The Scandal Of UK Library Mismanagement

[reggie]

I have copied this from my blog at the suburban pirate.

The UK has just recovered from a festival of resistance to library cuts . With protests all around the country, library lovers have been making a well justified ?fuss and noise to try and save their local library.

The Suburban Pirate now has evidence that there has been a scandal of mismanagement in the library system that overshadows the cuts made to library budgets.

The Guardian has proved to be a firm ally to library lovers along with campaigners such as Alan Gibbons and Facebook pressure page Voices for the Library and Fight4libraries. It is clear now that libraries themselves have not been in safe hands and that our fire has been misdirected.

The scandal ?comes ?to light in the form a mild mannered man talking in a set of videos on youtube.

The videos show that we have all been sold down the river by mismanagement of our libraries and this is a national scandal.

In this set of videos, Tim Coates a former head of Waterstones, carefully ?and openly explains how millions are being wasted on so called "back office" costs. These costs comprise a massive proportion of the library budget that is available to councils. The money wasted in this way overshadows the ?budget cuts that are currently being imposed.

What were the councils doing? How could they stand by as they allowed such vast sums to be wasted and to propose cuts in services when alternatives were a phone call away in the form of the good advice from people like Tim Coates?

 

[Scribe]

There's a sit-in at New Cross Library tonight. The masses with overdue books wait with bated breath...