Which would you rather save – your local library or a County Hall paper-pusher?
What a curious double life I lead. Half the week I’m your disembodied commentator from the world of high finance — my anonymity protected, as I truffle for City gossip, by a portrait drawing that (I’m told) doesn’t look like me at all. For the other half, I’m one of the north of England’s most hyperactive citizens, blundering like Flashman from one battlefield of the cuts debate to the next.
Last week, for example, I was discussing library closures on Monday, police manpower reductions on Tuesday, the crunch in higher education on Wednesday, and doomsday scenarios for the arts on Thursday and Friday. The real impact of all this on community life is becoming daily more apparent, but what is most interesting to observe is how the level of public acceptance varies with the degree of honesty displayed.
The Arts Council, for example, seems to have kept its client base well informed and to have created a decently transparent process that will lead, next month, to the announcement of which arts companies have made it into the funded ‘national portfolio’, and which will be left to fend for themselves. Likewise our local police inspector, tasked with telling us that there is now a single constable and one uniformed ‘community support officer’ to cover our vast rural area, assured us he is doing his best, reminded us that we have remarkably low crime levels, and left us feeling reasonably content.
Elsewhere, the approach is less frank. Councils have sought to present library closures, of which there could be more than 400, as a fait accompli. But they have met a wall of protest and legal challenges, and their arithmetic is far from persuasive.
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