We are all in it together!

Gold rush helps hedge funds bounce back‎
"The hedge fund industry, heavily criticised for gambling on the collapse of some banks in 2008, will end up the year with $2.4tn (£1.54tn) of assets under management, after adding a net $79.5bn during the past 11 months, according to HFN, a trade publication." Guardian 29/12/10

• About 2,500 charities that provide welfare services in Greater Manchester – around a quarter of all voluntary groups in the area – could go bust because of the cuts, according to estimates by the Greater Manchester Centre for Voluntary Organisation.


• A quarter of charities in the north-east of England which depend at least partially on public funding will go bust in the next 12 months, according to research by Voluntary Organisations Network North East. It says that while demand for services has rocketed, 64% of charities surveyed say they will be forced to close services.
• A third of charities nationally that receive state cash say they will have to reduce the level of services they provide, while over a quarter expect to make staff redundant, a survey by the Charity Finance Directors Group, consultants PWC and the Institute of Fundraising found.

All Hail the Big Society!!!

Westmoreland Road Flea Market - A Eulogy!

Between East Street Market and Albany Road SE17, lies Westmoreland Road. Famous for its 'pie and mash' shop, opened in 1914 by W J Arment & Son and up untill last year its Flea Market.
Visiting Westmoreland Road Flea Market was like stepping back into victorian times, a raggle taggle bunch of people selling a raggle taggle bunch of goods. Old clothes, bits of crockery, dubious looking electrical items, well thumbed books etc
Now its gone but the memory still lingers! http://www.soundsurvey.org.uk/index.php/survey/soundmaps/more/37/35/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mal1/3795705591/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mal1/3795707693/

Humbug! (or Happy Christmas from a self serving, hypocritical liar!)

At the last count 365 libraries closed or closing, redundancies galore and a full out ideological attack on the public sector, unions and the welfare state!
But at least we know that some families will be safe and warm this winter!

Do you realy want to volunteer to run a Library?

In the last few days i have dealt with aggressive and abusive library users, handled a complaint of harassment from a young woman, told numerous students to keep their voices down, told numerous users to turn their mobile phones off, split two men who were fighting over a newspaper, dealt with two potentially hazardous health and safety issues, unlocked a user from the public toilet, answered a phone enquiry from a woman in Sydney about florists in the Finsbury Park area, dealt with an enquiry about the law relating to child abuse etc etc etc
I regularly work from 9am to 8pm and every other Saturday.
Do you really want to do all this for no pay?

Email to the American Library Association

I thought that your members, and American Librarians as a whole, might be interested to know what is going on across the water?


The UK Public Library Service is under attack, 350+ libraries have either closed or are under threat of closure, this figure is expected to rise to 600-1000 before the end of 2011. Local Authorities are also considering running libraries with volunteers or handing them over to Trusts. The profession has been very slow in building a defence and the real thrust has come from library users and campaigners.

These cuts are due to UK Government cuts in Local Authority Funding and are also seen by many to be an ideoligical attack!

for more information see;

http://publiclibrariesnews.blogspot.com/

http://alangibbons.net/

http://www.goodlibraryguide.com/blog/

Good Honest Cafes!

I haven't posted a breakfast review for a while and since it says that this blog is about 'breakfasts, libraries and london' I'd better do one!

The Workman's Inn Cafe, 147 Blackstock Road, Finsbury Park - nothing to look at but does good, cheap and honest food. I used to work in the library around the corner, until they closed it down (it's not a new thing!), and frequented this cafe some 15 years ago.

Mushroom omelette, chips, beans, 2 slice and a tea = £4.40. Served on a large oval plate, they didn't have to use this device to make the portion look big it was big!

Cafe Delight, 351 Green Lanes, N4 - a welcoming, bright and clean cafe with a very friendly chef/owner. I reckon that this is the best cafe in the area and i use it regularly.

Mushroom omelette, chips, beans, 2 slice and a tea = £4.90. One of the best mushroom omelettes i have tasted in a cafe! And i hear you say "What can go wrong with a mushroom omelette?", well let me tell you i have had some stinkers!

CILIP and the Big Society!

