Cardiff Library Service
This is the text of my email to various Cardiff councillors, copied to the Western Mail, about the proposed cuts to the city's library service. If anyone's interested, there's a petition at https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/save-cardiff-library-service and the email addresses to contact are: newsdesk@walesonline.co.uk (Western Mail), Phil.Bale@Cardiff.gov.uk (leader of the council), Sue.Lent@Cardiff.gov.uk (deputy) and Peter.Bradbury@Cardiff.gov.uk (libraries portfolio)
Dear Councillors
I am aware that all councils are being starved of cash by central government and therefore cannot provide the level of public service they should and would wish to provide. I have considerable sympathy for the difficult decisions they have to make.
However, it was a wise man who observed that if you think educating people is expensive, you should see what ignorance costs. Giving up another two floors of the central library, losing a great deal of stock in the process, and closing seven branch libraries is no way to maintain Cardiff's status as a cultural capital. It isn't simply a matter of books, vital though those are. The computing facilities are also extremely important to those who cannot afford to be online at home, while the social benefits for older folk of coming together to read newspapers and magazines can actually be a saving in the long run, if it helps them continue in the community.
I am a Welsh writer, publishing with a Welsh house, and, insofar as I identify with any locality, it would be Cardiff, where I wrote most of my books. Though I no longer live in Cardiff, my son's family does (indeed my daughter-in-law is a librarian by training) and I myself lived in Canton for decades. The Carnegie library there was once set on fire by vandals and much stock was lost (by happy chance, Dante's Inferno escaped as I had it out on loan at the time). I published a poem about the incident, hoping the perpetrators would end up in hell, but I didn't realise, at the time, that the council itself might prove the more damaging vandal. As both a Welsh writer and a reader, I would ask you to reconsider whether such sweeping cuts are really unavoidable.
Dear Councillors
I am aware that all councils are being starved of cash by central government and therefore cannot provide the level of public service they should and would wish to provide. I have considerable sympathy for the difficult decisions they have to make.
However, it was a wise man who observed that if you think educating people is expensive, you should see what ignorance costs. Giving up another two floors of the central library, losing a great deal of stock in the process, and closing seven branch libraries is no way to maintain Cardiff's status as a cultural capital. It isn't simply a matter of books, vital though those are. The computing facilities are also extremely important to those who cannot afford to be online at home, while the social benefits for older folk of coming together to read newspapers and magazines can actually be a saving in the long run, if it helps them continue in the community.
I am a Welsh writer, publishing with a Welsh house, and, insofar as I identify with any locality, it would be Cardiff, where I wrote most of my books. Though I no longer live in Cardiff, my son's family does (indeed my daughter-in-law is a librarian by training) and I myself lived in Canton for decades. The Carnegie library there was once set on fire by vandals and much stock was lost (by happy chance, Dante's Inferno escaped as I had it out on loan at the time). I published a poem about the incident, hoping the perpetrators would end up in hell, but I didn't realise, at the time, that the council itself might prove the more damaging vandal. As both a Welsh writer and a reader, I would ask you to reconsider whether such sweeping cuts are really unavoidable.