 What is a big obstacle for the Glasgow Pound?
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. 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. 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. The founders of the Brixton Pound wanted to do something to stop 80p of every £1 spent locally from leaking out of the area into the pockets of corporations, at the expense of small local traders. So they printed a currency that would have the same value as the pound, but could only be traded in independent Brixton shops, where the shopkeeper would also have to spend it locally.
 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.