 I'm Chris, and we're here to share our experience of promoting positive money at the local level in Mansfield, which is within Nottinghamshire. First of all, the context, which you'll see that the title of this is rather amusing, a local motion, and if no one else is thinking of Kylie at this moment in time, I have the wrong audience. But the Nottinghamshire advice network of which I represent on the partnership manager there is a network of more than 200 advice organisations that work across the county, and within them we have independent private advice providers, so legal practises, citizens advice bureau, law centres, and so on. And there are two principal things we do through that network. One is to support the wider advice network, the capacity building support, and the other is to increase access to advice. But the thing that brings us here today really is our emphasis on social policy and campaigning, and we campaign on lots of issues that relate to this topic today. Financial inclusion, poverty, food poverty is one that we're particularly prominent in, and really sobering talk there from Ben previously, particularly the point about food banks, but it's probably worth pointing out that that figure of £375,000 is probably more like double, in fact, because that only relates to trust or trust food banks, which is sort of a national franchise if you like food banks. So it's actually probably far worse. Nottinghamshire as well, strong cultural heritage within Nottinghamshire, renowned for the bloat with the bow, for those that are here today, to world-class universities, but also the second most indebted place in England as well, so pretty sobering stuff. So from our point of view, why are we here? Well, because the principals are positive money are good, they're right, and more people should know about them, and that inform the work that we did, and explain who she is. Hello, can you all hear me? So I've been really sort of flying on the coattails of these guys with this process. I have a background in economics, I used to work in international development economics, and I had the privilege of spending the first debt relief that happened in the year 2000 in Uganda, so I understand a little bit the economics, and that's why I've got involved with the tool. Thank you. Okay, so Mansfield District Councils, a small local authority in North Nottinghamshire. Some of you might be familiar with the Mansfield area, but in a large extent by the closure of mines and legacy issues there in terms of unemployment, health inequalities and so on. But as district authorities go, and this is why I asked if anybody in the room was to an authority, because this could sound disparaging, they're actually quite progressive. So progressive in fact that in 2013, the Cabinet there passed a Robinhood tax motion calling on the coalition government to enact a financial transaction tax of 0.05%. Did they? Of course not, but nonetheless they push forward. Through discussions that we had with Mansfield District Council and some senior councillors there in the Cabinet, they expressed an interest in raising a motion supporting a positive money approach to reform, and a motion is just an adoption of a set of principles if you're not familiar with local government. And we worked with Mansfield District Council to raise awareness of positive money and positive money principles through a workshop, and we helped them prepare a draft motion for the Cabinet to adopt. What follows is our experience. The motion itself looked like this, that this council resolves too, and I'm sure all of you are familiar with these principles, and that the aim is to fully support the proposals which are that money should only be created through a democratic and transparent body working in the public interest and so on. The middle bit there includes lots of public sector local authority speak that I'm going to spear you, but effectively it was building the case at the local level without appearing openly or too political, because what we found was that you could very quickly support the political agenda of the authority rather than the wider principles, and we do reflect on that when we talk about the response. The response from the authority and from feedback from the positive money website, we identified eight distinct response themes, and I don't have the understanding economic background, but Anne-Marie does, and she's going to lead from here. Well I'm going to try anyway. So the responses we've got, we have broken into eight themes, most of them aren't about the economics at all. We've got a lot of inherent scepticism, so it sounds too good to be true. Well there's not a lot we can do with that really. The next area is again similar theme really, a sense that we can't even engage in critiquing this because we don't understand the economics, coupled with a general disbelief that this is realistic in the current political time. So one person told us it's way outside the box for decision makers, no party would put it in their manifesto and expect to win. So we feel differently, but that was their opinion. So the problem is this political association, particularly in the Midlands, where politics is a hot topic, and there does seem to be some guilt by association assumed by a lot of people. So the assumption that this is originally advanced by monetarists like Milton Friedman, and currently supported by the likes of the Tea Party Republicans and the fundamentalist wing of the Green Movement. So again, what do you say to responses like that? Moving into some of the responses we had around the economics, there seems to be a general confusion between monetarism and monetary policy. Again, unfortunately from one of the local sort of Labour Party group telling us that this is a radical extreme monetarist ideology, I don't think it can easily coexist with those of Keynesian or socialist viewpoints. People are tending to forget that it was in fact Keynes who invented the IMF in the first place, so he wasn't against monetary policy, although he might turn in his grave if he knew what happened to it. What we found is there's a handful of people who have a small amount of knowledge of economics, but they're mixing up concepts quite badly. So we were told very emphatically, nes pa, at the end of this quote from the internet site, that this would be massively deflationary, and we understand from the Positive Money's website that they've been told it would be massively inflationary. So people are understanding some of the concepts, but not really understanding the limits around when they would or wouldn't apply. So moving in sort of the latter responses, getting into the meat really of the Positive