Positive Money at the Southampton May Day

Southampton local group held a stall at the Southampton May Day. Here’s a report by Phil Tyler and a few photos from the event:

It was the 1st May 2017 and we had a gazebo at “International Worker’s Day – Celebrate Peace and Unity in our Community” hosted by Unite The Union in Palmerston Park Southampton.

There was a march from the peace fountain, through the town, ending up at our event in Palmerston Park at noon. There were some speeches and various musicians. Other stands included Southampton People’s Assembly, Labour Party, Green Party and various other campaigners with leaflets.

It was my first stand for Positive Money and I wanted a fairly small event to start and one with participants that seemed likely be sympathetic to our aims. The Location, Palmerston Park is very central with some footfall so that the Positive Money name would be seen by many amblers.

We had a polling game for the public to take part in: the Transparent Bottle Top Economy Decisioniser. The question was “How Would You Spend £70 Billion Pounds” with reference to the Quantitave Easing from last summer of £70 billion. Milk bottle tops, each valued at £10 billion were available to spend across seven receiving perspex sections. It proved a very effective tool for getting people to consider what is happening in our economy. Several people saw that money created by the Bank of England belongs to us and that we should have some say in how it is used. The sections being completely transparent was a clear and symbolic contrast to the present arrangements.

“We set up a survey for people to choose where to spend money into the economy and this was a very good tool for getting people talking.”

On a table we had leaflets, a sign-up clip board and books for sale. The stand also had four A1 panels of information mostly adaptations or compilations of information from the PM website.

The main question we asked was “Where does money come from” and variations thereof. If someone is showing a particular interest in one part of the display information, that was used help us lead into a conversation.

The May 1st event was a good start to the campaign to start a PM group in Southampton and drive an audience to the presentation and Discussion on the 31st May at the Juniper Berry. We will then have an established group and a monthly meeting on the last Wednesday each month. Fingers crossed.