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March 4, 2010
Uncivil service
I had a message yesterday from someone who knows about these things advising me that people in the MLA, DCMS and LGA were 'briefing' councils against me and saying that they should not work with me. The person suggested that an FOI request to these bodies would reveal the evidence.
If you saw the BBC film "Inside Out West" on Monday evening you will have seen how the Hillingdon project is thriving. "This library had 300 visits each week, now it has 3,000" said Councillor Higgins, proudly, and rightly so. The project was initiated nearly 4 years ago and it has addressed successfully almost all the problems of public libraries around the country. And the people are very nice. Council and officers in Hillingdon and the staff in the libraries, have all done a wonderful job.
This is an example of the kind of work I do that the civil servants are trying to stop. I have no idea why. Instead of explaining themselves they pass sneaky messages like 7 year olds in the classroom. It has happened many times and been going on for years. I have often known it was happening, but only seen written down once this time last year when Roy Clare and his senior officers at the MLA were caught like naughty school boys and had to admit it and say sorry. That was shocking to see and I don't understand why they are still in their posts. Honourable people would have resigned.
By now we should have done 10 Hillingdon projects and the library service in councils around the country would be thriving and everybody would be wanting to give libraries funds, as Hillingdon council find themselves doing, instead of taking them away. They know how important they are to local communities, you only have to go in any day and see: there is no need for a Social Think Tank to report.
But instead of that we find highly paid officials 'briefing' councils not to get involved, and not to go on the same path on which Councillor Higgins dances his merry jig.
These people should be ashamed of themselves. There should be no place for them in our civil service. They should all be in jail. They aren't interested in public libraries, but only in their own careers. They are contemptible and if they want to brief against me in secret, like the senior MLA executives did last year in Swindon, then they deserve each others' company and nothing else. That will be horrible enough.
Posted by Perkins at March 4, 2010 8:30 AM
Comments
It has always bemused me that the above is the case. In Swindon we came up against impenetrable barriers when we wanted the Council to discuss the Coates Report. My Open Letter to the Secretary of State and the Culture Minister is on Alan Gibbons Blog. It expresses my frustration and that of Swindon residents, at the fact that we could have enjoyed what Hillingdon enjoys, but were prevented -- for reasons unknown. The MLA commissioned another consultant to do a very similar job as had already been done ! I saw the Hillingdon libraries for the first time very recently when making the Inside Out film. Hats off to that Council and its officers for implementing innovative ideas and for commissioning the right consultant to start them off on their successful journey. It is mean-spirited, in my view, that Mr Coates should be "briefed against" -- and incomprehensible. I do not like it. One must speak as one finds, as my Gran used to say -- and I find that there is too much nastiness in this game. Everyone must get on the SAME PAGE, stop playing games and help save libraries nationally. That is what we are here for, all of us, and we should do it NOW.
Posted by: Shirley Burnham at March 4, 2010 9:51 AM
Shirley
You are right. It is hard to persuade a normal person that this has been going on for years- but you have seen it happen, too. It is incredible and of the kind one used to associate with distant unpleasant regimes in other countries. All I have ever done is try to use my experience to help improve libraries, but the opposition, both from state officials and the profession has been both immense and underhand. As one of my sons said, when he saw it "But all you say is that libraries should have books in- how dangerous can you be?" It is that continuous prevention that has made me so cross sometimes, because it simply prevents libraries getting better.
Posted by: Perkins at March 4, 2010 11:03 AM
As Tim Coates' son says: 'all you say is that libraries should have books in - how dangerous can you be?'. The answer, clearly, is very dangerous indeed. Why? Because, like the boy in the tale of the emperor's new clothes, Tim says exactly what he sees, which is that libraries are getting rid of their books and that this is wrong. This is the awful truth that councils do not want to hear: it's something they have closed their minds to, listening instead to the blandishments of the MLA who whisper that it's just fine to be a library without books, in fact it's GOOD. Keep on telling the truth, Tim. It's the only way.
Posted by: Amanda Field at March 4, 2010 5:24 PM
This sort of nonsense really can't go unchallenged. What libraries are "getting rid of their books"?
Posted by: Apollo at March 7, 2010 11:32 PM