Airdrie Library Cuts

I am utterly disgusted that North Lanarkshire Council are planning to implement cuts to the library services across the area in order to meet their budget. I have been using the library in Airdrie for over forty years now and it has been a fabulous resource. Long before the internet this was the repository of information where school children and students from across the town would troop to as their main source of knowledge to assist with schoolwork; it provided us with (and still does provide) books to fire the imagination and which broaden our general knowledge. It has adapted across the years to include music, video and internet, and still remains a busy part of the community.

Airdrie, and North Lanarkshire in general are not regarded as wealthy areas. We have huge areas of poverty and many people who cannot afford internet access. Our libraries are now, like it or not, a vital part of the system which people are reliant upon to gain access to facilities which are by and large only available online. Benefit and job applications are just a few of these, and I often see the computer terminals in the library busy with people who are managing their lives online in a hub that we, as a community, provide for our common good.

We cannot then reduce that by postcode lottery, to see people in villages put under even more pressure, forcing them perhaps to pay to travel into Airdrie to complete paperwork to ensure they can keep receiving their benefits.

I am lucky that I can afford to go out and buy the books which interest me, but for many that is not an option. As a society we need to ask what type of community we want to live in and then set to building that society. We only need to look to the Nordic countries to see that although they pay greater taxes , they are by and large happier countries. North Lanarkshire Council’s “consultation” is a box ticking exercise in order to have us approve their cuts. Nowhere is there a box saying that actually I don’t want your cuts. Nowhere is there information which says that we can retain all our services, keep our access to our libraries and here’s how much it will cost. What will it cost? How much will have to be added on to our council tax to keep our libraries open; £10 a year? £20? £30? That’s the question we should be asked.

North Lanarkshire Council railed against the council tax freeze and demanded the right to end it to protect local jobs and services. Then when they got the power to do so, they didn’t wan’t to raise it! Tell us HOW MUCH it will cost us personally. We might actually want to pay it, instead of letting petty local politicians indulge themselves playing the blame game.