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January 27, 2008
The Observer names and shames Yinnon Ezra and Margaret Hodge! -- Is Hampshire really a New Labour Council?
Residents of Hampshire who thought they had voted for a Conservative Council are in for a shock as the Observer reveals their real roots are with the Labour party
Rachel Cooke writes this morning
Vandals at the library
I gather that AL Kennedy was in two minds about what she would say if she won the Costa book award: either she was going to mention Iraq, or she was going to talk about libraries. In the end, she spoke up for libraries, which was both brave (it's hardly the sexiest of subjects, or at least not for a black tie crowd of B-list celebs) and timely.
The new year was largely dominated by the controversy about the proposed Arts Council cuts, which meant that the latest news from our beleaguered libraries passed by almost unreported. So let me update you. At the end of December, Margaret Hodge, Minister for Culture, finally admitted that 40 libraries closed in 2007. In one way, this came as a relief: I was beginning to think that I was losing my mind. Last time I wrote about the dismantling of our libraries, Hodge simply denied the facts, boasting that 'there are 1.5 million more books in our libraries today than when Labour came to office in 1997' (the truth is that, as the government's own figures show, there are 20 million fewer books in libraries than in 1997). Mostly, though, it was just profoundly misery-inducing. Forty closures: that's getting pretty close to one every week.
A few days later, just to brighten my mood yet further, came the news that my pal Yinnon Ezra, head of leisure services at Hampshire County Council, and a man who believes that there is no place for fiction in libraries because 'most people buy books', had been awarded an MBE for his trouble. I doubt that Margaret Hodge, who appears to share some of Ezra's views, will bother to respond to Kennedy's impassioned words ('We're in danger of losing our stories,' she said). But should the Minister decide to do so, no doubt she'll treat her as she did me. She will accuse Kennedy, obliquely, of elitism, of longing for a return to 'the smell of Mansion polish and a tweedy librarian shushing anyone whose voice rises above a whisper'. Well, then let her. Kennedy is tough. She is also right. Hodge, as ever, is wrong.
What do you think? review@observer.co.uk
Posted by Perkins at January 27, 2008 8:49 AM