Following on the widespread condemnation by campaigners and authors the Brent and Kilburn Times LINK added its powerful voice yesterday to criticisms of Brent Council's clandestine raid on Kensal Rise Library:
In a hard-hitting editorial they state:
In a withering coda they conclude:
In a hard-hitting editorial they state:
The night raid was a shameful episode, one that will win the council no friends, either within or without the borough. It is indeed difficult to imagine councillors and officers planning so nefarious an act: did they do so behind closed doors, at dead of light, speaking only in whispers as they plotted?Focusing on the fact that the new leader of Brent Council, Muhammed Butt, claims he did not know about the raid they say:
His embarrassment must be profound, since just a few days earlier he had promised that the library's books would remain in place for the time being. Perhaps it is time for him to exert his newly-won authority and hold someone accountable for this brazen breach of trust, before he is made to look like a fool again.HEAR! HEAR!
In a withering coda they conclude:
Sadly, it seems futile to add that the council's reputation has been damaged. When it comes to the borough's libraries, Brent seems content to behave in a way that leaves it with no reputation to preserve.In it heartening to have a local newspaper which stands in solidarity with the community against a council that attacks those it was elected to serve.
I'm not sure what comes into ordinary people's minds when they read newspaper a headline like "Council's 2am raid on a library". For me several past school history thoughts come into my mind: King Henry 8th dissolution of the monasteries - picks and choose which ones you want to destroy without the people having a say. The Nazis burning of the books in the 1930's. Stalinist Russia - you vote for council leaders, but the voting paper is not worth the paper it’s written on, why bother. And my final thought of how greedy Margaret Thatcher’s 1980’s poll tax helped to destroy or reduce in size many fine reference libraries in London. And recently I read that something like 2000 bookshops have closed. Are libraries going the same way as past gas, electric, and other public service shops did, on to the Internet. Will in future all books will be linked to the letter ‘e’. Your future library will simply become a list of e-books on handheld tablet. In future there will no longer be regular social contacts with real people in environments like libraries. Most of your future ‘friends’ you will not meet in person, but via the Internet. Already you hear people saying I have a hundreds ‘friends’ but never met in person. In the distant future you will not know if a ‘friend’ is real or an Android. Social places like libraries will never exist again once they are lost.
ReplyDelete