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How ‘Seg’ notes could look with images of former South End Green residents |
Have you got change for a fifty ‘seg’ note?
Traders could bring in a new currency
WATCH out, the pound is under threat – but not from the global banking crisis, the strength of the euro or the spiralling price of gold reserves.
Instead, the pound in your pocket will face stiff competition from alternative bank notes if a scheme to bring a new currency to South End Green gets the go-ahead.
Last night (Thursday) at the South End Green Association’s annual general meeting, members heard a talk by currency expert Jeppe Gravgaard, who has helped pioneer alternative currencies in the Sussex town of Lewes and also in Brixton, outlining how the area could also bring in its own cash.
The association’s members have already discussed featuring images of former residents, including authors George Orwell, Agatha Christie and Aldous Huxley on the new notes.
Chairman Michael Wellbank said bringing in a new form of cash – the currency’s working title is “Segs” – would provide a fillip for shops.
“We want to boost business in the area and this ties in with our aims to protect our independent shops,” he said.
“We have asked shoppers and businesses for their views and the idea has really struck a chord.”
It would work through shoppers exchanging their quids for the new currency over the counters of local businesses – in denominations of £1, £5 and £10 – and then you spending them like any normal cash in shops in the area.
Mr Wellbank added: “We will have various distribution points where you can go in and pick them up.”
As to who would grace the new notes, Mr Wellbank said members would be asked for their suggestions and so far the area’s best-known writers were favourites, although he wouldn’t rule out local characters such as the former Sega chair Pam Gilbey, street dweller Robert Allan, who, before he passed away earlier this year was a regular sight relaxing by the fountain, and two Heath railway station staff who together gave two decades’ service before being moved on in the summer.
The South End Green Traders Association secretary Russell Oppenheimer, who runs popular children’s clothes shop Blue Daisy, said he would love to accept Segs.
“I think it is a lovely idea and could really help define us as a place that is different and quirky,” he said.
But his enthusiasm was tempered by the nuts and bolts of the project.
“I am attracted to it but I think it would be really tricky to implement,” he added. “You would have to get a critical mass of shops to sign up to it to make it work. I’d sign up tomorrow but others, particularly chain stores, may not.”
Estate agent Jonathan Bergman, who sits on the association’s committee, said: “We currently have no empty shops at all in South End Green, unlike other areas in north-west London.
“Introducing a currency is an interesting idea but we will have to see how it would work.” |
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Your comments:
THIS is a joke right?. Where is Queen Elizabeth II on these notes. And South-end green is only a small bank that is note known as well as The bank of england. Segs vs The £, there isn't even a symbol for this new currency it monopoly money.
Michael O'Flaherty |
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