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June 16, 2006
The Royal Society of Literature
I cannot satirise this, it means too much. A year ago David Hughes, the most excellent author, who had encouraged my writing and my work on old official papers, called and asked about articles I had written in the Guardian on the subject of public libraries. We met and talked and, as he was on the council of the Royal Society of Literature, he insisted that I should enlist their support and explain to them the problems that I was uncovering. While the arrangements for my presentation to them were being made, he died.
In response to my discussion with them the Royal Society, of which Maggie Gee is the president, immediately offered their authority and support and they invited the new Minister responsible for libraries to come and address and discuss the matter of public libraries with them. There could be no more articulate debating society nor one with greater commitment to and understanding of the role of public libraries. A new, young minister could have gone nowhere for wiser council.
The event took place last Tuesday and it was as embarrasing as it was sad. I have already posted the Bookseller account of it and here is today's entry in the Evening Standard.
""ES London's Diary 16 June
Lame Lammy waffles on
Culture Minister David Lammy angered a gathering of The Royal Society of Literature in Somerset House by referring to readers as "punters and consumers". When novelist Helen Dunmore took him to task for being crass, Lammy snapped back that she was being pedantic.
Lammy was invited to talk about closures, dwindling book stocks and opening hours in public libraries but succeeded only in aggravating his learned audience with a long speech patronising them as "the finest minds in the country". He waffled and filibustered, they said
Whenever questions got tough, Lammy said "local democracy" meant he could not intervene, although he lauded the "national standards" he had set. Most oddly, he said he had tried to urge upon publishers that the end-papers of all books should include a form which readers could post to their local councils, saying they want them to buy such books as the one thereby mutilated.
His speech was recorded by the British Library, but anybody who has the spare time to ask his permission to listen to it. Don't all rush at once."
Posted by Tim Coates at June 16, 2006 1:14 PM
Comments
yes, if it were not so sad it would be laughable.. Yes, Minister could not improve upon it.But ALL new labour ministers and MPs speak in this curiously patronising way - does not take them 5 minutes,. I watched the dreadful Hazel Blears some time ago, when she was fairly newly elected, on a programme about housing regeneration in the North. She went to the house of a delightful lady but one who had not received the benefit of Higher Education...and Blears spoke to her as to a very badly deaf, blind, dumb and mentally retarded 2 year old and all in dreadful NewLabourspeak...It was shameful. The way Lammy spoke to the RSL is exactly the same - patronising, waffling, full of buzz-words which New Labour invented. It was a disgraceful performance. But some years ago I spoke to someone in government about schools and books, and he- someone who really should have known better, could only bang on about how much oney Gordon ws giving to schools to buy computers. Nothing gets better.
Posted by: SUSAN HILL at June 16, 2006 8:15 PM