The Good Library Blog

FIRST STEPS
Brilliant! He says: "Libraries are about books. A library without books – lots of books – is not a library."
But even Tory councils, like Croydon, balk at having 6 or 7-high shelving to actually make room for them!
Why? Because they fear providing library steps for shorter readers could lead to "compensation-culture" claims.
I hope Ed Vaizey's new government can indemnify such timid councils, and let us all have access to the dangers of more books and ideas.

Vaizey's speech seemed like dross to me. And backward looking. The references to Charter are the language of 20 years ago, and the ‘inspections’ bit is a throwback to the days of , for example, the attitudes of school inspectors where the pupils, or as here, the members, are essentially passive recipients of government policy.

All of which is pretty much par for the course from a shadow cabinet packed with Old Etonians, educated to the assumption of power, although Vaizey himself went to St Pauls. They usually put themselves across authoritatively, but in truth have no real ideas. His views are just centralist, which is a major part of the problem. And a national library card is an irrelevance, a vehicle to enable additional charging for ‘book distance travelled’.

It’s only a relatively short time since these guys and their affluent followers, not a poor person in sight, were hurrahing themselves into oblivion at their party conference …, in the confident assumption that they would soon just waft into power come the next election.

For me, the worrying thing is that so few people, from, political journalists all the way through to, as here, the lovers of libraries put this would-be government under so litle scrutiny.