Let's all work together on this.

I am glad that Nic Newman has set up this blog. Everybody who is angry about the announced library closures must communicate and work together.

The closures are crazy because public libraries cost so little as a percentage of local government spending. Closing all twenty libraries is only supposed to save £2 million over a period of five years. That is ridiculous. Things like extra traffic lights along the London Road and other major roads have cost hundreds of thousands of pounds already. I am told that the legal expenses of the bus-gate court case were fifty thousand pounds! Compare that to the petty amounts saved by closing a library.

I think that the same savings could be made by reducing some inflated public sector salaries and cutting unnecessary jobs as advisor on this or that woolly issue. Do we, for instance, need a local community "manager" in Headington? How much is she paid? Didn't we always manage very well without her before the job was set up?

Cut things like that and we CAN afford a library.

I have put a petition to save Bury Knowle Library (as it alwasy used to be called) on the County Council's own website. This is essential as they have a statutory obligation to investigate any complaint submitted by a certain number of people using that petition form.