"Siri, Show Me A Headline That Encapsulates 2021..."

Officials in London's Redbridge borough were left red-faced after a library event designed to promote reading among kids featured a monkey character in a costume that included dangling fake genitalia and exposed buttocks.

The costume and the actor wearing it came from Mandinga Arts, a troupe of street performers based in Clapham South that has "a distinctive style bringing together live music, carnival, street costume, puppetry and dance, drawing on diverse influences from Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa," according to its website.

And presumably Japan... 

Redbridge Libraries acknowledged the lapse in judgement and apologized for hosting the performance, but shifted the blame onto the charity Vision. It was they, rather than the borough council, who were responsible for organizing the event, the statement said.

Typical! 

Council leader Jas Athwal called the situation "disgusting" and said the charity had confirmed to him that all scheduled events were cancelled, but he likewise distanced himself from the controversy.

After whining on social media that those complaining about it were 'Johnny come latelys'... 

Victoria Coren Mitchell Goes Shopping...

...it doesn't turn out well:

To cut a long story shortish: my local library, which has been run by a children’s charity since the council removed its funding in 2012, has a weekly singing group for babies and toddlers. It’s a fantastic way to get parents, carers and children out socialising (and socialising together): toddlers that can sing, toddlers that can’t sing, toddlers from big houses, toddlers from council estates, toddlers from the temporary homeless accommodation in the next street, toddlers from the secret underground oligarchs’ lairs that must be round here somewhere… all of them clapping, dancing, speculating confidently as to the stock on Old MacDonald’s farm, then staying on to look at books and catch the reading bug. It’s truly a vision of how you would want society to be. UNLESS YOU’RE EVIL.

 Well, must check for pointy horns then, because it's my idea of hell...

For some time, the singing group has been hosted by the librarian herself, an excellent woman with a real vocation for the task: she has natural charisma, a lovely singing voice and the children adore her. But she’s thinking she should focus on “more serious” tasks relating to the building and the charity. And that’s because she’s too modest to realise how directly her talent triggers social cohesion, making this important free space feel welcoming to all. So I decided to send her, on behalf of the neighbourhood, 50 miniature tambourines.

 As you, errrr, do. And in today's modern world, this should be easily accomplished, no?

The volume was meant to be dazzling and a bit silly, like when a rap star sends a thousand roses to a love interest.

 And provide an excuse for a column, no doubt?

I had it all planned. The huge, mysterious box would arrive; she’d open it to find 50 tambourines; she’d laugh, she’d feel slightly harassed, she’d be ultimately flattered; she’d feel a renewed enthusiasm for the group as she imagined her dozens of tiny singers banging incoherently on dozens of tiny tambourines; she’d feel loved and valued and (I told myself excitedly as I clicked eagerly on to the John Lewis website) maybe she’d remember the gesture for ever.

 Yes. It's all about you, Victoria.

So you can understand my frustration when, as the day dawned, I started getting a stream of automated text messages that gradually revealed the tambourines were not being delivered in one giant comic batch with my gift note, but in three different parcels, on two different vans, dropped off six hours apart.

So..? Isn't the point of this to get them the tambourines?

I say you can understand my frustration. Can you? The John Lewis manager I spoke to could not. She told me that 50 tambourines could not be delivered in one go “for safety reasons” and that she agreed with this “policy”. (No such policy exists, I have subsequently established.) She disagreed with me that this should be advertised at point of sale.

 Probably thinking all the while 'What the hell's the problem? She's getting the damn tambourines!'...

Essentially, she was prepared to say anything at all, other than sorry. I suddenly found myself crying...

 Well, I hope that brightened up the John Lewis girl's morning as much as it brightened up mine!

Why cry, though, over a botched tambourine delivery? I’ve asked myself this, as I lie awake at night picturing my sobbing pleas being broadcast to a crowd of giggly new sales staff and clawing lightly at the headboard. I think the answer is: because it’s an increasingly frightening, chaotic, unknowable world and we can only control it (or make sense of it) in small, kindly, hopeful gestures. That’s what this ridiculous purchase was supposed to be. When it failed, I needed the person on the end of the phone to be kind and sympathetic and for the two of us to share a moment of fellow feeling. When that didn’t happen, it all seemed to represent something much bigger than itself.

 Jeez, you're making a purchase from a company, not communing in an ashram over mint tea!

We all have to interact with large corporations now; too many little shops have been pushed under by them. If we choose John Lewis or Sainsbury’s, it feels, at least, more human scale than Amazon. The big corporation can’t meaningfully care about us, but we need to persuade ourselves that an individual representative could, even if they’re just a disembodied voice on the phone. When you can’t convince us you care, that exposes the relentless grind of the emotionless, profit-hungry machine. It’s frightening and alienating.