Money proposals, some people felt that, you know, do we really need alternatives or can we just strengthen the existing regulation of the banking sector? I think there's probably rebuttals and reasons why Positive Money isn't suggesting that, so perhaps it's a case of sharing that information. And then finally, some concerns about this independent money creation committee. You know, would this really be independent? The Bank of England is considered to be independent in exactly the same way, and yet it's been responsible for many of these problems. So perhaps the information is there, but sharing that more widely would be useful. So unfortunately, we've had a lot of negative feedback from people, which has been a bit discouraging, but it has helped us to gather our learning of what to do next. So basically these are not simple concepts. A lot of people don't really have a lot of knowledge of economics or any at all, and so it's quite easy for people who have a bit of knowledge to really dominate the discourse and where they're muddling concepts that makes it all the more damaging for other people who don't really get it. The political associations are definitely a problem for us, but there is some hope where some of the concerns are simply practical issues. We can at least address that. Underlying all of this, of course, is a basic issue of trust. What we're basically saying is, hey, let's take power away from the banks and we'll give it to the democratic elected government, except not a lot of people trust the government at the moment. So there's a bit of a challenge there for us in terms of presenting this. It isn't a Robin Hood figure. There isn't a hero, a David to the Goliath to make this an easy sell. And also, is it really very sexy? Is it relevant to Joe Blogg's who lives in Mansfield? Does he get it? What are the implications for him in his life? Back in 2000, people understood the basic principles of cancelling third world debt. People understand Save the Whale. It feels exciting. It feels you've got a solid enemy to fight. Who's the enemy in this and how are we going to head into the battlefield? It makes it a more difficult sell. So we have a few recommendations, things that we'd like to suggest to positive money, but also things that perhaps we can take into our local work as well. In terms of the broader public campaign, I guess I'd love to see some kind of short video that looks at the different schools of economic thought, particularly spelling out what the difference is between monetary policy and monetarism. We think that it would be great, like the examples that Ben's just showed us, more data like that to show illustrations of what this might mean for real people's lives. If we managed to do this, what could it mean in terms of nurses and hospitals? I know there's a million different ways this could manifest itself, but some examples could be helpful. We also wonder whether it's possible to bring some of the liberal economists that are highly respected and have been involved in this debate into the forefront a little bit more to try and avoid this association with the fundamentalist left or the fundamentalist right. And we also perhaps wonder whether we could bring in a couple of celebrities. I personally will do anything that Patrick Stewart tells me to do, so we could give them a call. In terms of the grassroots campaign then, a few things that will be helpful for us and might be helpful for yourselves. Could we expand the frequently asked questions list? There's a few things on the positive money website, but there's maybe a number of misconceptions that perhaps we could address and give that in a sort of pack form out to local groups. I understand there was some training done quite in the early days for people who were going to be speakers on positive money. Perhaps we could rerun that so different people in local groups could build up their knowledge of what those basic economic principles are and how to deliver these ideas. We also wondered about how we might invest in future generations. It's going to be the current 15-year-olds who are voting in three or four years time. Do they have any idea of what's happening? There seems to be a difference of opinion about what is happening in schools, but we would love to see more. So perhaps we could have some kind of introduction to economics, alternative economics that looks at this from a real life perspective. Could we put that into secondary or even primary schools? I certainly think if we can convince a 10-year-old we stand a better chance at convincing their parents. And finally, could we have some kind of campaign pack for local groups, including things like a template for a local council motion? Things like that. I'm sure Chris would be able to help develop those who've got that expertise. So things like that, there might be helpful tools and resources for you to use at the local level. Andrew Shadirach from Devon. I'm very interested in what you've had to say. It sounds great. It's interesting. It comes from Nottinghamshire and puts me in mind of the Nottingham Declaration, which has been very effective in communities on climate change issues. The reason I mentioned that is I'm wondering where you're hoping to go with this. If a number of other district councils and counter councils become enthused and start to take this up, do you see that as a route to national change because their cabinets will talk to their MPs? Because one of the concerns I have about local action is how we link that to eventual central change, rather than just spreading the word? Well, yes, would be the first point there. We do hope that's the case. It's sort of a snowball effect. And we hope that happens through a process of osmosis, really, to support that, but to put the conditions in place that we can make that happen. And what we've talked about in Nottinghamshire is sort of a hob and spoke model for campaigning. So to have a central Nottinghamshire positive money group and then support work at the local level through that grouping. And just to ensure that momentum continues to provide resources to those that are doing the really great work at the local level. So we've thought it through and we've used a lot of what we've learned here to do that to inform that. And actually to think about our audiences, are district councils the right kind of audience at this point? Or do we need to be going to communities and using thorny issues to raise the prominence of positive money principles? And I think we're still experimenting. You know, this was just one approach, one idea. Some bits of it has worked, other bits haven't. So we'll try something different and see what happens.