Pound for Pound

From http://www.vivalewes.com/ Nov 2008

The launch of the Lewes Pound has been the biggest thing to hit town since the boycott of the Lewes Arms all those months ago. The Pound's website promotes it as way to keep money in the local economy, cut carbon emissions and strengthen relationships with local traders. Though coverage has been everywhere (local and national) there has so far been very little discussion of what the Pound can realistically achieve. Lately I've been wondering: when all the razzmatazz, and eBay auctions are over what's the Pound really worth?

The argument that the Pound keeps money local goes something like this. Did you realise that the Lewes economy is like a bucket full of holes? Money that comes into Lewes is leaking into the globalised world beyond. The Lewes Pound will address this by ensuring that a portion of the money in circulation can only be spent in local businesses. This should maintain (and perhaps increase) spending in local shops. Just how many Pounds circulate in the local economy depends on how many people pick them up in the first place and on how many of those keep using them after the initial buzz. The arrangement is envisaged as permanent though of course it’s possible that, after dealing with two kinds of money for a while, a portion of people may find this a hassle and revert to regular cash. Though the plan is optimistic, the evidence for such complementary currencies may be less encouraging. It suggests that they have their best chance of catching on when physical money is scarce and large numbers of people really need a substitute. They literally stop money going out of town. In a country with plenty of coins, notes and plastic there just isn't the same necessity for an alternative, and complementary currency is far more likely to remain a novelty. After all people already have a way of supporting local business.

This support is given via regular money but an aim for the Pound (assuming enough people use it) is to increase the amount spent. However, here it runs into another problem. What about all those times when buying from the shop down the road is undermined by price, product range and all sorts of other factors which influence us weak-willed consumers. If you don't have a lot of money to throw around, the hole in the bucket that leads to Asda might look quite attractive. Sadly, in Lewes many small traders selling core commodities, like food and electrical goods, haven’t been able to compete in recent years. Against such forces what chance for the Lewes Pound? The example of the Totnes Pound (on which the Lewes Pound is based) is instructive. It maintains a steady circulation which implies that it at least has a number of committed advocates who keep putting it out there. However, is far from clear that it has increased spending in the local economy. In fact its circulation might just as easily mean that the market for local goods and services is fairly stable and unlikely to be dramatically altered by these kinds of initiatives.

Of all the possible benefits of the Lewes Pound, cutting carbon emissions has been put front and centre. The assumption is that keeping trade local will help the environment. Much as I love the High Street, this is not always a straightforward case to make. Sure, people walk to local shops but they also drive to them. Supermarkets often (though not always) mean you have to drive, but then larger loads can mean fewer trips. Relative to the volume of stuff they sell, large stores may have fewer deliveries than small ones as their products can often be delivered in larger amounts. Also there is no obligation on local traders to stock local goods and the products people demand mean even corner shops have a global inventory. Strange though it may sound, even if shops do have more local goods, there is no guarantee that commodities from nearby have a lower carbon footprint than stuff flown in from abroad. Local vegetables may come from heated polytunnels or British apples could have been refrigerated for months. Anyway, if we're really serious about cutting emissions internet shopping can be a more efficient way, as many deliveries can be made on one journey. It’s often complicated to calculate the carbon cost of various shopping options and proposing a vague notion of “localness” as the solution to emissions is seriously oversimplifying the issue.

All of which seems to leave us making friends with local traders. Despite some instances of traders being hassled to accept Lewes Pounds by some customers, this may be one area where the people behind the Pound are onto something. Community development is something complementary currencies can at least potentially achieve if they get beyond being simply a curiosity for the middle-class. If nothing else Lewes Pounds will give us all something to talk about now the parking has been done to death. Actually, and maybe this is the real point of the exercise, they do more than that and have been a publicity coup worthy of a town that's been grabbing headlines since Simon de Montfort. Local trading is well worth shouting about and can be wonderful in myriad ways: not least convenience, services the big boys can't match, and gluing the whole community together.

The other side of the Lewes Pound, though, is a danger that complex problems are being addressed with a romantic fantasy of self-sufficiency rather than appropriate solutions. The survival of local business in the face of globalised competition is an issue that requires action well beyond temporary hype. We need to consider many solutions from high quality start-up advice for businesses to supportive local authorities. Transition Town deserve credit for having raised a flag: it’s down to all of us to work out how to keep it flying.

The Big Society

People, it seems, are troubled by the Big Society.  The BS as I’ll call it (for the sake of brevity naturally) has been dissed by luminaries as divergent as Polly Toynbee and Peter Oborne and views range from scepticism to scorn. Lately I’ve been wondering though: isn’t Lewes the sort of place where the BS might flourish? Could Lewes be a Little-Big Society?

