Felly, rhaid i'n ei wneud i'n gweithio i gilydd y cwrdd. Felly, rhaid i'n gweithio i gilydd y cwrdd, felly y byddwn i'n gwneud y Bank of England yn y Lleidwyr Gwmwyng. Rwy'n gyffredinol gyda'r Prifysgol ym Llywodraeth, mae'n prifysgol i'n gweithio i ddweud y ddechrau a'r cyfnodau a'r sydd cyflosig. Rwy'n gweithio i'r cwrdd o'r cyflosig, a'r cyflosig a'r cyflosig i ddweud y ffordd. Yn ei ddweud, mae'r gyfyrdd o'r ffrindio ym Mhenachol yn hyn o'r ddechrau i ddechrau y Llywodraeth. Yn gyhoeddwch y Llywodraeth eich lle i'r unig bethau bod eich cyfan a'r drefwyr lle o'r ddrafod y dros ym Llywodraeth mewn gwirionedd. I'm going to hand over to my amazing panel for their thoughts on a Labour bank of England under a Labour government, not a Labour government under the Bank of England. There's a few notifications so we've got a free bar so help yourself to drink. Feel free to get food. I'm going to use a hashtag BOE under Labour and obviously lab 16. The Wi-Fi is Pan Am Public and the password is Pan Am with a capital P 123. Just so you know that we're actually doing another event at 5pm at the World Transform, the Rementant Fringe. So if this topic is something you want to carry on conversations with then please do come along. Unfortunately Helen and Paul have to leave it early so I'm going to bias questions towards them. And our fringe event is called Money Den Democracy. So it's a really exciting time. All wings of the Labour Party are seen open to radical ideas, particularly on the economy. And I think if Labour's new economics is going to be really credible then it needs to consider the most powerful economic institution this country has, which is the Bank of England. Possibly it's at its most powerful in history and its actions have significant consequences yet it remains really poorly understood. And that's what positive money wants to change. So in essence it's role is to determine the amount of money in the economy and where that money goes. But it's overseen in the last decades and it's pressed into growth of money going into property and financial markets. And that results in our economy being skewed towards housing bubbles for the neighbour-sized financial sector and a lot of people ending up under debt. So where are we now? Well after Brexit with the political economic uncertainty the Bank of England stepped in in a big way and announced it's going to create 70 billion pounds of new money for a new scheme of quantitative easing. It's going to use that money to purchase 60 billion pounds of government bonds and 10 billion of corporate bonds from financial institutions. But growing number of economists are warning that QE English is an equality and by the Bank of England's own research it does. So we can see that we know that monetary policy has significant political consequences and yet it remains pretty underscreened by Parliament. There was a debate on the 50th on QE and its effectiveness and only eight MPs spoke of which of course was Helen who spoke very eloquently. Our aim is to change that. Also a couple of weeks ago Mark Carney announced the companies it's going to be considering buying bonds from through the corporate bond purchasing scheme. And he'd stated that he wants to buy bonds from companies which make a material investment in the contribution to the UK economy. So of course we're hoping to see some British icons of manufacturing and business. And the list includes companies like Apple who have recently been charged 11 billion pounds by the EU for illegal tax reasons. It also includes companies like AT&T who are headquartered in Dallas so they'll be celebrating over there. And Imperial Tobacco Company. So many people have pointed out that the bank shouldn't be picking and choosing companies like this at all. MPC former member David Blanchoutflower who was leading the Labour Revenue of the Bank of England said this is a mandated fiscal policy. So today there's basically been a cross-party consensus on monetary policy which is leaving it to the Bank of England. But that is changing. More and more people are pointing out that QE comes in a policy. And leading economic thinkers like Martin Morph and Adair Taylor are saying we should think about abandoning QE altogether and consider other options such as monetary financing which is where the Bank of England creates money but it gets spent into the economy through the government similar to people's QE which we obviously heard a lot about last year. Either way I think we'll long overdue a discussion about the Bank of England and its relationship with the Treasury and how monetary and fiscal policy can work together. So I'm really excited to bring together this excellent panel. Helen Goodman is MP for Bishop Auckland. She sits on the Treasury Select Committee but we're delighted that she can join us because she's one of a handful of MPs who's tirelessly scrutinised the bank and the banking system since the financial process. Paul Mason is a writer, journalist and thinker and he has been contributing to the debate on democracy and central banks. Francis Colla is a former banker and economics blogger and has been really talking about the issues with the banking system a lot since the financial process and causing a stir on lots of issues. So Williams is a journalist at the Guardian and he's been one of very few brave journalists who's talked about money creation. Most recently in the book The Alternative where she talks about ideas that hopefully will be discussed today. So I'd like to hand over to Helen to kick us off. Thank you very much for that very generous introduction. The Treasury Select Committee sees the government of the Bank of England quite a lot. Maybe six times a year, maybe ten times a year and we get the opportunity to ask him lots of questions. So when I discovered through the work of the New Economics Foundation, which I'm sure some of you probably know about and belong to, that the bank themselves have published work explaining that QE leads to inequality. I was quite struck by this. The Bank produced a paper in 2012 which found that the top 5% of the income distribution gained on average £185,000 per household from QE. The bottom 50% got nothing and this was because the effect of the QE had been to inflate the value of the assets which they hold. And as you probably know half the population don't have any net assets. They might have debts or they might be managing even Stephen, but they don't have any real assets so they can't gain from this. And I thought, well if the Chancellor of the Exchequer stood up on Budget Day and said, I'm going to give the top 5% another £185,000 each, I think even the Tory backbenchers would have a problem. That would be a very significant redistribution so I thought we better ask them about this the next time they came in. I asked what they thought they were doing and they said, I thought this was fantastic, he said he thought that to take account of the distribution effects would be political. So it's not political to give the richest people £185,000, but it is political to take this into account. So I thought, well maybe there's another way of doing QE that wouldn't have quite such extreme distribution effects. So I went over to Frankfurt to see the European Central Bank to find out how they do their QE and they do do it in a different way because they do buy different assets. And they said they did do it in a different way in a number of respects. First of all, they have a strand of purchases for their QE scheme which went directly into SME finance, which ours doesn't. Then they said that they bought bonds in infrastructure banks. So we don't really have successful business investment banks in this country. It's something that John MacDonald said he wanted to do from the main conference hall yesterday and it's something that we've looked at and discussed previously and we did persuade the Tories to set out the green investment bank. So we have made progress on this in the past. The Tories are now privatising the green investment bank. So we don't really have the kind of vehicles that they have in Germany which is where they have an infrastructure bank called KFW or France where they have an infrastructure bank called PADES. But Matt has enabled the ECB in its QE to concentrate its purchases in things where they are actually going to spend the money in the real economy on things which are useful for improving the productive capacity of the economy, rather than simply giving house price rises to people in London and the South East, which is what's going on at the moment. The other thing that was very interesting about what the ECB said when I was talking to them, which is different from the bank, is that they said they were very interested in running the monetary policy in a way that would benefit what they call the periphery they meant, you know, Southern Europe and so forth. And they said, but you don't really have a periphery. So I said, well my constituency is in the North East of England in category and actually we do have a periphery as well. And this isn't a concern of the Bank of England.  I just want to be clear. I'm not saying that I don't think that the bank were right to take the steps which they took this summer in order to, first of all, calm the markets after the shock of the Brexit vote and introduce some monetary expansion. I'm not saying I'm opposed to that in principle. I'm saying the way they do it is not the best way, it's not the most helpful way. If, for example, they were buying assets in housing associations, that would be providing some money to build some real houses instead of just inflating the value of the fact that owns belong to people who already have houses, which in fact is just pushing other people further down the ladder. And they say in a rather airy way when I challenged them on the second occasion, well there are other policy tools that you could use to deal with this inequality. Well, I frankly cannot think of a policy tool which we could, in any real political reality, use to take £185,000 off the top 5%. I mean, this is just cloud cookie land. We know that we put forward to the British public a mansion tax before the last election where the average price tag was £3,000 and scorn was poured on us by all sorts of people. I mean, I think we should go back to that policy. I think it's a really good policy. But, you know, the notion that we can just tweak this all that and undo the damage that they've done with this, I think is completely unrealistic. So, this brings us to two questions. What would a better economic policy look like? Well, obviously, a better economic policy would include some more expansionary use of fiscal policy. And we're all hoping that Phil Hammond, having abandoned George Osborne's fiscal targets, will actually go for some fiscal expansion in the autism stage in no number. But it, in addition, raises the point that you made, which is about control of the Bank of England. I moved an amendment to the Bank of England Bill, which went through Parliament earlier this year, to make the Freedom of Information Act applied to the bank. The bank was very resistant to this, the Government was very resistant to this. But actually, I think it's completely reasonable for us to make the Bank of England subject to the Freedom of Information Act, which it is not at the moment. That does not mean that we would be engaging in second guessing in their open market operations in the money markets day to day. We can exclude that, but there is a real problem of accountability at the moment. And I think if we made them subject to the Freedom of Information Act, we would get more openness, and that would be a first really big and useful step. I'm good. Thanks for inviting me. I know apologies in advance that I have to run our pathway through, because like everybody, I seem to double boot all my meetings. So, I just want to say one other thing. As a writer to this, you know, people will know that I am not John McDonald's advisor, as alleged by George Osborne. Things didn't go so well for George after he misinformed the Commons about that.  