EMMA COWING: Why there’ll be no happy endings in this sorry saga of cuts
I wish I could tell you what the first book I borrowed from a library was, but the truth is there have been so many over the years I wouldn’t know where to start.
There was Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, where I empathised with poor Mary Lennox and secretly wished for my own walled garden, complete with door and key.
A hefty hardback copy of Watership Down I insisted on getting out after watching the film, but which my seven-year-old brain found a little too cumbersome. And oodles of Noel Streatfeild, whose Ballet Shoes series I inhaled.
Survivor: Stirling Central Library
What I loved about reading when I was young, and still love today, in bed before turning out the light or on the sofa with a cup of tea as the sun slips from the sky, is the ability to escape into a different world. To leave your daily troubles behind and disappear for a moment into another life.
Unlike TV shows, movies or computer games, it’s a world where you get to picture the details. Images you see in your head, sparked by an author’s imagination, that you carry around with you for weeks, sometimes even years to come.
You’d be hard pressed to find anyone in Scotland who hasn’t at some time read a book from a library.
It has long been a rite of passage in this country, most of us making our first visits when we’re still knee-high to a bookshelf, and sometimes holding on to our library cards (and occasionally, whisper it, the odd forgotten book) for a lifetime.
And so perhaps it is for this reason that I find it so utterly nonsensical at a time when reading – proper reading I mean, not scrolling through a phone – has never been more important, to learn that Stirling Council is looking at shutting down 16 libraries, leaving almost 100,000 people with a single library for all their reading needs.
Stirling Council, like just about every other local authority in the country, is facing a funding black hole. With more than £13million to save, it says that operating all 17 of its libraries and two mobile vans costs £2.4million a year.
While we all understand that money is tight, shutting down libraries – so often the lifeblood of a community – seems like a terribly backwards move.
And perhaps, if the SNP were capable of funding local government properly, local authorities wouldn’t find themselves being forced into making these patently absurd cuts.
It’s not just Stirling either. In January, Midlothian Council proposed replacing public library staff with self-service machines and introducing e-books instead of replenishing the physical stock across its nine libraries.
Glasgow City Council cut back its library services earlier this year, while Aberdeen City Council’s attempts to close six of its libraries are still being contested. A local campaign, Save Aberdeen Libraries, recently recruited comedian and children’s author David Walliams to the cause.
It’s a smart move. Children – particularly those from low income homes where books are a luxury that cannot always be afforded – are a key demographic for libraries, as they should be.
No child should be denied access to books and learning. It is one of the things that sticks in the craw so much about these closures: they will disproportionately affect those most in need.
Then there’s the elderly, many of whom go to their local library to get out of the house, seek company and, yes, pick up a new book. For many,
particularly those who live alone, it is a ritual, sewn into the fabric of their day, and one that allows them to take a new friend – a whole new world – home with them. Why would you want to deny so many so much?
Julia Donaldson, former Children’s Laureate and author of the Gruffalo series, who has long campaigned for keeping libraries open, said once: ‘Reading broadens the mind, stimulates the imagination and increases literacy.
And librarians and libraries are the most important people and places for fostering a love of reading.’
I couldn’t agree more. Stop people reading and you stop them thinking for themselves. And there’s nothing more narrow-minded than that.
Karen’s dream date… a cartoon superstar
I’ve always had a soft spot for the Simpsons character Groundskeeper Willie, such a ludicrous pastiche of the Scottish identity that only the dourest of countrymen could fail to raise a titter.
Karen Gillan’s career has gone stratospheric in Hollywood in recent years
Groundskeeper Willie finds love with Maisie (Karen Gillan)
So I was delighted to learn that Willie will at last get himself a girlfriend, voiced by the stunning and genuinely Scottish Karen Gillan. The former Doctor Who actress, pictured, whose career has gone stratospheric in Hollywood in recent years, declared it ‘the role I was born to play’ and said she was honoured to join the show.
I’m sure she was. Although how she kept a straight face as Willie – voiced by actor Dan Castellaneta – mangled the Scottish accent in his usual charming way, I’ll never know.
What a damning indictment of the state of our NHS that senior doctors have warned that patients in Scotland could soon be forced to pay for health services as waiting lists hit a record 830,000.
The days of carrying on and hoping for the best, which appear to have been at the root of the Scottish Government’s handling of our health service for far too long, seem to be over.
Time to start prioritising the people who always suffer most when the NHS fails: its patients.
A legacy for which we should ALL be grateful
I was sorry to hear of the death of Alistair Darling, a thoroughly decent politician who played a huge part in keeping the Union intact back in 2014 as head of the Better Together campaign.
A year on from the referendum, I interviewed him in an Edinburgh café near his home and found a relieved and vindicated man, who took on the hardest job in politics at a time of huge uncertainty, and won.
‘I’d have felt terrible if I hadn’t done anything,’ he told me of his decision to take the job. ‘I’d have felt even worse if I hadn’t done anything and we had lost. Because it’s not one of those things where you can come back and say, “We’ll have a try next time”. There isn’t a next time.’
Quite. Thank goodness he stepped up to the plate and gave it his all. What a legacy he leaves.
Another day, another ridiculous Bill from the Scottish Government to make us all feel that little bit worse about ourselves.
This week it’s the Circular Economy Bill (who comes up with these titles?),
which could see neighbours snitch on each other as a result of moves to issue fines for putting rubbish in the wrong bins.
Just what this fractured country needs: something else to fall out about.
It’s fascinating to see M&S clothing becoming hip and cool for the younger generations, thanks to a flurry of catwalk-inspired ranges as well as its good old staples, such as plain white T-shirts, timeless black trousers and
the ever-reliable lingerie department.
As long as it’s still acceptable for those of us of a more mature vintage to keep shopping there, I’m quite happy to share the love of this most resilient of high street fixtures with today’s hipsters.
Farewell then, to Edinburgh Zoo pandas Yang Guang and Tian Tian, who are now embarking on the long trip home to China after 13 years in Corstorphine.
The two never showed much interest in each other, rarely batting eyelashes over a stick of bamboo, and there appears to have been something of a conscious uncoupling.
Perhaps a return to their homeland will ignite the spark, but I suspect the Chinese won’t be holding their breath.
Strictly star is a Bobby dazzler
How moving to see Bobby Brazier – the very definition, it would seem, of a Nice Young Man – dedicate last week’s Strictly routine to his mother Jade Goody, who died in 2009.
Speaking to the Mail this week, his dad Jeff Brazier revealed he was ‘apprehensive because Bobby hasn’t necessarily shared his experience of loss publicly before’.
I hope he can rest assured that not only did Bobby, pictured, do an incredible job, he also did his dad and his late mum extremely proud.
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