For the last few months i have been reading with increasing anger and amazement both the 'Public Library Journal' and the 'Library + Information Gazette'.
Article after article has been published on how to manage volunteers and how to 'do more with less'.
Library staff are fighting for their jobs and trying to keep libraries open and our main professional body, CILIP, is telling us how to manage volunteers!!!
There seems to be a cowardly acceptance of the staus quo, it's pathetic!
Would the BMA, RCN or the NUT undermine their professions in such a manner?

Correlation and Causation!

The government decides not to spend money on the annual marketing campaign to persuade people to have the flu vaccine, the number of people taking the vaccine drops and the number of reported cases rises! Coincidence?

Bullying tactics in Gloucestershire (or "all's not fair in love and war")

Email sent to Chief Exec and Asst Head of Library Services

"As a UNISON member and Librarian I am emailing you to express my anger and disgust at the bullying tactics being used against Gloucestershire Library Staff in order to shut them up about cuts and library closures. I believe that staff are being forced to ‘register an interest’ if they are a member of a group campaigning against the cuts. These are committed and professional staff who are willing to fight to save public libraries for the good of their communities and the nation as a whole, they should not be treated in this manner.


Your authority has a statutory duty under the 1964 Act to provide a ‘comprehensive and efficient’ library service, please do your duty and dont close any libraries."






.

Public Libraries and Austerity!

Whilst library staff were being told of redundancies and library users were being told about closures, the great and the good of the library world were discussing 'What future for public libraries in the age of austerity?' at the The Public Library Authorities Conference 2010 in Leeds.

Roy Clare, the chief exec of the now soon to be defunct MLA was a guest speaker, this is the man who praises councils for having 'political courage' when they close libraries.
Anyway they all appeared to have a jolly good time with a dinner on the first night, a black tie dinner on the 2nd and a lunch on the last day, not very 'austere'!

Irish Banks

The Irish Government has threatened the Allied Irish Bank that it will withdraw state financial support if it pays its staff bonuses of up to £34m, and guess what the bank has backed down saying
"Previously the Board had received strong legal advice that it was obliged to pay these bonuses. However, the letter from the Minister conveys a decision by him to legislate which overtakes this obligation."
"The Board of AIB very much welcomes the actions of the Minister and is relieved to be in a position not to pay these bonuses."

Surely this is what our government should be saying to the banks and the City, ah! but hold on silly me! there are vested interests afoot!!

Government too poor to print Poverty Report!

The Government has decided not to make Frank Field's Poverty Report available in print form, when questioned by a leading information professional a Cabinet office spokesperson said
"We were hoping not to produce hard copies of the Frank Field Review report because they are expensive and would need to be paid for out of public funds. Is it possible for you to allow your customers to read it on-line?"
This is a growing trend, a multitude of official documents are now only available online.
Are all the public online, are they all able and willing to go online and have they all got the money required to print all, or sections, of the report?

"Lies, Damned lies and Lewisham" (my apologies to Mark Twain!)

Lewisham Council has been threatening to close six of its libraries, to save money they say! Library users in the borough have mounted a vigorous campaign and legal challenge to stop them doing so.
 Now they have announced that they are to join the 'London Libraries Consortium', a grouping of 12 library authorities who offer access to over a 100 libraries in the capital and most importantly shared costs, but in order to do this they must change their library management IT system, at a cost of possibly 100's of thousands of pounds! Were has this money miraculously appeared from?

Money and war! (or thank god for Radio 4)

I know that Radio 4 can sometimes come across as very middle-class, twee and smug but it also one of the only remaining places left were intelligent conversation can still be found.

Heard an interesting piece this morning about the 'Malayan Emergency', a guerrilla war fought between Commonwealth armed forces and the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA), the military arm of the Malayan Communist Party, from 1948 to 1960. I t is widely believed that the reason it was called an 'emergency' and not a 'war', which it clearly was, was that the rubber plantations and tin mining industries had pushed for the use of the term "emergency" since their losses would not have been covered by Lloyd's insurers if it had been termed a war.
 
Capitalism in all its glory!

A brilliant condemnation of the current zeitgeist in public library thinking!

