Everything came together perfectly today for the first Friern Barnet People's Library. The weather was great, there was a genuinely wide choice of books, there was an impressive turnout, and we even achieved a one-week-on reunion of the #OccupyFB crew.
I arrived fairly late after catching two 251s (having to change at Whetstone). I was wearing my best Barnet blue flasher's mac, which you can see in rather too many of the photographs from the event (lots of people have pictures, e.g., the Pinkham Way Incinerator blog).
I didn't take my camera for once. It was a choice of heavy camera or heavy book - Capital vol. 1 by Karl Marx (I took something a little lighter, in all senses of the word, to donate to the library).
I swapped my donated book for the 1991 edition of a book called How the City of London Works. It probably doesn't work in quite the same way any more, but it's high time I found out something about it.
After all, it's the recklessness of some s**tbags in the City with their weird financial "products" that caused the almost complete crash of the banking system in 2008 that necessitated the banks bailout that pushed up the national deficit that provided the Tories (and their lickspittle Lib Dem lackeys) with the pretext for privatising everything in sight and savaging our public services that led to us being on Friern Barnet green at all... outside the now closed Friern Barnet Library.
The Library was nicely adorned on the outside by campaigners but we still would have preferred to be inside. The Councillors' surgery has had to move to take place in the Royal British Legion building nearby. So much for the library not being a community hub in the eyes of the Cabinet that has closed it!
(Thanks too today to the Legion for providing free tea.)
There was such a great gathering of people, we were able to swap ideas for the next steps in various campaigns. It really felt like a great coming together today of the various strands of discontent in the borough.
The "people's library" was the inspiration of Barnet Eye blogger Roger Tichborne. Lots of people pulled it together today, including the still determined Save Friern Barnet Library group. (They have a new petition on the Barnet Council website: please go and sign it and ask others to sign too.)
Robert Rams, Barnet bullshitter extraordinaire
Thank you to Mr Reasonable this evening for alerting us to the next full meeting of Barnet council this coming Tuesday, 17 April.
The business includes questions to Cabinet and Leader. The Labour group has asked some questions of Robert Rams, Cabinet member with responsibility for libraries including the decision to close Friern Barnet Library.
Rams' replies are truly staggering. He as good as admits he has never had any worked-up plan for his much vaunted "landmark library" at the Artsdepot to replace the closed Friern Barnet library. He is only now getting around to holding meetings about it with the Artsdepot. The funding for any future library will rely on the council persuading Arts Council England to stump up for it - how likely is any of this?
Please take the trouble to look at the questions and answers in the official document which you can acess via this page.
The questions of most interest are 50, 51, 58 and 59. Rams' answers to these questions are so bad that they deserve a blogstory all their own but time is pressing.
The Friern Barnet People's Library will run again next week, Saturday 21 April, 11am-1pm, at Friern Barnet Library. Don't miss it!
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6 comments:
"After all, it's the recklessness of some s**tbags in the City with their weird financial "products" that caused the almost complete crash of the banking system in 2008 that necessitated the banks bailout that pushed up the national deficit that provided the Tories (and their lickspittle Lib Dem lackeys) with the pretext for privatising everything in sight and savaging our public services that led to us being on Friern Barnet green at all... outside the now closed Friern Barnet Library."
Well done, Vicki, never let irritating facts get in the way of a good rant!
Seems a reasonable, if simplified, desciption to me.
Near-worthless US mortgages were chopped up, reassembled, and pronounced "AAA" quality by the ratings agencies. The rest is history.
DD: What is your explanation?
Baarnett, you need to ask who it was who encouraged America to produce worthless mortgages on an industrial scale?
That's intriguing, DD. Who did? I thought some banks saw a chance for some business and took it. Dodgy business, because one day those debts would have to be called in.
Not just people selling sub-prime mortgages in the US, however. The whole banking industry went on a bit of a binge of offering credit. (Of course, people took it.)
I remember my own bank NatWest having posters in the window advertising loans saying "Why wait? Have it now!" I thought that was pretty disgraceful at the time, and now, as a taxpayer who also has to do with fewer public services, I'm paying for it! We all are (well, most of us!).
And I remember I received junk mail offering me a new credit card, where approval was essentailly "assumed".
The only choice I had to make on the form was which PICTURE I wanted on the credit card, and I was helpfully supplied with a set of sickers of the choices. All I had to do was peel off the desired one, and stick it to the form.
I thought at the time: "This is going to end badly!" and wrong I was not.
"That's intriguing, DD. Who did?"
It began in the Clinton era when Left-wing agitators like Barnie Frank insisted that government-run insitutions like 'Fanny Mae' and 'Freddie Mac' virtually give away mortgages to impoverished ethnic minorities. These hopeless and worthless 'mortgages' inflated the cost of property and had to be laid off to someone else in order to replenish the funds at 'FM' and 'FM'. These were bundled up and passed round banking circles like a game of 'Pass the Parcel'. It was a mad Ponzi scheme and everyone knew it would end badly - but remember - it was the likes of Barney Frank and his socialist cohorts who began it all in typical left-wing fashion by being generous to a fault with OPM (Other People's Money) and howling in outrage at anyone who opposed them.
So no change, really!
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