The Archers- Local Economy

I'm not a listener of the radio soap opera The Archers, but my dad is and he told me something amazing! The characters in Ambridge, the imaginary village where the series is set are currently trying to implement a LETS (Local Economic Trading Scheme), David Icke discusses this in several of his books and here's a site with more information: http://www.letslinkuk.net/ . It’s especially topical now with news of banking collapses and economic recession, as we discuss in the article immediately below this one: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2008/09/new-wall-street-crash.html

Here’s the page on The Archers’ site that deals with this aspect of the plot. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/archers/catch/this_week.shtml?sun
Here’s the interesting bit:


The IOUs are getting out of hand and Susan’s had enough. The swap club committee meet to discuss their situation. Pat and Jennifer are determined not to give up on the transition community and Pat volunteers to research other similar schemes. If there’s a way out of this mess, she’s sure she’ll find it.

Episode written by Simon Frith

The "Swap Club" and “IOU’s” are what the fictional Ambridge community calls their LETS organization. As the storyline shows, these economic initiatives are never easy and need a lot of hard work, but it’s a challenge we should rise to because it beats being a slave to the global banking, financial and currency system any day.

I’m very impressed with The Archers’ production team. This is the longest-running soap in all history, TV or radio, and they’ve managed to keep it daringly and perceptively topical.

Here’s that Welsh Pound article again, seeing as it’s so relevant: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/04/welsh-pound.html