So, what I say now is me, it's not them, in the sense that I would quite like if some of John's team were here to listen to the ideas that are on this platform. Because I do think, if people say to me what's your economic philosophy, I just describe myself as a monetary Keynesian. And I think that the monetary weapons of a left social democratic government are potentially very important, especially given the situation. Now, I want to start, therefore, not from principle, and I think one of our discussions here in the Labour conference has to be, especially for those of us on the left, not a constant reiteration of what our principles and theories are, but what we want to do in the next crisis period that is opening up. So, I want to start by describing, I'm only looking at my phone because I've got notes on them, describing the situation as I see it. I think the danger of a secular stagnation is real. I am not in the school of Robert Gordon that says it's because the technological productivity miracle has run out far from it. I believe that technology is creating new business models and new economic flows in which there is no value. A credit system is based on returns from investment based on the growth of the market sector, which then pays back the debt. I think the fundamental problem in the world is that information technology makes a lot of things cheap or free. That leads me to worry about secular stagnation rather in the way that Larry Summers worries about it. That is that we have become over-reliant on monetary stimulus to keep the economy going. You know that Japan has been through two periods of slump and stagnation and is the world leader at the moment and indeed a certain kind of QE that I want to talk about. But we have $12 trillion worth of QE money flowing through the global economy and it's produced $9 trillion of largely government debt that is negative yielding. And as one bond market participant said to me, I came into my job to run a capitalist economy, not the Russian planning system, because a $9 trillion worth of negative yielding debt is a minus sign on capitalism. So the danger of stagnation was well realised at the March G20 where Carney spoke and where if you want to look at Claudio Boreo, who's the head of policy at the Bank for International Settlements, issued an equally start warning to the one that Carney gave and that is monetary policy in the way it's been done is clearly running out of road. It's creating negative yields, it's creating disincentives to invest and at worst it could create what we all fear from the 1930s. That is whilst countries realise that a negative sum game has been created in which what is good for China is also good in a positive sum game, what is good for China is good for Liverpool. So you open a port in Liverpool because you hope that trade in China increases. In a negative sum game everybody has to grab what growth is left in the economy and one of the ways of doing it is through currency manipulation and the surefire way to manipulate your currency is to undermine its value by printing a lot of it. And therefore what I fear and what I think was a very clear subtext at the G20 is that what they want to avoid is more currency warfare and so do I. And what they said is you've got one more chance, we can do one more radical piece of monetary policy but after that it is over to you, the governments, to do structural reform and fiscal policy. Now I'm in favour of doing a lot of fiscal policy but I do think here in the UK we are right to do more and should have done more earlier targeted monetary stimulus. So maybe I'm on a different wing of the panel than anybody else. Why? Because what the G20 and the central banks are saying is that the structural reform has to reignite productivity. I think we have to leave behind neoliberalism, I think we have to leave behind low wage and stagnant wage jobs but to reignite the productivity you're going to need to do things to unblock mechanisms for creating human capital and capital itself. I would have printed 75, I would have done 75 of QE billion and I've just bought every student load in the country. And I would have buried it in a big dump called student load dump in which there was a 30 year payment holiday on it. Thus removing the line on everybody's paycheck that says student loan repayment. That in other words is how you use QE to buy specific assets to get the money straight into the economy. I mean even in favour of doing it we have to, helicopter money but it's not particularly effective. But long term I think that to finish what I would say we need to think about then is to be avert in what we would need to do to be able to take political control of the monetary policy. I think we have to own up that good though it was that Ed Boers and Gordon Brown did what they did in 1997.  There's a commodities boom we should be putting the brakes on and all they can do is put the brakes on in a period of commodity boom bust and yet we put the brakes on as the bank system collapses then we have to take them off again. That's not economic management it's kind of binary decision making and therefore I would just say there's nothing reactionary about saying as Cain said if the facts change just change your mind. We have a much more complex world economy, a danger, a clear and present danger of currency manipulation and negative sum game and the problem of leading fiscal and monetary policy to interact. So maybe we don't have to do everything through borrowing so we don't have to do everything through heavy lifting on a Cain's fiscal level and you can do innovative things like buying the book. I always say if you can buy 10 billion of VW bonds you can buy 60 billion of student loan bonds or you can buy everybody's mortgage. This is effectively what the Fed did in 2009-10. So think about that as a philosophy not rocket science and also not too heretical because we're billed on Blair on brown balls rather than scrapping. I was wondering what you thought about the idea of using QE in order to ban this problem and to have a direct effect of being idle and saying that you need businesses. We need a microphone, can everyone hear? Yeah. Okay, yeah. Go for it. Yeah. You said you haven't got some money to go. In what sense did you go where it actually increased a bit back to being managed? Thank you. Great. Very nice and short concise questions. Yes. I'm a chemo engineer by training. I remember the interest by Thomas Gureka. Okay. There's a microphone there. My name is Nigel Martin. I'm a chemo engineer by training. I'm interested in the work of Thomas Gureka. There's also a chemo engineer by training. What's at his point is that the quantitative easing created today to supply the interest you're doing to create more money tomorrow to pay for the interest created today. You're chasing a tail. Does the panel have a view on that statement? Thank you. Okay, so we'll just take a brief comment from all the panelists on those three. Can you hear from bottom up? Helicopter money no good even if it boosts demand and the interest question. We've spoken to one of the others. No, Paul can go first. Because I am going to go in a minute. I'm sorry because I want to hear what you're saying, friends, but I'm a new joe. You do. We know each other. I only want to focus on the helicopter money thing because I think your question is an interesting one. Your one, I think basically I agree with you. We've got to design once you free yourself from the binary decision making. The bank has to justify the binary decision making simply on what's the likelihood of hitting 2% interest in three years time. It's like being a goalie and saying, if I kick rather than roll the ball out of my hand, what is the likelihood of my team scoring? Once they've kicked it, they wouldn't have to care what the team did with the money. So all we're looking for is ways of having microeconomic effect, which brings me to the thing about helicopter money. If we have to do it, let's do it in a crisis, but remember what it does is it's not microeconomically changing anything. It simply says that if you've got 10 grand and you've got a low wage job where you're earning 12 grand and you get 10 grand put into your account, you're all right for a year. But if we did it via things like student loans, through mortgages, through company loans, through infrastructure loans, in other words, if we kicked down the walls between fiscal and monetary policy, which is what it does anyway, then you can microeconomically target it for the effect which we want, which is what the BIS and G20 are calling out for, which is structural reform of the actual economy. Do I want to go? Do I want to go? Can I apologise, because my taxis are upside them? Yeah, yeah, yeah, no. But all the apologies will be live on that. In response to three questions, should we have an unfinished job policy? We actually have a hard portion of the economy working in the moment they're done before, so I'm not too sure what we'll achieve. It seems to me a big problem we've had is that a lot of those jobs are burying away. Can you stand up? Can you stand up? It's just a microfamilie to read. I'm near a slight difference in data when I am standing up, so I'm not sure we'll help. I'll just try and shout, OK? Will that do? Yes. Right, money finance job guarantee. We have a hard portion of the working age population working at the moment than ever before. I'm not at all sure what the money finance job guarantee would achieve. It seems to me that what we really need to be doing is finding ways of actually increasing people's incomes so that the work they're doing actually gives them a better standard of use. So for my money, I would rather have a basic income than a money finance job guarantee. What's wrong with how many money? I think we have to distinguish between two things here. One is short-term stimulus, where we are putting some money into the economy. And I don't think the way you do it might work right now. I think there are ways of doing that. We've worked a lot better, including getting rid of existing debts. So in that respect, I agree with Paul that we could do a lot with money financing of existing debt levels, particularly among students and among other income people. There were two a lot to raise their disposable incomes and their spending profiles. And I think that would help to improve demand in the economy future. The second is the longer-term need for investment in the economy. And there is an opportunity there potentially for that being support for things like a much bigger British business bank. But I do think that we need to separate the two. There's a short-term and a long-term