Library Cutbacks

So £735,000 is about to be cut from libraries across the region. Can we really be surprised, given we have just had an election in Newcastle? What is shocking is the swiftness of the attacks on this type of public service, and one on an already minimal existence.
   What's really disgraceful, is that this, I feel, is an attack on a lifestyle. I must surely not be the only person out there who, with excited anticipation, visited a local library growing up with a sense of wonder at all those books to borrow - for free! Now that possibility for kids, their parents, or both, is being eroded to a degree that people just won't bother going in the first place.
You may think this is being overly dramatic - that library services will continue in some form; they no doubt will, but by removing a desire to visit a library on a regular basis, what motivation is there for kids to get into reading in a way that remains with them their whole lives? And when you consider that Stoke-on-Trent (the biggest cuts culprit) doesn't exactly have a reputation for a high level of literacy, the council appear to have shot themselves in the foot. How can they hope to 'market' themselves as a thriving city when the vast majority of its population are the ones to suffer?
   These draconian cuts are getting more and more personal. And once more the working-classes are the ones paying for them - not just financially but socially and ideologically. It all comes back to holding down the prospects of ordinary working people whose avenues for learning are constantly shrinking.
  Welcome back Labour. Can you spell b*****ds?

Wednesday · 7:00pm - 10:00pm
Location
Hope Centre, Hanley

Come down to the start of the fight back against the CON DEM cuts! Not a day passes by without Cameron and Co announcing a fresh wave of cuts in our jobs, services and benefits, the harshest in living memory.The only way we are going to stand a chance against these cuts is to build a huge campaign involving trade unions and communities to resist these cuts....organised by North Staffs Trades Union Council

Speakers TBA

I should be filming this event too.

UK Film Council Abolished.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-10761225

The latest round of Con-Dem cuts is hardly surprising. The Tories and Arts and Media are terms that don't seem to go together. The worst aspect of this is we may now find ourselves in a similar situation to the 1980s. "The British Are Coming" proclaimed the press after the Oscar success of Chariots of Fire. This was not to be in the following years, and one can only wonder what output us Brits could have produced in the decade of excess. Instead the 'classic' films were few and far between. The seminal works in the 80s included My Beautiful Launderette and Withnail and I. Yet films such as these were only made with the assistance of Channel 4 and Handmade Films. The Thatcher Government was also notoriously unsupportive of the industry.

It is also worth noting that Labour set this council up in the 90s. It is also worth noting, despite the failure of Labour in every other area of society, that some of the most creative and successful British films emerged in this period, as well as the success of distributors such as Polygram, who even made inroads in the American market having worked with the Coen Brothers, (the Big Lebowski) Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects) and invested in talent like Danny Boyle for example. Polygram's and UK Film Council chairman Tim Bevan called the announcement a "bad decision". No truer words were said.

Bad PR.

So, plenty of cuts already announced with more on the way in the 'review'. Yet no sign of proportional representation. Mr Clegg you are a whore.