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September 28, 2009
DCMS sinks to a new Low !
Like a fly on the inside of the window, nothing is more calculated to spoil a good cat's sleep than a press release from the DCMS, or the chums at the MLA, or even the interplanetary SCL on a Sunday afternoon.
Can you believe that Lady Hodge (formerly Mrs Mansion Polish) has announced the invention of a new system to send library books in the post in competition to Amazon ? Most councils already offer such a service and many have volunteers who do the job even more helpfully and cheaply than the postman. But evidently the highly paid Lord Snootys in the Department of Common Sense, forgot to tell Mrs Mansion Polish this. Nor, I suppose did they tell her about the billions of pounds and the number of years it took to make Amazon work properly- or of the number of large commercial operations that have sunk without trace trying to compete with it. I don't suppose they know about those things, nor care, so long as they have endless access to the public purse. Her pronouncements smack painfully of policy devised at a dinner party in Islington and make us wonder whatever happened to the Labour party of the people.
Perkins happens to know that the MLA (Bless!) have spent more than a year and many hundreds of pound notes trying to work out whether this service was needed and how it could work. One has to hope that their failure to report answers to these questions meant that they might stem the tide of wasted money... but no! It goes on regardless of recessions or poverty of the poor taxpayer.
Into the soup then steps Tony Durcan who tells us, in a thousand press releases, that the SCL (The Society for Closing Libraries) has asked libraries to allow people to come into their buildings even if they don't live in the area. He tells us on The Today programme, evading questions about why the library profession don't campaign to save libraries, that this is not a new idea, it has always been the case that libraries are free to all and that if you go on holiday, the local library will be pleased to look after you and lend you some books, as long as you bring them back. It is not news at all. So what were his press releases for? (and who paid for them?)
However Mike Rosen, who is an old friend of Perkins, was much more interesting and reminded the nation that libraries are where children (and adults) can get books for nothing. He's good-- and would make a decent Chair of the MLA, in our view, from the sofa.
It's conference week this week, so we have to expect more of the same, I'm afraid.
Posted by Perkins at September 28, 2009 3:34 PM
Comments
I'm sure Lady Hodge has fond memories of her time as leader of Islington Council, not so sure library workers will though, she demonstrated even in those early years an alarming capacity to put personal ambition at the forefront of all her thought processes. Mind you the Liberal Democrats are now carrying on the tradition with some style with a chief executive appointed on £210,000 per year, now proposing substantial cuts in libraries for 2010
The dinner parties will still go on in leafy Barnsbury, and that's probably where the future, such as it is of Islington;s Library service is being decided right now
Posted by: Paul Wycliffe at October 10, 2009 7:48 PM