"The neoliberal mind-set across all three main political parties is obsessed with the mythology of choice. We are told that public libraries need to be more commercial in their look and feel because people can choose to use the same or similar services elsewhere. The mantra is that the market is all, and the market in access to knowledge means people will choose to go elsewhere if the public library does not give them what they want.


Except of course we know that the concept of choice in relation to the core services public libraries provide is complete tripe. Yet this has been the modus operandi for public librarians for over a decade. Services have been tweaked, added, or removed based on the fear that public libraries must compete with the choices people have for their leisure time. Have those evangelists for mediocrity any idea at all of why public libraries exist in the first place?"
see http://www.voicesforthelibrary.org.uk/wordpress/?p=736#comment-528 for full article and comments

What a shame! (or 1966 and all that!)

"I'ts not coming home, I'ts not coming home, Football's not coming home"

It's good to see that Cameron has got his priorities sorted out, we are in the grip of the worst recession since the 1930's and the 'Three Stoooges' are off on a beano with some FIFA officials!

Anyway whats 15 million quid amongst friends?

The barbarians have breached the gates!

The wholesale destruction of the UK Public Library Service has begun in earnest, 240 libraries under threat or already closed. Many more being handed over to volunteers. Thousands of library staff at risk of losing their jobs.
The 1964 Act stating that authorities have a statutory duty to provide an "efficient and comprehensive" service has been pushed aside. The MLA appears to be in favour of library cuts and CILIP, SCL and the profession as a whole have been conspicuously quiet!
Hundreds of thousands of pounds have been spent on the London Libraries Change Programme, the Future Libraries Programme, consultants and a multitude of reports and research documents, a complete and utter waste of time and money!
Recent research published by the MLA miraculously finds that the majority of library users value the service and want books!!!! Library users, campaigners and staff (well some of them!) have been saying this for years but were never listened to, instead they have diversified and diluted the service so much it has lost its focus and, in my view, its integrity.
In my view, and many others, libraries are all about books, they are at the core of the service and of the ethos. Off course welcoming buildings and knowledgeable and experienced staff are also very important.
You have to pay for Cd's, DVDs, coffee, and in some libraries ICT but books are free and in light of the recent statistics that family spending has fallen, for the first time in 10 years, this is an extermely important message to get across.

Anyway its not all doom and gloom there are voices out there campaigning against library closures, people like Tim Coates and the LLL, Alan Gibbons, Shirley Burnham, Voices for the Library, The Library Campaign and millions of library users. But what we really need is a national demonstration against library cuts, a London wide one would do for starters!

These are my own views and do not in any way represent those of my employer.

God Bless Greggs!

Like Wetherspoons and Robbie Savage, Greggs gives the man and woman on the street what they want!
Bread Pudding, Baguettes and Belgian Buns, the holy trinity!
Also see http://bapstodaps.blogspot.com/2007/08/thesis-greggs-and-demise-of-dough-based_03.html for interesting blog on the demise of regional cake talk!!
But i must say Benjys is sorely missed!!

Managing expectations!

Recession
Cuts
Redundancies
Public revolt

Royal Wedding

hooray!

Austerity London (or any other place)

I quite often walk around London wondering how i would manage with no money, or very little, and i actually try some times not to spend very much just as an experiment, obviously i do this on my own and not with my wife and kid who would accuse me off being a skinflint! Anyway here are my observations;
Food and Drink -
Waitrose and some of the other posher stores regularly have free tastings as do food/farmers markets such as the ones in Borough and Spitalfields.
Private views in the smaller galleries, and even some of the bigger ones, are usually quite easy to gatecrash and usually have free drink and food, I even gatecrashed the Whitecube in trendy Hoxton and helped myself to quantities of free wine, beer and canapes.
Culture -
Obviously private views and galleries again.
Libraries with free books, newspapers, IT and events.
Bookshops with free book readings and events.
Free lectures at the LSE, Gresham College etc
And obviously just walking around London is free and I cant think of a better way to pass a few hours.

