybe "something for nothing" is a misunderstanding of the truth on my part. But the seminar has helped confirm my rather simple view that money is not a thing in itself - it represents value of things, labour, etc, as was established early on.   But if the widely perceived increase in government debt is the myth that Ann Pettifor demonstrated in her graphs, how can the myth be most effectively exploded? Were any MPs present? I came to this because I watched a parliamentary debate in which almost no Labour MPs attempted to address the repeated accusations by Tory MPs that the last government got us into all this debt.     Martin Jewitt   (Author: Rev Martin Jewitt)

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