First let’s clarify what we’re talking about. The Conservatives made a very big deal in their manifesto of replacing some Government activity with community instigated action. Labour commanded from the centre but the Tories plan to encourage smaller scale innovations and, most particularly, help people exercise “responsibility over their lives”. Much of the debate has concentrated on an anxiety that paid-for public services will be replaced by voluntary efforts. Is this trying to get something for nothing? Can it even happen when the state is being cut? The other angst-du-jour has been that voluntary work is the province of the rich: people in places like Oxfordshire (David Cameron country), where posh MPs have no idea what it’s like for those scraping a living. One might wonder if people struggling to get by are likely to open a Free School or start a charity. Or perhaps it’s insulting to assume that they’re not?

Research on volunteering tells a more complex story. People volunteer for all sorts of reasons but the unifying one is some kind of meaningful return for the effort. Not quite something for nothing then. It also turns out it’s not exactly wealth which predicts the desire to do this. What is more important is human capital.  This involves having sufficient dosh for sure, but also requires people with spare time, skills, education and a sense of linkage to their communities. Of course, human capital is not something that is equally available to all parts of the country and the BS may thus end up giving more to those who have. To neglect this point seems simplistic and more than a little crass.

Lewes is pretty well endowed with human capital. As well as high average incomes, we have loads of community activities (just check Viva’s listings), all sorts of volunteering opportunities and vocal (if sometimes unconvincing) environmental activists. Some of the schools have a level of parental involvement that I’m sure would make many Heads sick with envy. At one stage we even had someone putting luminous stripes round dog poo (how I long for their return!)

But where does this get us? Well, that Lewes may be a place where you can see if the BS can actually lead to something productive (or at the very least minimise the damage from public sector cuts). To mangle Sinatra: if it can’t make it here it can’t make it anywhere.  On the other hand, perhaps the real trouble with the BS is that, even if it’s a success in places like Lewes, it may nonetheless turn out to be BS anyway.

Dogs

“Extraordinary creature! So close a friend” said Thomas Mann of his spaniel in his 1918 Essay Herr und Hund. It’s clear that Mann was a man who, when not meditating on the tensions of industrial modernity, liked to walk his dog. You’d be hard pushed to find a better account of the closeness between man and beast or a more eloquent testament of the power to see canines as crypto-humans (though without all the irritating baggage of actual people). For those of us less enamoured, this closeness is something of a source of puzzlement.  Dogs are supposed to endearing, faithful and even beautiful? Man’s Best Friend (assuming that whoever wrote that phrase had some human friends). In the parks of Lewes I am surrounded by people enjoying their pets (and the odd terrified child). I can’t help but wonder then just what is the trouble (or rather my trouble) with dogs?

It’s clear that human/dog camaraderie has been around for a while. The domestication of the wolf  is likely to have started at least 15,000 years ago presumably when some hungry stray decided that wondering into a human village and making a cute face was a good strategy for surviving the rigours of the ice age. Initially bred for work it’s clear that the new, more docile, wolves at some point also gained companion status. Can those who find pooches a pain in the arse have been far behind?

One thing that suggests they are more common than one might think is the large number pejorative uses of the word “dog”. Calling someone a dog signals something less than enthusiasm about their abilities or physical attractiveness. It can indicate low quality (that car is a dog), a poor investment (Enron was a dog) or a questionable effort (dog it). I expect the pre-dynastic Chinese (likely the first pet dog pet owners) had an equivalent phrase for “going to the dogs” to signal the Yangtze Valley neighbourhood taking a dive: Perhaps as a result of the increased in pooh. If you get bored with the word there are a number of negatively connoted synonyms of which flea-bag is one of the more polite. And the troubles with dogs are clearly many. They bark and occasionally bite. They have unfortunate ways of “making friends”, frequently smell (as do you after your un-wanted encounter with them) and their liberally shared faeces contain nasty bacteria.

It may be though that it is churlish to blame them for all this. Despite millennia of breeding it is difficult for dogs to be anything other than... well doggy. It could be here that the real trouble lies. After all it’s people who own them, fail to clear up their excrement and insist that their overtures are friendship. It’s owners who let them out to pee and yap at 6.30 AM. There is plenty of evidence that even dangerous dogs are actually the product of irresponsible owners rather than breeds we assume are aggressive. It’s humans who imbue dogs with emotions akin to our own. Perhaps the trouble with dogs is the trouble with another species.

I’m beginning to think maybe Thomas Mann had a point.