issue there. We need to think separately. And the third point about QE, that happens with all forms of interest of money creation, whether it is creating QE or any other sort of money creation. In fact, you could argue that QE actually creates money interest-free, whereas conventional forms of money creation don't. We can go into a greater discussion about forms of debt-free creation of money and whether we should go down that route. So I think that's where you all go. I have a huge problem with their interest and I think it should be confined to commerce and manufacturing but taken out of the domestic sector. We can have a debate about the role of interest in the economy and whether it is reasonable for households of horror to do so at zero interest regardless of their level of risk. I think we might have some issues around that. I think that's a much bigger topic than we can come to hear in my right from the end. I think there's also an issue isn't there about how likely it is that by cutting interest rates again by 0.2% we're going to see some great boost and this is going to change the decisions by businesses to whether to invest in another widget-making machine. It's just incredibly doubtful. I think one of the things that was very successful in 1997 was separating the bank out because I think what that did was it established credibility for the Labour government and basically having that economic credibility gave us a lot of room for maneuver. So when we're thinking about policies towards the Bank of England we do need to think also about what we do that maintains credibility and that's why I think steps like applying the Freedom of Information Act is kind of a reasonable thing to do. I must admit the central bankers themselves are divided on helicopter money at the moment and I'm not a monetary economist so I'm not going to apply on whether that's a good idea or not a good idea. I mean it probably is in some social services and not in others but I don't know enough to comment on that. Which in a way kind of makes the point because what you have central bankers for is to make useful technical judgments and it's our job to give them the right remit. Do we think having 2% inflation target is the right remit or not? Could we say we want them to have a remit which is about inflation and a remit about employment? That seems to me to be a reasonable thing for a government to do and not saying that there can't be anybody in the government who's better at monetary economics than me obviously there can be but I just want to just give a slight sort of put up a flag and say we do need to be careful about the signals we give on credibility that is important because if we suggest things which people who are extremely overhauled about this say won't work then we lose credibility and we undermine ourselves for the investments that we really do want to make and I need to get to my remit. Okay we're going to take a few more questions and the time is up to get. Okay so purple jumper and then glasses and then... If the price of big beans, what was in the basket is increasing more than 200% a year then apparently that's inflationary that's going to demand of my finances that's going to cause me to make the inflationary way to demand spiring inflation disaster pay funding. If accounts prices are going up by 10% to 15% a year then the rents are going to increase to 8.9% of inflation that doesn't even feature in the ranking and remit. That's a very good point. Look at that question next time they come up. Very good question. Great ahead and also supported what great work you're doing in trying to hold back financial account and it does seem like you yourself are sort of someone conflicted between your desire to look through and the statements that that thing needs but yet to respect their credibility and attendance. You say that you think that their best place to make technical observations that you've probably seen from the work you've done that there is a big ideological, contextual backdrop to a lot of the work that they do and the whole profession of monitoring versus other forms. People as credible as a dear turner have made alternative recommendations and obviously were not made back in England back over time or as possible. I've just sort of gently challenged that one should not be in awe of these people and I just hope that you don't think that somehow it's easy when someone is independent to make one feel that there is somehow some superior respect going on. Well, that's a very, a good but very fair point and I agree with you. In fact, if one looks back over the last six months the bank has come under far more attack from the radical right than from us. The radical right has been highly critical of Carney's interventions on climate change and green-stud where he's saying, for example that the oil companies are stashing up on their oil machines reserves of oil and gas which they will never be able to extract if it aims to meet our climate change objectives. He's been very clear on that and I'm saying you know we need to better get the counting system and the Tories were just ballistic when he said that Brexit was going to be a shock to the economy. So, I feel that the line we should take is kind of more probing less full-francule and using as you did in your question you know, well, a debt earner says blah blah blah I think that's better than saying you know we don't at all agree with your whole approach and as I said before if their approach is fundamentally wrong that's because we've given them the wrong terms of reference. There's one more question at the back. I'll stand up because it's happening again I'm not working at all, please. Is it working? I've got a lot of posts anyway. As far as I'm concerned politicians are greedy and do agree with their home and me that if they were in charge of creating money or printing money and they had free licence that we would end up in the rhyme of a republic in the 20s in a well-way hyperinflation and such like and therefore the best way of dealing with this sort of thing is to leave it to the central bank leave it to the monetary policy committee to make the decision how much and when money should be created and then give the money to the politicians but the politicians have no say whatsoever on how much and when the new money is created because otherwise we will just lose to the next election because the politicians believe that they're the stimulus. OK, well, I mean that was obviously very much the thinking after the hyperinflation of the 70s and 80s and very much the thinking that's informed the new institutional arrangements which were introduced by the Labour government in 1997 to be honest the danger we have now is this constant stagnation and this lack of growth so there is always that risk of course there is always that risk but just now in the world economy I think the bigger risk is not being able to get growth going and therefore people are looking more at instruments and kick-starting growth. We're going to need to bring in Zoe in the process now, right? Do you feel free to respond to any of those questions? I'm going to respond sort of to that last question about the Weimar Republic anyway because I've talked about it I seem to have spent a surprising amount of time talking about the Weimar Republic. Don't wheel! In the spirit of openness I should say I'm not an economist as Twitter keeps pointing out I've never taken any kind of economic qualification but what surprised me becoming involved at any level in the conversation is the very, very poor level of understanding which kind of iterates itself in a real aggression so if you say anything at all you get absolutely teaped with scorn by people who themselves don't really understand what they're being scornful of and you get a huge amount of there's no magic money tree and when you say how do you think money is created if not out of thin air they say where do you want to live? Zimbabwe and you say no no I'm happy here but I'd be interested too to know what you think money is made of and they never know and it's been really fascinating to me being involved with positive money to the small degree that I am how little courage there is around this how people are really frightened of the issue they're really frightened to say anything around money because they don't really understand how it's made and if you do say anything they're really, really angry with the level of citizenly engagement as though the audacity of a citizen in having a view on how money is created is completely beyond the pale and that's what I've really noticed that a positive money event a couple of years ago there were these two guys who had a positive money group in Greenwich and I got talking to them because they had it at the same pub that my uncle has, his basketball group and they were about the same age as my uncle and him playing basketball was completely preposterous and I thought they, them taking interest in money creation was completely preposterous it's like for God's sake you guys you're 67, you're not economists what are you going to do about it but actually the point was that if you don't engage with it then it rules you and there is no kind of if you can't engage at the level of the citizen with how your money is created then you are very much governed by a small technocratic group and I think that, Helen's point that these technical judgments have to be made by the Bank of England is not quite it actually because a lot of the points aren't technical points they are political points dressed up as technical points and we leave them to experts at our own expense keeping public understanding low and policing the parameters of debate so that only economists are allowed into it is a political act and the Bank of England has to take that seriously because if we accept money as a democratic resource then we have to have a democratic say in its creation to say politicians are greedy therefore nobody should be allowed anywhere near money is like saying politicians are greedy therefore they shouldn't be allowed to decide anything now that might be true they might be greedy and they might be illiquid to decide anything but if they're not going to decide it we can't say well let Mark Carney decide you know we can't say Carney decide what the NHS budget should be because politicians are too concerned with the political cycle you've got to come up with a better solution blaming politicians for personal faults which I'm sure are myriad once you kind of accept that money is a democratic resource then you accept that the creation of debt is a democratic resource or maybe you accept that first and then you accept the money second whichever way you kind of make this argument publicly if you have a kind of democratic agency over money then you need to be able to you need to be able to kind of understand that you need to be able to make the case for it and I think actually that's the best place to start for the Bank of England I suppose I'm kind of working up to the point that I think a kind of really key kind of remit for the Bank of England which they're not taking seriously at the moment is for everybody to understand money as a social resource that we all have a stake in and everybody to understand how it's made and everybody to understand who decides how it's made and everybody to feel as though they have a say in