Minutes of Democafe meeting, 2-4pm on Saturday 29th August 2015 at The Forge, Delancey Street, Camden NW1 7NL, transferring to The Camden Head due to a rehearsal taking place in the background of wonderful Brazilian music.

Present:  Eddie (chair), James Carol, Sara, Janos, Alan, Clive, Trevor, Mary (notes), Apologies: Michael, Denise.

Minutes of the last meeting: Sat 22nd August 2015.

Update:  Eddie recommended the latest posts on the Corbett Report site:  https://www.corbettreport.com/never-forget-the-central-banks-have-engineered-this-collapse/ and https://www.corbettreport.com/deal-with-the-devil-how-the-global-elite-re-colonized-china/

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HOUSING:

Members thanked Michael (and Trevor) for the updated paper on Housing, which had been tabled last week, and those who had not yet studied this were urged to do so in advance of the event on housing:  Housing_a_Place_to-Live.

Mary brought a copy of the Guardian colour supplement, which had a very relevant article on the Generation Rent campaign:
http://www.theguardian.com/global/2015/aug/22/renters-fight-rogue-landlords-rhiannon-lucy-cosslett and also found this earlier report:
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/23/generation-rent-locked-out-of-housing-market
We brainstormed on the ideas behind the articles, and the connection with the issue of money creation. Janos suggested that more attention should be paid to the ideas of Land Reform, which gave rise to vigorous discussion on the origin of money, and it was agreed that Money itself is a topic that also deserves thorough debate.

In regard to the event being planned for September, which would be after the election of the Labour Party leader, one idea suggested was asking The Forge if we can have a larger than usual meeting and warn them to have more food available. Carol is also going to check with the collective group who organise pop-up shops to see if we could have a session on one of their premises, before it gets a dedicated use.
In regard to the format of the meeting, people thought that the house-buying stunt would create more interest than the usual conference format with speakers on its own, although it was felt that we also needed some expert presentations.  With reference to the list of organisations and campaign groups mentioned in the notes of last week, Eddie suggested that we should ask each of those organisations to send a representative to the meeting and also to publicise it to their members.
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Next Meeting:  Saturday 5th September 2015 at the Forge.  Please note that in addition to advertising other meetings, we can put the date of our own DemoCafe meetings into the events plugin on this website, including Uxbridge, starting up on Sundays – see http://www.democafe.uk/events/.  Each week the next meeting can be shown by changing the date on the event listing, which can be done as part of compiling the notes.  Janos wondered if we should hold the Camden meeting monthly and rotate around, to help seed DemoCafe’s elsewhere – to be discussed.

EF/mf