18 February (Part 1) - Reader’s right
Most days I get an email from a reader, sometimes more than one, but Teresa
O’Neill’s appointment to be Boris Johnson’s adviser has provoked quite a flurry.
The general theme is why are Bexley’s residents having to foot the bill for
our representative to swan around the capital working for the Mayor. It’s a good
question; I don’t know the answer but some of these correspondents say they are
going to start writing letters. A couple are commenting on O’Neill’s somewhat
suspicious reactions to the Ian Clement affair. We will have to await the outcome.
Another email was about libraries. There was an interesting news report in
last Monday’s Telegraph
about the government being prepared to step in if councils over-did the cuts, councillor Catterall please note. However my correspondent had a different take on library matters.
I feel I have blogged quite enough already for this week so I am going to give myself,
and you, a rest and merely publish what my correspondent said.
“In the days of yore the staffed counters for issuing/returning books and any
enquiries were located close by the library entrance/exit. How very sensible.
When they were remodelled some genius in the council decided that with computer
technology the customers could issue and return books to the system themselves
thereby enabling staff numbers to be reduced and the few that are left to sort
out queries could be located as far away from the entrance/exit as possible. Pure
genius! (Bexleyheath, Erith, and Blackfen are examples of this and there could be others.)
The consequence is as anyone with an iota of common sense
could have foreseen, that the magazines and newspapers are walked out the
library doors almost as soon as they are put out. Being retired I used to enjoy
browsing the magazines and newspapers but nowadays the only ones available seem
to be ethnic ones which very few can understand. How many books and other
stock goes missing I wonder because there is no staff presence near the exits?
I would not be surprised if it is a lot. All it would take to restore common sense at
Bexleyheath library for example would be to put the entrance back to the corner
where it used to be. There would then be no need for the ramp/steps as at
present since the entrance would already be on the correct level for disabled
access. I wonder if the council genius who decided that the entrance/exit should
be moved from its previous excellent location has now left the council employ so
that the original location could be reinstated? This is how it seems to work
with crazy council inflicted so called traffic management or calming schemes viz.
wait until the initiator moves on then
quietly put back arrangements as they
were. How much the whole farce costs is irrelevant of course.”
Thanks Les. Nice one. I hope you have started a trend. Quickest blog
production ever.