that going forward so I don't think, I mean I know Andy Howe that he does take that very seriously actually but I don't think Mark Carney does I think that you know that his point about distributional effects being a political act and his stuff being an apolitical act is really telling everything he does is a political act but the politics he agrees with are politics and the politics he disagrees with are suddenly political I think if you were to say if you were to kind of flip it round and stop trying to engage people at a technical level because there is so much shame around understanding or not understanding if you were to flip it round and describe debt creation as a democratic act simply because it is a hold on the future and the future without wishing to sound like a Nazi and go back to the Weimar Republic does belong to us you know tomorrow and it pains people quite easily that tomorrow belongs to all of us in an equal way then you kind of get to debt creation being a democratic resource and then you get to money as a democratic resource I think if you come at it from the other end from the kind of Felix Martin end of the kind of reality of what money is people will switch off if you come at it from the death end then people do understand that it's something that we all need to decide together at the very core of their reading is for everybody to understand that and they can't model that without kind of showing some humility to what voters want Take a round of questions Hold on You're going to give your five minutes responding to questions or comments or just whatever you want to say I'll do that to the person though because I have quite a few things to say as ever people who don't know me very well are talking quite a bit Okay I want to talk quite a bit about what we might call mixed messages because it seems to me that what's happening in the last six years or so is that we've seen the Treasury and Bank of England putting in the opposite directions all of the time so we've had the Treasury that is held out on cutting back, getting the debt to other control and a lot of those cuts have fallen with the bottom end of the income distribution continuing to do so there are cuts at hand that will drive down incomes and the bottom end of the income distribution even more At the same time as we have a Bank of England that is trying to kickstart the economy and get growth going and phishing out, as we've heard from Helen improving the value of assets at the top end of the income distribution result of this is a vital issue whether it's been affected or stimulated I have a serious doubt and the reason for that is that I actually think that when you've got on the one hand part for a government cutting back consolidating and encouraging all of us to cut back and save like crazy At the same time as we've got the another arm of government which is what Bank of England is depressing interest rates very much less beneficial to save in the hopes of encouraging everybody to spend strikes me as a fundamentally mixed message so the first thing for the first thing I would say is I think that the Treasury and the Bank of England actually need to be on the same page because historically they have not been and I want to allude to one of the questions actually which is this question about what just is called trusted is a very different point but where I see it is that we reach a stage now where the risk is not that politicians will spend too much but rather they will spend too little and so if we and so we as we've heard there's been a lot of pushback from the right wing against Bank of England for its policies and that has been going on ever since the financial crisis and not just in the UK the centre banks vilified really by the amount of money that they have created and spent in the economy in an attempt to get what is moving we can argue that they may not spend that money very effectively I would say that personally but that is not the criticism from the right the criticism from the right is that they shouldn't be spending it at all and so what the right wants is for there to be a consolidation on both the fiscal and the monetary side now I'm sure you can imagine what that would have done and would do now if we applied that now so in a way I'm slightly defending the Bank of England here and indeed centre banks generally who have carried really carried all the responsibility for creating what little recovery we've had and it's about time that the fiscal authorities recognise that this deficit mania oh my goodness we've got the debt back under control when they've got the lowest interest rates in history it does not make any sort of sense so first of all let's get the Bank of England which is adopting a generally explanatory attitude and the Treasury on the same page so the second the second part of that is actually within the Bank of England itself and again this is again pushed by the Treasury and again we have more mixed messages here there are two parts of the Bank of England there is the monetary policy side and there is also the macro-predential side the monetary policy side is trying to kickstart growth get inflation up a little bit to try and get energy into the economy that's what it's all about at the same time as the macro-predential side is clamping down like crazy on banks and imposing rules on them that make it more difficult for them to lend to small businesses to borrow income households macro-predential policies as they have been elected so far benefit those who don't need to borrow they do not benefit those who do and again I feel that the Bank of England itself is not fully not fully coherent on this we need to make a decision about what is more important of course we want to take the financial system of course we don't want banks to be taking ridiculous risks but it's worth remembering that part of the financial crisis the risks they were taking they thought were safe in my book properly managed lending to small businesses and to households that is properly managed is considerably safer then stocking up on safe assets then blow up in your face so it seems to me that we need to have a general rethink of the responsibilities of the Treasury and the Bank of England to ensure that we have a coherent policy an economic policy that addresses all parts of the economy equally and doesn't end up fighting each other and ending up with nothing a stagnant economy and stagnant wages and businesses that won't invest can't grow simply because we have not pulled the different parts together and said how exactly do you want this to work thank you a round of three questions now one here I'd love to see a hand for a woman if there is I mean I know this is we've managed to get a pretty good mostly female panel so some questions will be great too we'll take the grey waistcoat and then here with the grey jacket and then over there I know I'm taking your mixed message of your situation it was a good idea to make the Bank of England independent because it made the labour market good and that's what only people trust however by doing that you just lost control of the Bank of England so the sovereign money that we've always created by the sovereign is now created by the Bank of England so he's the king without a crown it's interesting it's done without too much company you can't be an information act etc and they don't particularly put the money where the politicians provide for well if you can't trust the politicians change them don't give the job away to somebody who's not holding control of that sounds to me like stupidity so should we take doing Bank of England and that should we get on our fiscal and monetary policies determined by groups who are closer to the population at a doubtful level and should we give it away and should we get it back Down here I would say if you wanted to come up with a plan that was going to create inequality as rapidly as possibly could be created then the plan you would come up with would be accurately on one side and austerity on the other side that would be your plan I think the whole sector as I think Mr Coppola was suggesting monetary policy and fiscal policy excuse the pardon are two sides of the same coin they have to work together for the long-term monetary policy and fiscal policy but really what we should be developing is an economic policy that takes both monetary and fiscal policy together what we probably should be doing instead of filling around the edges of monetary policy whether we were to by student loans instead of corporate bonds or to loans that are needed instead of by guilds we probably should reverse the whole policy altogether and the tighter monetary policy is much looser, fiscal policy you don't need to create the money and you don't need to borrow it the money is there the money is there in very great quantities and I'm going to tell you exactly where it is exactly where it is the money is sitting in untaxed corporate profits in offshore bank accounts I'll give you two very quick numbers two very quick numbers the financial times and I'll give you an exact reference to anybody who wants it the financial times 200 billion pounds worth of untaxed corporate profits goes out of the UK every year that's 40 billion pounds at a nominal rate of taxation 40 billion relative to the mansion tax which was going to create 1 billion the other things I'll give you from the Wall Street Journal and again I'm very happy to give you an exact reference if you want it companies active in the US are currently in possession of a trillion dollars of untaxed corporate profits so we're not sure thanks very much my name is Councillor Paul Grant and I'm a politician which I thought might be a sense to mention but it's not good enough I want to make two points back but normally before the fact of England to realise how unpopular it is I think it will be but the phrase we bailed out the bankers has put the residents right away across well beyond the land and it will potentially contaminate some of your capacity to carry out your function in the future because I'm under like public support and I think that's part for two reasons first of all QE has actually been used to deal with three separate issues over time and we have a propelling to make first of all when the credit crunch happened in 2008 it was used as a method of ensuring there's an activity in the banking system and actually that really was kind of keeping the bankers afloat although I tried to find people that would stop their savings and it would be better to know because in the end of the day we were bailing out as politicians not banks but nonetheless then it shifted towards inflating demand aggregate demand and I'd say for the best of reasons I can see why it was going the way it was but it was spectacularly unsuccessful but of course corporate bonds and corporate bore I was worried about aggregate demand in the economy and they were going to produce an effect that they didn't think there was a demand for it out there and then gradually now we've got to the point where you're looking at your inflation target so it probably is back to increasing aggregate demand which then comes back to the point about is the mechanism being used in the QE the right way to increase aggregate demand because if you're just going to inflate balance sheets but not give them the reason to produce them and therefore to one more