A great market day for the launch of The Stroud Pound
One Stroud Pound
This Saturday the weather was lovely and Stroud’s amazing weekly Farmers Market was heaving – so much going on, what with the harvest season being in full swing and the apple season just ramping up, and it was Stroud Food Week or something like that.
Stroud really is an amazing place, filled with so many amazing and committed people. Saturday saw the launch of the Stroud Pound, an alternative currency for use in Stroud. I received my first gratis pound, and will be joining the co-op (cost £5) and then buying some local notes soon, for use in places like the Stroud Bookshop and Star Anise Café.
Its an exciting thought that we might be keeping even more local money in the local economy through this – people already buy a lot of local produce here in the Stroud Valleys – the Chiemgauer from Bavarian is well established and has €3 million worth of currency in circulation. What is fascinating is that this money is spent much more than Euros, in the sense that it changes hands much more. Local currencies like this devalue over time, so there’s no gain to saving it.
Stroud also had a repeat of its Open Homes initiative to open up eco-friendly / renovated houses to the public over the weekend. I visited a couple to find out about rainwater harvesting, solar heating and some insulation challenges. I also found out unexpected things along the way, eg that you lose more heat through the mortar in joints in conventional walls than you do through the blocks (per % area or in total I don’t know) so a green new-build used very thin mortaring between blocks to combat this.
UPDATE: Found Philip Booth’s blog article on the Stroud Pound launch, with pictures
5 Comments
KingofthePaupers
September 15, 2009“Local currencies like this devalue over time, so there’s no gain to saving it.”
Jct: When they are linked to the Time Standard of Money, the Hour earned is always equal to the Hour owed equal to 60 minutes. There is no devaluation. I can’t think of a better way to save than to be owed neighbors’ IOUs for time.
Matt Passell
September 15, 2009Interesting… I don’t believe it would be legal in the US to create one’s own currency. I know that there are several attempts here to encourage local spending (e.g., http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Economy/story?id=7042022&page=1 ) and there are definitely time-based work exchanges, but I think the actual creation of a currency would be a problem. Anyone?
Marc Palmer
September 15, 2009Well it is called a “voucher scheme”. You pay a small fee to become a member of a co-operative. I think that is how they get around the problem.
Matt Passell
September 16, 2009Cool. I’m glad to hear that works. Do the co-op merchants still need to collect VAT? Just curious.
Matt Passell
September 16, 2009Never mind. I took a look at the Stroud Pound website and saw that it says, “From a tax perspective, anything paid for in Stroud Pounds is accounted for in the same way as pounds.”