Thanks. I must agree with what you say, but still believe that Mr Clarke tends to listen and is a thoughtful man. The acutely disappointing thing for me is that no-one in the current regime, except our local MP, has been at all responsive. I am absolutely no fan of the Conservatives and their intentions. Locally, we have been defending our libraries under a Tory council. An appeal made to Ed Vaizey early this year was not, in retrospect, a bright idea. The situation is utterly frustrating for anyone attempting to save a local library, constantly exhorted to protest to all and sundry with little or no result. The political hay/chaff being made out of Libraries is most indigestable. But our own Old Town Library in Swindon is still open, so it is well worth soldiering on.

The 1964 Act must stay in place and have clout.

I, too, am currently shoving leaflets through letterboxes (hot tip: a small wooden kitchen spatula is useful to poke the leaflet through when there is a maddened dog throwing itself at the door from the other side).

At the end of Desmond Clarke’s post it says ‘Leave a Reply’. It doesn’t say ‘Cheer Now’. And when someone extolls the so-called virtues of the private sector and its view of life, and simultaneously describes others as amateurs…., I assume that they can look after themselves . My general view is that much of what Mr Clarke said, and the way he said it is designed to appeal to the proclivities of a Conservative viewpoint. Boards of directors, corporatism. I happen to believe that much of what has gone wrong in public services is the idealogically based attempts to make them sound and behave like images of for-profit business.

For now, I believe that what is most important is to ensure the strength of the 1964 Act. I disagree with you over the the current government. The stated Conservative intention is to ‘clarify’ the Act. Which , taken together with various other aspects of their political positions, traditional and current, means a watering down. Probably force people to redirect their appeals to the new proposed ‘agency to give a veneer of ‘accountability’. The agency just another unelected quango, answerable only to the government, who in the case of the Conservatives wish by ‘localism’ to divest themselves of any responsibiliities. Underfunding, laziness and arrogance in action. Edwardianism. Keep them working hard just to keep their libraries in survival mode. And we’ll get on with our real interests…., the bond markets.

Hot air…… Not in Banwell the other night, a few hours before I posted here. Shoving leaflets through letterboxes in the freezing rain, destroying my street-cred with the orange Ikea umbrella……

Libraries are an egalitarian space, or should be. We just want to keep them OPEN, for heaven’s sake, for everyone’s benefit.

Political infighting and a consciousness of issues of class (which ought to be obsolete) have allowed and continue to allow injustices to take place, at a great cost to the whole public. We all need community libraries. Those who, erroneously in my view, look to the Shadows for a saviour are reacting in frustration to the inertia demonstrated by the incumbents.

My ‘beef’ is that enough hot air is generated to finish off the planet, never mind the emissions contributed from animals’ behinds. By trying to put people in convenient boxes, labelling them and dismissing their contribution to the debate, we are side-tracked from the main aim. I only wish we could make common cause.

And certainly in my chosen work area for many years, freelance programmer, Reuters was a byword for its computer project management screw-ups, throwing money at problems to solve them…..

The primary difference between public sector, and private sector, is that news media love to report public service messes, and corporate incompetence goes mostly unreported, unless of course it’s banking well terminal.

And the subtext of most of what else you said is angled towards placing more high-value , payable services in libraries, cheap ‘marketing makeovers’ , a little bit of extra training for counter staff, attempt to disguise a starvation of the infrastructure elsewhere. Funny really, many people have commented on the political thinking around the Shadow Cabinet and their admiration for Edwardian values. For me , Edwardian values translate as ” the poor know their place “. And a large chunk, in my opinion, of your scenario for libraries is one which really just emphasises when someone is poor. Which, in my opinion, is almost exactly the opposite of what libraries are supposed to be about.