people and then push up the weight in the number of productivity in the economy you're going to end up just having the same asset bubble in the corporate sector or the corporate bond sector that we've experienced and you'll continue to lose overall support so although it seems counter-intuitive because I honestly don't know if I was on the sensible wing of the party the whole idea of helicopter money does actually feel like the most egalitarian way of trying to increase demand now I suspect there are political reasons why I'll give that to this but it's almost unsellerable but Cora is huge and you obviously want to think up a way of trying to increase aggregate demand that has precisely a positive redistribution effect rather than a negative redistribution effect because if you don't you'll find that you're going to support what you're doing and even if a Labour government comes in the future we will be unable to support a continuation of the policies of QE even if it's necessary at the time Thank you, okay so three big questions basically should the Bank of England no longer be independent QE and austerity two sides and Munch policy and physical policy two sides of the same coin and issues with corporations sitting on loads of cash and basically what is so popular what does Labour need to do what does it need to promote can we just promote helicopter money what are the issues who wants to go first I'm going to do independent to the Bank of England this conversation happens a lot in the energy world should we have an independent energy commission because actually politicians what they're spectacularly bad at is like they'll do anything for like a job at G4S when there's money we don't ever look for the money but what they're really bad at is making decisions of more than five years hence so anything that you need a 15 year cycle or a 25 year cycle or a 50 year cycle for they're useless now and sometimes it does sound like a really good idea to have an independent energy commission to operate like the Bank of England only for energy and things if we want to be 100% renewable in 50 years what do we need to do this year to get there I do have my doubts about whether any politician of any political party will be able to make those decisions I just have my doubts so I think if you apply that then to the Bank of England how long are the decisions that they're making for the next 10 years and the next 15 years if we are looking at very long cycles I think they do need to be independent even though that does bring problems with it but obviously they can then be given a remit by politicians who are elected I don't agree that technocrats make good decisions they factor because they're imparsh I don't think there's any such thing in impartiality but I think any sphere in which you need a long lens you need to consider that unshackling of the immediate democracy with the long technocratic thing that actually brings me to the QE point which is that if you are talking about how to pump money into the economy while not having these negative distributional effects you need to invest in something that we will need it's just absolutely ridiculous we've known this since the new deal if you want to put money into an economy and how it would affect there's no point in putting money into an economy if they govern what effect that money is going to have so I'm not in favour of helicopter money particularly I am in favour of a green new deal with the long term becoming self-sufficient in terms of energy so you invest in huge renewable projects distributed where they're reasonably productive across the country and then you do a lot about regional disparities that are long term energy planning which I think is going to be our main challenge I don't think it's very complicated I don't think it would be hard OK Thank you Over to me should the Bank of England be independent it's very interesting what you mean by independence because the Bank of England actually isn't this kind of totally segregated institution that nobody has any control over the ECB which is independent in that way and interestingly the ECB because it is independent in that way is completely hedged around with treaties and directives that's seriously limited what it can do and it actually has much less freedom of movement than the Bank of England has which is an interesting perspective on things but in practice that's what happens is if you have a completely independent Bank of England you end up in a central bank you fence it in and you can't blow the place up So what we actually have here is what we call operation independence which means that the Bank of England has freedom of decision over operational decisions and that includes things like QE however for example for the recent round of QE that it's just embarked on it would have had to get agreement from the Treasury for that because the Treasury indemnifies it for any losses arising from QE so it can't embark on a QE programme without that indemnity in place so it has to have Treasury permission to do it the same is true with funding for lending I don't think people fully understand that independence in the UK independence of the central bank doesn't mean quite what you think it means it just means that the Managing Policy Committee have freedom of decision but it does not mean that they're completely cut off from government or from the Treasury and my plea is actually for a closer working relationship between the Bank of England and the debt management office as well which is the arm of government that issues government debt because of course most of the decisions that the Bank of England makes involve in some way involve messing around with government debt so there is this incredibly close working relationship and that arguably needs to be a bit close as well. These pieces of the puzzle need to be more closely joined I think I don't know that I would want to water down the operation independence I don't think we need the Treasury the Chancellor breathing down the Managing Policy Committee's neck but I do think they could work more closely together and co-operate better Great, thank you It's a lovely description Yesterday I suggested to the Minister that we should have a Tory dictionary when you have words like which means you're getting a crump in the cake and other words like Brexit and then you said C-Brexit well independence in this case would be another definition you can do anything you like and I agree with it and so if anybody would like to contribute to the Tory directory I'd be like it's a fun project It's fun and classic, you don't know what to say I'll just tell her off, I'm very sorry If you've got to go, kick We're losing them like price We're about to wrap up You won't be leaving France is those literally everything so she could hold it We do have some more questions so I'm quite happy to hang around We've got like five minutes left so I'll take them I know there's some questions out there but if I can just pick up a couple more points about this question of tighter monetary and looser fiscal policy is a very interesting one and one that's being discussed about whether we've actually got this hugely wrong because the way we've tried to go about things so far is to use loose monetary policy to offset tight fiscal policy and my take on it is that it doesn't work I'm also of the opinion that tight monetary and loose fiscal policy doesn't work either for exactly the same reason they have to complement each other and that means that if you're going to do loose you do loose and if you're going to be tight you do tight and you justify and the Treasury and the Central Bank work together not against each other Is it all right if we wrap up there because I feel like there's actually like plenty of food and people can hang around Absolutely, we can have a discussion over food and drink because I feel like possibly the first time in a while we've actually brought a conversation on monetary policy into the Labour party and I heard somebody say that they feel like it is a bit of a blind spot to have a really open and uninterrupted discussion on monetary policy and what we think about the Bank of England and positive money is really here to foster this debate we don't say we've got all the answers there's a lot of new ideas there's quite radical ones coming out around what we should do with monetary policy what we should do with the Bank of England and clearly there's a lot of intelligence and interest in this just the people in the room you obviously know a lot so we've had a really exciting discussion we've heard from Helen Goodman about QE's effect on inequality and how important credibility is for Labour party monetary policy Paul was quite outspoken in he feels like actually the Labour party should be talking about a targeted monetary stimulus he talked about a student loan dump Zoe talked about how we need to accept money as a democratic resource and it's a social resource and then have a really open and inclusive conversation and Francis pointed out very clearly how the Bank and Treasury are pulling in opposite directions and have been for a long time but we need to change that if we're ever going to have a chance of having a macroeconomic policy that works so I just want to finish by saying thank you for coming and thanking our panellists most of which have gone myself on Francis and other very interested people are going to be here until 2pm I can see there's still loads of cake left so I'd really invite you to join us to continue the discussion so if you just want to thank yourselves and the panellists and thanks for coming


Demon, what have you done in her life? Speak out. What did you cause? Pain. Pain? What else? Rejection. Rejection? What else? How long have you been tormenting her body? What have you done to her marriage? To her marriage, speak out, you demon. Division. Jesus Christ is going to break every grip over your life. To you going to the race to deliver conference, were you experiencing any symptoms, any of what that demon spoke out and said? So from very little I noticed, because I wasn't raised by my parents the first nine years of my life, there was a lot of rejection throughout my whole life. And division with my husband, it was constantly a battle, the whole entire time. And I felt like God wanted to show me there that it was not me pushing him away.


Hey everyone, my name is Alexandra Aguadello. I'm a hospital corpsman third class. I'm stationed here on the USNS Comfort on Ross Crew, which means that I'm actually stationed on the ship. I checked in about eight months ago during Continuing Promise 19. It's been a wild ride. I work here in the ER. I'm the only Ross Crew member here in the ER. This mission has been really special to me. My uncle actually responded to 9-11 with the Comfort. He was a firefighter in the Army at the time and having this opportunity to be here and follow in his footsteps someone that is the motivation for me joining the military. This mission has been very humbling for me and it's pretty amazing to be able to be here and respond to Americans after spending so much time in South America. It's just kind of putting the corpsman right out there for everyone so that people finally know who we are. You know, we're here for you and you don't have to be afraid anymore. Thank you guys for listening. I hope you guys have a great night.


