The Librarian Liberation Front
These reading-room revolutionaries are putting their own stamp on the fight against advancing globalisation. Think Che Guevara in a cardigan and you are halfway there (there are two of them).
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Drop the shopping.
It’s just sooooo predictable. It’s as sure as the late return of Harry Potter books and the illustrated pages of Alex Comfort’s magnum opus being ripped out. If there is one thing we can all rely on for early January, it’s bad weather, rubbish songs on the hit parade and high street chains moaning about how awful their Christmas has been.
With cash dribbling from their pockets, we have a succession of economists and retail analysts bleating on about how profits are down, sales have not matched expectations and more stock has been put into the January sales. By stock, of course, I refer rows and rows of cheap designer goods fashioned by 4 year-olds in Asian sweat shops – not our lovingly collected stock of the world’s great literature neatly shelved for the entertainment and education of the people, by the people, for the people - and laboriously checked annually.
What exactly are we expected to do in response to such capitalist whinging? The underpaid and over worked library assistants have to tolerate daily abuse from people refusing to pay 50p in fines because their Catherine Cookson is over two decades late and yet we’re all expected to get spending to keep the High Street chains in the manner to which they are all too accustomed. This sort of thing is just not nice.
Is it just Cautious and I that have noticed this? Does it not seem a little insensitive to anyone else for Next to be complaining that not enough of us bought their young people’s clothes (I can never get anything in corduroy in that shop) when the people have managed to give over £100 million to help those affected by the earthquake in Asia. It seems to me that Next, M&S and Dixon’s and their like would rather that some or all of that cash had come their way. The people should be told and must resist any temptation to go shopping in January, or indeed any month. We have given up the budget for our new book drop to help those in need, I don’t see why the capitalist leviathans sucking the life out of our communities should not be asked to do more.
Not that we aren’t capable of more ourselves. £100 million is equivalent, roughly, to what we spend on jam in a year in the UK. So we’ve given up jam for a year, big deal. Maybe we should give up mint humbugs too and really make a difference. We advocate fair-trade honey for your toast in the morning, by the way. All the proceeds go directly back to the bee, that’s how it should be in a fair and just society.
LLF are all in favour of redistribution, but only of wealth. Anyone caught “redistributing” adult fiction in the children’s section, supposedly for laughs, will be invited to read Lemony Snicket to the under fives. Hell’s Bells, that’s getting a bit Sheridan, maybe Horrid Henry would be more appropriate.
With cash dribbling from their pockets, we have a succession of economists and retail analysts bleating on about how profits are down, sales have not matched expectations and more stock has been put into the January sales. By stock, of course, I refer rows and rows of cheap designer goods fashioned by 4 year-olds in Asian sweat shops – not our lovingly collected stock of the world’s great literature neatly shelved for the entertainment and education of the people, by the people, for the people - and laboriously checked annually.
What exactly are we expected to do in response to such capitalist whinging? The underpaid and over worked library assistants have to tolerate daily abuse from people refusing to pay 50p in fines because their Catherine Cookson is over two decades late and yet we’re all expected to get spending to keep the High Street chains in the manner to which they are all too accustomed. This sort of thing is just not nice.
Is it just Cautious and I that have noticed this? Does it not seem a little insensitive to anyone else for Next to be complaining that not enough of us bought their young people’s clothes (I can never get anything in corduroy in that shop) when the people have managed to give over £100 million to help those affected by the earthquake in Asia. It seems to me that Next, M&S and Dixon’s and their like would rather that some or all of that cash had come their way. The people should be told and must resist any temptation to go shopping in January, or indeed any month. We have given up the budget for our new book drop to help those in need, I don’t see why the capitalist leviathans sucking the life out of our communities should not be asked to do more.
Not that we aren’t capable of more ourselves. £100 million is equivalent, roughly, to what we spend on jam in a year in the UK. So we’ve given up jam for a year, big deal. Maybe we should give up mint humbugs too and really make a difference. We advocate fair-trade honey for your toast in the morning, by the way. All the proceeds go directly back to the bee, that’s how it should be in a fair and just society.
LLF are all in favour of redistribution, but only of wealth. Anyone caught “redistributing” adult fiction in the children’s section, supposedly for laughs, will be invited to read Lemony Snicket to the under fives. Hell’s Bells, that’s getting a bit Sheridan, maybe Horrid Henry would be more appropriate.
