You'd have to be mad to close Friern Barnet library

There's a good piece in the Independent today - "Closing libraries? Now that's crazy" - by writer Boyd Tonkin who grew up using Friern Barnet library. He attended the event held last Saturday to mark National Libraries Day.

He talks about the contrast between the small library built in 1934 and the scary former asylum nearby:

I had half-forgotten just how close it stands to the gates of the stupendous edifice now known as "Princess Park Manor". Opened in 1851 as the Second Middlesex County Pauper Asylum, boasting the longest corridor in Europe under its fine Italianate dome, this was the dreaded Colney Hatch – a blood-freezing byword for the miseries of mental illness for generations of north Londoners.

...Now the 300-odd converted apartments of "Princess Park Manor" offer, the developers say, "a luxurious living link with the glories of Victorian England". A four-bedroomed penthouse will cost you £1,250,000.

Tonkin doesn't say so explicitly but the thought is implied. Isn't it mad that a society rich enough for some to enjoy accommodation such as that at Princess Park Manor can't afford a small library in the middle of Friern Barnet? It's not only mad, it's nonsense! We can afford it!

Do YOU trust the private sector? Or, the Astonishing story of Princess Park Manor's illegal East Wing

There's an astonishing story here of a property developer, Comer Group, completely flouting planning permission, to put 83 flats into an old building when it said it would put 64 in. And getting away with it, eventually, after a long, legal battle with Barnet council, and on pain of making a pay-off of £4 million - "towards affordable homes", the headline on the article says.

It really makes you despise the private sector, who are, after all, in most things only for the money and not for the good they might do.

The inhabitants who have been trying to enjoy their "luxury" rabbit hutches for the past few years while the development was in legal limbo - all but one of them - finally come out of the affair unscathed, at least.

P.S. I think the offending development is featured here on the front page of the Comer Homes website!

P.P.S. They're not short of a bob or two, are Brian and Luke Comer, who set up Comer Group. They were 1,203 on the Sunday Times rich list in 2009.