Welcome everyone. I just want to say hello and welcome to all of our Amherst community members, and we thank you for joining us today. My name is Brianna Sunren. I'm the communications manager for the town. And we have Fire Chief Nelson here with us today. And excuse me for that. We can see your typing. I'm multitasking folks. So I just want to remind everybody that this is being recorded. So please refrain from asking any personally identifying health questions today. In this webinar to ask a question from the zoom application, click the Q&A button to type in your question. It will only be visible to us as the hosts. Additionally, if you'd like to join the conversation and speak, please use the zoom raise hand button or press star nine if you're joining us from a telephone and we'll pull you into the room. We ask that you introduce yourself before speaking and to maintain a civil discourse. So today joining us, we have Amherst Fire Chief and emergency management director Tim Nelson. Welcome to you both. Before we launch into Q&A, I'm just going to give the town manager a chance to give any status updates he might have. Great. Thanks Brianna. So I'm Paul Backelman, the town manager. And thank you for joining us today. Don't have a lot of updates because I know Tim has a lot to talk about and he talks a lot about everything he talks about. And we appreciate you taking the time to join us. A couple of things that we do want to talk about is that we're waiting, a lot of talk about reopening town government and or town businesses. We really try to align ourselves with the state and what the governor is talking about. We're waiting for him to make some pronouncements with that might happen today might happen tomorrow. Right now that May 4, which is next Monday is the date that has been the target date. My assessment my assumption is that that will be extended. So, sort of, that'll be something that'll be of keen interest to a lot of us to know which which way he's going so we can align our tasks with him with it with the government with the state government is doing. Also, you know, as the weather starts to get warm up, we'll have a lot more people out there this weekend should be pretty warm. We're monitoring all of our facilities, especially Puffers Pond, as we move forward right now we haven't closed off the road we are considering limiting parking near Puffers Pond. Puffers Pond is closed to sort of sedentary activities. You can walk through you can use the trails you can go you can do solitary fishing things like that. But as the weather starts to warm will be adjusting our policies on outside recreation as as it as we deem best for the town and for the public health. So with that, I think it's really going to be Tim show. Oh really. Well, good afternoon. I hope everyone's doing well that thing that you see out out there is the sun. So, that's strange, yellow orb. So, I just a couple things to start to start with, you know, I know I know folks are curious if we've had any code code code code positive K K case in the town and yes, yes we have but nothing, nothing too serious serious serious. I think that's a test and the fact that folks are taking taking this virus seriously. And that's and that's and that's a good good thing. It is so insidious that you know they're going to be the folks that are going to get get get this in in spite of doing all that that that we can to stay stays to save it off. People are doing the right thing. They stay staying home, while watching their bare hands social distancing I see see all over the place. And we're wearing map math and mass mass when you're when you're going to be in a close encounter counter with people that's though those simple things are really going to do a lot to protect you and everyone around around you. And I can't say enough enough about that. And, you know, again, and I mean our concerns really great right right now are are the are most vulnerable populations. That's that's gonna be our L L L this for the most, most parts and they're nursing homes assisted webbing facilities that we have in town. And I have have to say that they've all done a stellar stellar job at protecting their their their reds red red red as whether it be through hyper clean cleaning restrictions on access to to the building, building where we're wearing the proper proper personal protective equipment across the board, they've done a as I said a stellar stellar job at taking care of their people and taking care of each other. So. Thank you for that update chief. Sure. We've got a list of questions that have come in and if you guys are ready I we can, we can launch in certainly. All right, so the first question is for Chief Nelson how is your team holding up during this time. emotionally, physically, in a right resting part of the inner of the resting group request question we're, we are a reflection of society as a whole. And we're doing doing well, I mean, one of the one of the interesting things that we've become a young younger department department which means we have a lot of a lot of a lot of a lot of our members have young young young kids at at home and like everyone they've they've they've gained a new found respect for teachers. Let me tell you so and they're go and go go go go through the same things that everyone else is trying to balance balance work, school child childcare and trying to work work that out at home and also the fact that we've all kind of been thrown off our schedules, schedules, schedules, schedules. We're not used used to being with our, our loved ones as much as much as we are so that takes a little, a little bit of adapting to. I might say I've never, never, never, never seen fire fire fighters more excited about coming to work. As I've seen it in the last couple of months, but they're doing doing well hold hold holding up. So, we're doing a lot more in terms of checking in on on folks to make make make sure they're all our needs, they're well they're their need, need, needs are met met and we're just kind of, again, keep keeping keeping a cool, cool, cool side and make sure that everyone's okay and at the same time to let let folks know it's it's it's it's okay not to be okay and we can fix fix we can address address address that but again that we're doing to do and again our focus is on taking care care killer public and this is a really a strange time a different time but there are the folks focus on what is important which is taking care of all of you, all of us. Now that's an important message I think for everybody to hear. I'm going to remind our attendees if you want to ask a question, please use the Q&A button in the zoom application, raise your hand in the zoom application or press star nine from the phone. So, we've got another question here. What's it like with you mass being closed you notice a difference in your call volume at all. Oh, sure. Absolutely. I mean, which we would what what happened is we've, there's probably 25,000 people who are not there. And that and that is in itself is going to cause our call calls all in the go to go to go down and and and it has significantly and it's not you know folks like like say well you know you don't have those drunk students students around in anymore but it's not just that it's not real really bad it's just a function of that many people people here and people drive around they have car accidents they fall down they they get sick.  So, you know, without that, yes, our call calls volume is down significantly.   I'm a pilot I've been a pilot for 30 some some years so my wife got got got me the propeller propeller for Christmas a few years back. And the photo photo is. It's a good good friend friend of mine flying flying flying the jet, and I was flying flying the phone phone photo plane we're up in the white white mountains doing it. Do we're doing a that that was in the Air Force may mag magazine, a few few years years back so I got I got the fly fly fly the photo photo ship. So, and he's a really good good friend so I'm a man of many talents. I'm I do okay I'm okay and I and I got to have to have to say I also he's he's such a such a good friend he got God he got he got me a flight in and out and ff ff ff 15 a few years back and I got to fly it I actually got to fly fly fly fly the jet so that's my claim the same I guess that's what they told you. Trust me, try to trust me we do the it was good we do we got we got the dog dog dog dog fight and we didn't lose a fight. Okay, so the next question is, how, how do you think Amherst is handling the situation compared to other communities in the Commonwealth or other communities in the area. I think we're doing doing well and part of that is, we prepared early as early as you could. We, we first began here here about this back in first part of the latter part of Jan, Jan, January, and we just heard, you know, just that this this thing was coming all that. And just we, we took steps from one one thing to order for personal protective equipment or early. Because as we talked about about about this it just seemed like this is going to grow. It's going to get worse. So we said, we need to reach out, build build up our stock, just just in case, you know, the rest of the world starts to do do do the same same thing. That would put us in a good, good spot. We took, we took steps or early to restrict access to our building. We did did that that are early on, we, we, we took a higher protective stance with our personnel as they went out went out to to respond. We're wearing more personal protective equipment, PPE. We did did that early on so and one of the things is, you know, what what we found found is people, you know, they may they may they may they may be sick and they may have been sick for a week week or so with flu flu type type symptoms symptoms but if they, if they broke broken ankle ankle, they're more concerned about that when they make make that that call. So to protect, protect our protect our our folks we started starting where we're wearing our TV or early on. I think compared to other other towns in any area, I think we're doing doing doing well we haven't had anybody, any of our personnel come come up positive for for this we only had to have to quarantine to people just as a particular question, and none and none and none of them were positive. And I've been anecdotally here, you know, throughout throughout our area area of the towns are having some some issues with with with with that. So that is just just bad luck, you know, but for us I think we we we took an affirmative affirmative and a proactive step to protect all our personal so right now we're doing doing well and I would think we're going to we're going to continue to do do well with that. I noticed that Tim early on you were sending your paramedics out in full protective gear like right people call it hazmat suits but they're really right word we've heard is PPE right personal protection equipment. And I said, Wow, why are they doing it so early but really you had already thought about force protection which has maintained our our crews have to stay healthy so they can serve the citizens and residents of Amherst. And that if one person were to be catch, you know, have catch COVID-19, the whole crew would have to be out. And so losing, you know, having exposure was a really dangerous thing and that's why I really admired your early decision to have people have the paramedics going out and full PPE. And I think it was a little off putting to some of our citizens to show up because you have a hurt leg or something like that. And they're right, but they don't know and you walk into the house you don't know so I that foresight was really