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Why obfuscate library reform plan with management-speak?
NATURALLY, Flick Rea, who runs the borough’s libraries, is a cheer-leader for the sweeping reforms, apparently, destined for this hallowed service.
An imaginative and reforming councillor of many years’ service, we would expect nothing less.
Sensitive to today’s consumerist culture, aware, in particular, to a decline in reading habits, Cllr Rea clearly wants to recreate a different type of library service that is more in keeping with the world as it is rather than simply reform the existing one at the fringes. In promoting the reforms, heralded by her second-in –command, Mike Clarke, she is setting forth with a loud trumpet blast.
She should be careful, however, that the pillars don’t collapse around those leading the charge for this momentous shake-up.
An analysis of the consultation paper – superficial though it is given its almost incomprehensible language – suggests that the pressing requirement to make economies at all costs could lead to the loss of stalwart services.
Danger signs hang over the future of the local history library in Holborn.
A beguiling argument is made that the present building is out-of-date and that a better and brighter future can be provided in a new complex.
The devil here, of course, is in the detail. We shall reserve judgment until facts, figures, plans and designs are marshalled to convince even the greatest sceptic.
It should be recognised that a great deal is at stake. It would be a tragedy if the archive – that has served the borough for decades – were to move to a smaller and inferior building.
And why move it anyway? Why not refurbish the existing site? Or is the driving motive the lure of selling a prestigious site in central London?
In the shake up, at least 14 jobs are to be lost but 127 are to be “recreated”. The Blairite catch-phrase of “flexibility” pops up which, presumably, means new multi-skilled jobs, but the consultation paper is short on detail here.
Just as it is when it says the whole programme will bring about a saving of more than £850,000 over two years.
The staff deserve more detail from the paper, as does the public whose taxes prop up the service.
As for the alien management-speak used in the paper – language often used by bureaucrats to conceal rather than to reveal – we wonder what Cllr Rea made of it?
A former actress and lover of plain, simple English surely she must bristle at the style of the narrative. Certainly, the public deserve better.
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