 What is a big obstacle for the Glasgow Pound?
New money: Do local currencies actually work? It's lunchtime at Glasgow Chambers in late November, and Councillor George Redmond is getting worked up at the prospect a Glasgow Pound. In the UK we think of the pound like fish think about water, which is to say not at all. It might never have occurred to many of us that there are other types of exchange that can stand in for ragged bank notes tucked away in pockets, or other objects that can stand in for those notes. But they will only work if Britons are ready to accept that they have the power to invent their own currency. "At the moment, if the pound stops working for us, the whole economy grinds to a halt because there aren't alternatives," Duncan McCann, a researcher at the New Economics Foundation, tells those gathered in a gilded room at Glasgow Chambers to discuss the Glasgow Pound. It's an idea he no longer thinks will work, because the debate, since Brexit, has shifted from the currency issue back to ideas about Scottish independence. On an adjacent table, Tracy Duff, a community learning and development worker from Clackmannanshire Council, digs out some papers. Everyone has gathered to decide what a Glasgow Pound might look like at a time when many are asking if local currencies can work at all. Councillor Redmond says Glasgow has been closely watching existing alternative currencies like the Brixton Pound in London, which was introduced in 2011.
 More than a third of the families grow up in poverty. A local currency makes shopping a little more expensive.
 There is a ten-year life expectancy gap between different parts of the city.  More than a third of the families grow up in poverty. A local currency makes shopping a little more expensive.  They must be used at independent shops, instead of big supermarket chains.  In deprived areas, people cannot afford time and money to put into their communities.