important. Yeah, and we and we were quite a question about that at first and then of course it came came came came out that you can be a sense of the symptomatic, but but still infected people. And we wanted to make make sure that that in an abundance of caution that we took those steps to pretend to detect our for our folks as I said, for years, you know, in order for us to take care of the folks out out there, we need to take care of ourselves and if we protect ourselves, it means we're better able to protect and take care of the folks that we serve. So that, and as I said, you know, a person may have been been ill for a week a week or so. But if they, you know, break break an arm break break a leg, that's what they're going to be focused on. They may not tell, tell, tell, tell us when we arrive. Oh, I've had the flu for a week or I've had the symptoms because they're more concerned about that particular thing. So, and that's, again, you know, it was at first I think it was off of putting, but in the in in the end it means we're going to be able to protect people. How is the town doing now with PPE. Do we have enough. Yeah, we're doing well we're doing very, very well I got to got to admit, you know, there's prepped for prepped pressure a lot of a lot of pressure worldwide on all these vendors. But I, but I believe that because we started started early, we got out ahead of the curve, and we've, and we've got got some great great vendor vendor so our supply supply stream is good. And yeah, it has slow, slow, slow down, down some, but because we began early. I mean, again, we got out ahead of the curve. So we have above buffer and, and our plan was the plan for the worst. The plan plan plan plan for an overwhelming amount amount of calls and trans transports and that type of thing. And we just began and we just pushed pushed out as far as far as far as it could and we're still do do do the fact that the state has come up come up with a do to the distribution system system that works well. That has helped help us as well to fill in any gaps we may see in the future. And it's really interesting because it's like a military campaign where you have to lay out your supply line to make sure you have your supplies and you started early, so that when you put an order in now and they say it's backorder for a month that that's you can handle that. Right. I'm not sure several weeks worth of supply on hand if this is I mean the question we talk about every day when we meet is if supplies were to be cut off today. How long would we last and you've had multiple weeks out there. We were right right now I mean we we we ended in the inventory our supplies at least every five to six days, and then project checked out and we project what what our rate of use is going going going to be as well. It's called a burn rate. So we so right right now we we've got approximately four to four to 45 days worth of supplies if our supply if our supply chain stop right now. And then that goes back back back to, you know, I've got got got got some great great great folks will work in here who who who could project checked out and and we're for for forward think think thinking, and said you know we need we need to do do do this so that so that's why we're in a good spot now. We have a question that just came in through our info email account from rich. He's asking, even though case count of covert is low and Amherst has the town considered requiring facial coverings or masks in downtown area where it is difficult to remain six feet away from each other. It's a great question. It's something that we talk a lot about. It's really a call ultimately for the health director or Julie Vetterman who is our health director. You see some communities have required facial coverings cloth facial covering specifically at all times I think Somerville went for a mandatory if you're outside you need a facial cover covering. We have not done that. And I think the health director is waned is aligning our policy with the Centers for Disease Control and the Mass Department of Public Health, saying that it's recommended. It's advised, but it's not required is the key piece in her mind and I think in our mind is that social distancing is the key public health safety measure. If you can't achieve social distancing, then that's the time to have a cloth mask on or something I mean I have my, I think we all probably have I have my, my cloth mask, you know, we can put it on that must be allowed. And you've got yours and I think we're, we're actually starting a campaign with our community participation officers to have people create or make cloth masks helps to distribute them to people who might not have access to cloth masks otherwise. But as in terms of the question, we don't require them at this point in time. It's something that we take into consideration and we'll continue to look at the science of the matter. And if it becomes something that where our, our health experts say this is something we should be doing we will certainly adjust that policy. Great. Thank you. Well, I wanted to add, add quick and as we were talking about the supplies, you know, things were to get hectic and we were in our activity level went went went way up specifically because because of the vibe by. I wanted folks to know that we've got a pretty robust new mutual aid plan in place throughout throughout the county.  But we've been, we've, we've had had had this packed in place for years just for some something like this. So, and, and so, you know, the plan is all read or ready there. And if one two or three towns towns get have have an order in order amount of pressure put upon pond and we have other towns that that can come in and support support and that's something that's been been in place for a very long time. I just wanted to make that. So I have a question that I guess would be for either of you both of you. Are there things that we can do as a community to help out. You know, well, yeah, well, also, you know what, one, one thing is keep doing what you're doing. I just get it's beginning to get night night nice out. You know, some some of the news news out outlets are saying that the trend trend is beginning to clap, clap, clap, and that type of thing is, we can't get complacent. We don't need to in the still still need to need need need to enforce this social dis dis diss diss diss dissing piece, where where where where wearing a mask, watching has all those, we still need to do those type type type type type type of things to protect ourselves and protect everyone else. So I guess it's you know is I think the other daughter doctor fell out she said, don't take your foot off the gas right now, so. that we're all feeling a little sense of I want this to be over already when I get back to normal when my kids go back to school and all those things is kids are not going to go back to school this this year but when the weather starts to turn and we get tired of all these you know the stay-at-home restrictions I think that's really gonna be hard for folks to sort of internalize and we're just you know ready to get back to work and see each other again socialize and I think I agree with Tim is that this is not the time to do that you know when you look at the numbers at the state they say that we're plateauing we hope that we are but it's just at the very peak now and we're we want to see that go down for you know multiple days in a row in terms of hospitalization so that we make sure that it truly is going down and so if we if we sort of let up now and I fear that it's too soon and then we're going to be have another resurgence and we don't want that to happen but I think that's the that's the biggest fear and again the message has not changed from the very beginning stay home wash your hands those are the two things that people can do and limit your exposure to other people and it's really hard to do but I think people have been really phenomenal at making that happen so far and just really credit everybody in town and also in the whole state that really worked hard to make that happen you know one one one one thing that I that I ascribe ascribe to is is write the end of the story first and then and then you figure out how do I get there and then so instead of saying to think you know I've got all these obstacles to get to get to get to the end you've already written the end and the end of that that story where we need need need to be and then you just figure out how are you going to get there and I think that that's that's I think that's kind of kind of kind of way way to look look at this great thank you both so we are reaching the end of our time before I have the closing remarks do either of you have any parting wisdom or things that you want to share that you didn't get asked today wisdom wisdom time but do I let the Bob Bob the boss go go first or let's let the Bob boss go I think you go you go Tim okay uh just a couple things um if if you're sick or ill or feel feel feeling you know out of out of sorts don't be afraid to call your your primary care don't be afraid to call the doc one one of the things that we found is that folks seem to have this fear about going to a hospital or going to see a doctor so then by the time they call call us they're very very sick so don't don't don't wait on on the seas seeking help or getting getting or calling your doc you know that you know the hospitals have planned plans in place to take care of you know things that are non-co COVID related related they can deal deal with that the last thing I would say is you know let's continue to help each other out that's what a community community does I mean when things are at our when things are at their worst we tend to be at our best and it's it's really it's help each other out look out for each other we can you could do uh in terms of terms of girl girl grocery shop shop shopping uh check the check with with your neighbors on what what what what what they might might need that's not just just a nice nice thing that will cut down on another number of people that are out and about and and go go go going to to to the stores and then you reduce your the amount amount of the amount of possible exposure so that's so that's what I you know what I was saying and really just you know let's just take take care of each other we'll we'll get get through through through this and we'll we'll be better for for it and I just add you know it's you know Tim was a great athlete as a young person not commenting now but hey hey hey hey but um it's we have a great team for the town so I just it's been a you know privileged to work with such a great team uh and I think you know just this this group here that you're seeing today really reflects that um but also that we have you know full force of police fire paramedics dispatchers on duty 24 hours a day ready to respond if there are any issues that you need we're there to respond to it call 911 and we'll be there and so that's all I have to add great great so I just have some logistics here to share we will be continuing to do this for the next couple of weeks Tuesdays and Thursdays at noon this Thursday April 30th we'll be with our health director Julie Federman and coming up on May 8th we'll have another virtual cup of Joe Friday May 8th from 8 to 9 with Paul and a couple of special guests that will have coming in and out of that session so thank you both thank you chief for your time thank you always a pleasure thank you thank you have a great day stay safe everybody be good be good guys peace bye