Up the Holloway

Two conversations overheard in cafe on Holloway Road -

Two old geezers, the first one scottish the other english - "Spurs are playing at home tonight" "what" "i said Spurs are playing tonight" "what" "are your fucking ears blocked or something" "i can never understand what  the fuck you're saying" "for christ sake we,ve known each other for 30 years" - the conversations over the years must have been riveting!!!

Two young middle-class students, the waitress approaches and asks "would you like to order", one of them picks up the menu and the other comments "why are you looking at the menu, all restaurants sell the same things don't they?" Err Indian, Chinese, French, Italian etc etc!!!!!

The Barbarians are at the gates!

The onslaught has begun! from London to Leeds councils are taking the easy way out and closing libraries and sacking librarians, the savings made are miniscule but the damage to communities and society as a whole is immense.
Yes libraries are intrinsically about books but many offer a lot more, free ICT, information and reference services, children's activities, activities for older people, reading groups, outreach services for refugees/asylum seekers etc etc and of course a safe and warm place for people to meet and greet. They play an important role in the provision of Lifelong Learning and increasingly assist people who are job hunting.

But because of the Governments ideological decision to hit public services instead of the City and the banks we are in grave danger of losing this valuable national resource.
We are beginning to hear prominent voices against the cuts and there are dedicated groups of campaigners opposing them but my own profession has been pathetically ineffectual, unfortunately librarians are not very militant by nature.

how the middle classes have ruined it for the rest of us!

Me and the wife have been visiting local schools in order to choose which one to send our daughter to next year.
The 'tours' are usually conducted by the head teacher and there are usually other parents towing along.
At the question and answer session at the end you can bet your last dollar that some handnitted metrosexual type will say "what proportion of kids in the school have english as a 2nd language?" and when they are told "quite a lot" they say "does this hold the other kids back" Come on be brave just say "there are too many ethnics in this school and my precious fragile little blond haired, blue eyed jemima, oliver etc will be overrun and intimidated by them, i would rather they went to school with kids of their own class and colour"
Of course they all come armed with data from Ofsted, league tables etc and of course they will do the best for their little wonder and for themselves, that is their way!

How the other half live!

Meandering through Mayfair the other day I popped into the 'Punch Bowl' for a quick pint. "A pint of Kronenbourg please" "That will be £4.30 please sir" "Fuck me is it gold-plated?" No response!
Anyway I take my pint outside to enjoy the vista and low and behold there are a couple of archetypal sloan traders standing next to me "fucking labour" "fucking trade unions" "just bought a house in the cotswolds" Drank my pint swiftly and went.

Another glass cube with some books!

The all singing all dancing new Enfield Library has opened and true to form it is a glass cube with a cafe, pc's, self-service borrow and return, a 'teenage zone' and all the other accoutrements of a 21st century library. They also, you'll be pleased to hear, have some books upstairs, 'airport' and 'beach' reads, neither quantity nor quality!
Things could have been worse they could have renamed it, as Hackney did, the 'Technology Learning Centre (TLC)' or 'Totally Lost and Confused' as the staff called it.

When,or why, did we become so insincere?

"Hi Sir, how are you today" "How are you doing today, Sir" etc etc etc. These are the inane platitudes that greet you in most cafes and shops nowadays. I was even asked in a greasy spoon recently, after consuming egg, chips and beans, two slice and a tea, "how was it, sir", I said "fine thanks" but wish i had said "the battery eggs were delicious, the frozen chips just the right side of crispy, the catering pack beans great and the industrial spread on the value bread went down a treat", but I didn't!

I'm not blaming the staff, most of them work for poverty level wages, it's the corporate 'customer service' ethos based on profit maximisation and the blatant insincerity that I can't stomach.

Wild exaggerations #1

old geezer in cafe;

"European Union! don't tell me about the fuckin' European Union"
"We're the fuckin' European Union"
"If you go to fuckin' Europe there's no cunt there, they're all over here"

Favourite TV chefs

Who is your favourite TV chef/cook? Delia? Ramsay? Nigela?

My own is Kenny McBlane, the Scottish chef that appeared on series three of 'The Fall and Rise of Reggie Perrin. With his catch-phrases "Up Yer Clunge" and "Ya fickwe ma doodle split!", fag in mouth and a filthy apron he is head and shoulders above the rest!