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Portia
Kensington-Hogg in New Cross Library 05/02/11:
Boys and girls, are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.
I’m here in order to tell you what you need according to my interests as
representative of New Cross Library’s possible non-future. I work writing
gruesome fairy tales for the thinktank Policy Ex-cess which has been
lauded as the most influential thinktank today in continuing to shape a
complete contempt for anyone who hasn’t been educated at Eton.
Our vision is that Library services can be rationalised and made profitable
for us through ‘enabling’ you to volunteer your livelihoods, i.e. take
redundancy. Thereby allowing the library to be housed in other local
businesses per an ethos of ‘outreach’, a vision your valiant community-
minded councillors have advocated. Indeed under Ed Vaizey’s astounding,
almost absurdly brilliant, scheme ‘The Future Libraries Programme’,
Lewisham is one of the hand-picked areas of England to be educated, in
Big Society fashion, as to how to dismantle its libraries for the benefit of
supermarkets, and various private companies. Indeed every time you may
visit a ‘library’ in our Big Society, henceforth you will be doing a charitable
deed, since books can now be liberated from the shelves and the wage-
labour of the librarian- surely the kind of sacrifice you should be making in
order to allow for the total ineptitude of government?
You may be wondering why a councillor is not stood here offering you
their vision of the future. Well, to be frank, even though councillor’s are
cushioned by a management cabal who are payed in total roughly the
same amount that will be saved by their pogrom of cuts, we cannot expect
Cllr Bell to go out of his way beyond simply making speeches that are
blatantly hypocritical and void of substance, can we?
Indeed if you refer to this table showing the salaries of some of the most
significant puppets in the council [Chief Executive:£192,000 per year;
Customer Service Director: £141,000 per year; Director for Children &
Young People: £141,000 per year; The Director for Community Services:
£135,000 per year; Director of Recourses: £138,000 per year. The Prime
Minister earns £142,500 per year – just to put these salaries in
perspective!1]
detail from Lewisham against cuts website> you can see quite clearly why
even more taxpayer’s money must be wasted on thinktanks, and any
lingering beliefs you had in the usefulness of having councillors at all is
summed up very neatly in cllr Paul Bell’s recent speech delivered at the
vote for cuts taken by Lewisham council this November, to quote:
‘To the public I say this: we are not the resistance that our community
needs as we are bound by rules, regulations and laws. Democracy does
not end and begin with elected politicians but within the heart and soul of
every member of the community.’
Hear, hear. Indeed, when we at Policy Ex-cess hear words such as these
we wring our hands in joy knowing our vision for the public will not be
called to account by any kind of truly democratic process. Furthermore,
such aspirational addresses to the people enable the prioritising of the
1
http://laca.org.uk/whats-being-cut/
interests of organisations such as Lewisham Homes, who in actually
owning the building within which the library is housed, should really
shoulder responsibility for its survival, (since one of the excuses for ridding
ourselves of the library is that the building is not suitable). But, in our
opinion, this is not the best use of community assets as will become ever
more clear for example, when the government begins liquidating
universities to the toxic benefit of the equity market after the model of
that towering and untainted democracy; the United States.
2
The full pdf detailing the effects of, and motives for, privitising universities can
be found at http://www.ucu.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=2296
entitlement, and may openly express the fact it is a privilege. Further, due
to the fees becoming so astronomical the notion of actual knowledge as a
public good can also be done away with, thus making it a lot easier for us
to do away with public libraries and not-for-profit schools.
Thank you so much for being here today, as has been repeatedly stated
by David Cameron we support the right to protest especially if it is done
quietly and to no affect, so I would finish by cautioning you not to make
too much of a spectacle of yourselves.