I'm Hega, it was a mountain delta, and I'm doing the experiments in this project. And yeah, so last paper before lunch, we need to make this very, very super exciting. So here goes, inscribed textiles found in Egypt dating from the late antique and the early Islamic periods provide important cultural and documentary evidence in the form of movable personal objects. After the Arab conquest of Egypt, markings on cloth expanded official control of the textile industry. Tera's originally referred to a type of embroidered band, but over time, the term evolved to become a more generic designation for messages on cloth. And among the artifacts recovered from upper and middle Egypt burials, a small but important group of textiles demonstrates the intersections of religious cultures in post-conquest Egypt. So in this presentation, we'll show how interdisciplinary research methods are necessary to interpret these complex artifacts that represent a synthesis of both late antique and Arab cultures to create a distinctive form of Christian Tera's as a means to convey prayers and blessings. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, hundreds, as we know, hundreds of these so-called Coptic textiles flowed into collections around the world through the antiquities market, totally divorced from their context. So subsequently, the information content on these is generally pretty low. So what we were going for is trying to maximize the information content that we could start with to get to significance, to bring this material to the attention of scholarship. So today we've gathered data for more than 200 Greek and Coptic inscribed textiles in over 40 collections and there are certainly more to be found. The University of Michigan collection is especially noteworthy because it was created as a textile analog to the Papyrus Museum there. And note that this study excludes inscriptions that were written or painted on cloth. What we're trying to understand is the interaction between the medium and the content rendered in cloth. Inscribed textiles fall into distinctive categories, which I'll just give a very brief overview of. The most widely known Greek inscribed textiles are tapestry hangings where text provides a label for key figures. So in this example, Dionysus is on the left and figures of Paris and Athena in the middle with the Virgin Mary flanked by Michael and Gabriel on the left, on the right rather. And dating through this evidence is presented at the bottom of the slide. So after the Arab conquest of Egypt, inscribed Christian-themed tunic ornaments appear and their form represents a very major shift in Christian representation that continued into the 10th century. And the conspicuous use of religious representation dominated by Old Testament themes, such as the Joseph group of tapestries is presented here. And consistent with paprological evidence, Coptic entirely supplanted Greek as the language of inscription on cloth. And the interaction with Islamic culture is evident by the choice of Indian lac as the red dye stuff. This particular dye stuff is never seen in textiles pre-conquest. So when Tiraz emerged in Arab culture in the eighth century, we also see the form of Christian inscriptions involved from labeling represented figures to more elaborated inscriptions in Coptic script with more decorative designs. So this group of cloths is attributed to workshops in the Fayum region. But few cloths with elaborated Coptic inscriptions have been carbon dated. Now, given the size of the corpus, the most extensive text is found on inscribed funerary shrouds, which is the focus of the remainder of this presentation with about 45 examples in the corpus. Names and blessings on inscribed garments and household items serve as poignant appeals on behalf of loved ones. And collectively, these cloths demonstrate the co-mingling of religious messages and imagery on cloth. Rather than trying to discuss the entire body of the fragments, we will discuss this group through a case study of an unbuckled shroud from the Kelsey Museum at the University of Michigan. Number 88017 A&P has shown delivered. The diagram in the center describes our interdisciplinary research methods that brings scholars in relative fields together for non-invasive analysis and sampling, including dianalysis and radiocarbon dating. This is a working process. We want to share research today and show direction for a larger, fully founded project to study and publish this corpus. Our current focus is non-invasive analysis that brings the scholars, scholars, historians, technical and textile analysis and experimental archaeology together. The evidence suggests that this artifact was the product of a professional industry that produced luxury furniture throughout the British market. This slide provides an overview of the cloth fragments. The body flue shows that the clothes was used as infirmary wreaths. The surviving fragment, the two ends of a shroud, close surfaces survived, with a wide of 150 centimeters and 80 centimeters high in the center of the section is lost. The length is by reference of the one of the few intact pieces from another collection. The center wapping section was probably a plain wreath. Three elaborated lines of text survived in readable form, making this an extremely important document for historical analysis. So the text is written in a phyumics, a hidden dialect of Coptic. The B fragment contains a personal prayer and benediction which is shown by the green line that begins on the left side and continues to about three quarters of the way to the right. And this text is shown above in two sections along with the Coptic reading. And so the translation is Lord Jesus Christ, our true God, bless, help and protect the life of our servant, Sassinos, the priest, son of your servant, the deacon, whom he see the carpenter, amen, it shall be. And the text is readable, but there are several errors in the inscription. For example, as shown in the red box, the letter row is reversed. So the A fragment is shown above the B piece on this slide and the text in the two lines that appear above showing the particular sections of the Psalm, this is Psalm 22, it starts on the right side of line one. So right here on the right side of line one of the B fragment and continues with two lines on the A fragment progressing upward. The Psalm begins with the message, the Lord tends me as a shepherd. So the embellished letter forms are interesting and unusual within the corpus of similar fragments which may show the influence of Arabic aesthetic or more likely it's carried over from the Coptic manuscript tradition which uses similar colors and letter forms. This type of Shraddus Kriliabisti Shraddak loaded with details of provided plink as a form of conspicuous consumption. There are five registers of the located silk on this fragment. This image has been edited to make the white silk more visible. The magnified image of the silk brocading wefts is shown on the left and the higher magnification image on the right shows that the construction of the brocading weft is unusual. The wefts are inserted into the same sheet as the David Cron tree. The design program is symmetrical for both ends of the Shraddus with additional embellishment so stripes and embroidered ornaments. We see specific protection conventions for embroidered figures. There are errors show the starting and the finishing yarns. They are twisted together and are long rather than knotted. These long yarns are visible through the open weft on the right side. Note that the shorts were clearly made for a real purpose. There are no signs of wear or rework. The high twist yarn appears new and the wear very well preserved. Comparing the Kelsif fragment with a similar piece in the Papyrus Library collection in Vienna, we see that embroidery techniques and conventions are very similar to the Kelsif fragments. But comparing the inscription side by side, we can make a difference in the epic graphic between the two fragments. The Papyrus Library piece on the left has more ornate style with ligatures on the letter forms. The most important point is that we see evidence of very different lettering styles but they are post-adapted to the constraints of the closed medium and the embroidery technique. Analyzes of the new letters from also lines of the Kelsif fragment shows a high degree of consistency in letter form and method of production. For example, the red arrows mark the intersection of the diagonal and vertical lines. The join of both the bottom of the letters reflect a specific stylistic choice. For some letter forms, we see fairly consistent spacing with three or four reps between the letters but we also see examples of kerning in which spacing is adjusted for certain letters to give a more pleasing effect. This analyzes indicates that the letter spacing was planned in advance of the production. We also see individual differences in the top member of the towel caused by the starting and the ending point of the embroidery. The red arrows show the tip caused by improper alignment of the stitches that would not be seen if written with the stylus. In summary, our analyzes shows that three factors must be considered when analyzing textual inscriptions. Letter forms are adapted to the medium and the production method. We see a clear standardization of letters with consistent stylistic forms and the production method also influence letter forms as shown by the variations on the towel. Now turning to scientific analyzes, we have the die analyzes that search for the rena fragment with the same color as the calcipes. The black yarn was dyed with rhodo or indigo and likely an unknown dye source obtained with the deep black color. The red yarn was dyed with the red lactite which is notable because it fits with the change often in dye stuff to the in the ocean to wait after to have a conquest. So tie together the elements of this case study from a historical perspective, we see the centuries long practice of text as labels for representations was transformed into text dominant textile artifacts embellished with decorations. We see from a cross cultural influence standpoint that Christian use of text for making religious meaning merged with the messaging role of Islamic inscription to create a distinctive form of Christian to us. The inscribed prayers and blessings on cloth invoke God's protection as a projection and a defense of religious identity for a culture that was under external pressure. The technical analysis shows very clearly the details of construction indicate that a professional industry existed to produce funerary shrouds for the Christian market. Experimental reproduction provides a basis for interpreting the series of decisions including technology and work practices. Scientific methods of course provide specific information for comparison with like artifacts and other aspects of the material culture. Rigorous analysis of complex objects this is the point provides the need for ongoing collaboration and interaction throughout the process not just sort of parsing out roles and assignments which help us to interpret the interactions among various components. And as Karina mentioned and this is our thought too we wanna make sure to bring forward the contemporary relevance of this kind of research in that we see in the past and in the present projection of identity and beliefs through text on cloth provides insights into the contemporary culture of textile messages. So thank you, we are pursuing this as a research project and if any of you have stumbled across inscribed textiles Coptic inscribed textiles that fit this typology in your collections please let us know they're relatively rare but contain really valuable documentary information that should be published as a corpus. So thank you.