London Diary: Libraries collapsing, intolerant Brexiteers, moral code for writers and more from UK

Bye, bye libraries

Britain’s once-famed public library system is on the brink of collapse because of a crippling financial crisis brought on by deep cuts to government funding. Many libraries have already closed down, others are struggling on shrinking budgets —buying fewer new books, laying off staff and cutting down services.

Local Borough councils which run libraries have been starved of funds as part of the government’s decade-long austerity drive following the 2008 financial crash. Library budgets have lost more than £300 million since the turn of the decade, 700 libraries have shut down, 1,500 people have lost their jobs.

The pressure has begun to tell even on wealthy councils like the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. I’ve noticed a steady decline in services at its libraries. Their purchase budget has been slashed drastically restricting so they now buy only essential books. Whereas once you could put in a request for a new title and 99 per cent of the times they would order it for you. You can still make a request but friendly librarians let you understand that it’s a long shot.

The situation is many times worse in poorer areas. In some places, staff have been cut to the bone and residents are volunteering to help run library services. More than 30,000 people, including JK Rowling and a string of other high-profile writers, have signed a petition urging the government to “ring-fence” library funding. Local “Save our Library” campaigns have sprouted in many places and some have succeeded in stopping immediate closures, but the wolf remains very much at the door and doesn’t look like going anywhere soon.

Thin-skinned Brexiteers

Many Brexiteers have got their knickers in a twist over an innocuous tongue-in-cheek HSBC Banking Group advertisement highlighting the benefits of global cultural influences on Britain, and declaring that “we are not an island”. They have accused it of indulging in “anti-Brexit propaganda” and “corporate claptrap”.

The ad says: “We are not an island. We are a Colombian coffee drinking, American movie watching...Korean tablet tapping...tikka masala eating wonderful little lump of land in the middle of the sea. We are part of something far far bigger.”

Tim Montgomerie, a high-profile hard Brexiteer, took a swipe at the bank’s allegedly dubious global practices, tweeting : “We are an island actually — full of villages and towns your bank deserted; of cleaners you underpaid; and of money laundering and other laws you bent. #Brexit etc was a response to the economy you helped decimate. Thanks for the lecture but we’ll manage without it.”

A bright spark from the notoriously xenophobic United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) ranted: “What nauseating corporate claptrap is this? A bank spewing out this sub-literate crap about who and what we are. You are about one thing, and one thing only: money. Oh, and for accuracy’s sake: we are an island.”

Another said: “I despise @HSBC’s constant anti-British and pro-globalism/pro-internationalism propaganda… Their anti-patriotic hatred for Britain is barely disguised.”

Anti-patriotic? For praising Britain’s openness and inclusiveness?

Now, a moral code for writers

Writers in India, beware if your publisher is owned by an American or British company: you may soon have to sign a so-called “morality clause” giving the publisher right to terminate your contract if at some point their PR boys don’t like your public conduct.

Several American publishers and their British subsidiaries have already introduced the clause in their contracts as an insurance against bad publicity in case a writer behaves badly: a fallout of the #MeToo movement and increasing political correctness.

Last year, Simon & Schuster dropped a book by right-wing journalist Milo Yiannopoulos, over a controversial statement about gay sex. Writers and literary agents have protested saying such clauses are “antithetical to creative life”, as Jonny Geller, chairman of the literary agency Curtis Brown, put it.

They should be restricted to controversy-prone celebrities whose books sold solely on the strength of their celebrity status and adverse publicity was likely to affect their sales. It was unfair to impose them on novelists and historians whose works sold for their literary merit alone.

“It’s something we’ve been resisting because they’re antithetical to creative life,” he told The Times. A publisher didn’t have the right to destroy someone’s career on the basis of social media gossip.

Indeed.

Judges want justice

British judges have complained of “abysmal” working conditions: courtrooms “not fit for purpose”, a “failing” IT system, and a lack of administrative support forcing them to do their own photocopying. Some courts don’t even have canteen facilities and judges have “to eat lunch out of Tupperware boxes”, according to researchers at Cambridge University.

And we thought that such conditions were a Third World monopoly.

And, lastly

Oxford University has been forced to open up a women-only fellowship to men to comply with the Equality Act which bars gender discrimination. Set up in the 1930’s by British archaeologist David Randall-MacIver in memory of his wife Joanna Randall–MacIver, it funds women’s studies in fine arts, music and literature. Women have described it as a “male grab” in an already male-dominated university.