It exists to take your money in return for goods. Which it fulfilled. It's not there to hold your hand while you have an existential crisis.

SNORK!

Some Museums Are More Equal Than Others...

Planting a museum in the parkland along Chicago’s waterfront seemed as natural an act, for most of its history, as planting a tree there. That city’s breathtaking waterfront parks are host to the Art Institute of Chicago, the Field Museum, the Shedd Aquarium, and the Museum of Science and Industry – a solid majority of the city’s premier cultural institutions.

Chicago remains the place I'd love to visit in the States, and it's mainly for the museums. But others would rather not see them, it seems:

It came as little surprise that George Lucas and other backers then chose a lakefront site for his proposed Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Yet in 2016 their proposal prompted fierce opposition and a lawsuit from a local nonprofit group, Friends of the Parks, that eventually sent the museum all the way to California in search of a home.

So all presumptuous would-be museum builders should think they won't get a warm welcome?

Well...

Less than two months later, the desired location for the Obama Presidential Library was announced – in lakefront Jackson Park. Friends of the Parks won’t be filing a lawsuit against this proposal – but they are once again opposed. Times have changed.

Shocker, eh?

But what's so bad about a museum, a temple of learning and culture, anyway? Well, it seems the grasping hand of the SJWs has reached here, too. They just aren't modern and 'socially responsible' enough for them:

Like any search for a home, these issues often reveal as much about their tenants as about real estate, and the way they have shifted over time sheds considerable light on the evolving character of museums themselves.

Evolution into something unrecognisable:

The starchitect’s favourite creation was surely the museum, rising out of so many locations in the 80s and 90s. As one eminent among their number, Michael Graves, commented at the Architectural League of New York in 1986: “I think this is a moment in history where we have to realise we’re not just building Kunsthalles or picture galleries. We’re building institutions that have places for discussion, places for study, and a social climate as well as a climate in which to see painting and sculpture.”

Visit your favourite museum while you can, before it goes the way of the public library....

No, Let’s Place Any Shame Where It Belongs, Shall We?

A homeless man who teaches other rough sleepers how to read said society should be ashamed at the number of people with literacy problems.

Really? And why is that? Are there not enough opportunities to learn? Are schools not free?

Matt Holgate, 41, has taught nine people under a new scheme run by Westminster council which pairs up illiterate people in hostels with a reading coach - either a fellow resident, a hostel worker or a volunteer.

The council, which wants to roll out the project across London, said 40 per cent of rough sleepers have literacy problems, making it harder for them to access benefits, housing, employment and training services.

Which came first, though, the homeless chicken or the illiterate egg? Which contributes to which?

Mr Holgate, who stays at the Salvation Army's Edward Alsop Court hostel in Westminster, said: "We are one of the top five developed countries in the world and it's pretty damn sad we are in this situation."

Yes, indeed it is. But the solution is entirely in their hands. There’s nothing for me or anyone else to feel ‘shame’ over, is there?

The council today urged more homeless people to take advantage of the reading scheme and called for more volunteers to join up, as Mayor Boris Johnson encouraged other London local authorities to adopt the programme.

Adopting the programme is all very well. But if homeless people aren’t taking advantage of it, that’s to their shame, isn’t it?

No Wonder Libraries Are Being Closed At A Rate Of Knots...

Young people have been issued with orders banning them from libraries across East Yorkshire after extreme behaviour.

Talking too loud? Creasing the pages?

Well, no:

The youngest was a nine-year-old girl, who was banned from Bridlington and Bridlington North Library for a month after disrupting other library users, hitting other children and refusing to leave by lying on the floor.

*gulp*

A 14-year-old boy was banned from the Pavilion Leisure Centre in Withernsea for a week after exposing himself to children and another boy of the same age was banned from Goole Leisure Centre for theft.

*boggle*

In Hull, Fred Moore Library has seen ten bans – making it the worst in the city for bad behaviour.

Ahhh, hully-gullys....

Aren't They Going To Find It Difficult Then?

Debt collectors will soon be used by libraries in Ongar, North Weald and further afield to target those who fail to pay their late fees.

Those who don't return their books, DVDs or CDs on time could soon find themselves being harried by an American company which specialises in recovering library fines.

OK, I see nothing wrong with this in principle, but this is a little puzzling, to say the least:

The Gazette asked the county council, under the Freedom of Information Act, how many fines remained unpaid, although the authority said it could not provide this information because it was "not held".

Then how on earth are you going to instruct the firm..?

Hyperbole Corner

Which events in London during 2011 will bring most lasting disgrace to the capital, and to the nation?

Well, the riots. Surely?

The teenage rioters who plundered fashion outlets presented a dismal spectacle. But many will grow up and look back on those moments of madness with embarrassment.

Yeeees, because that’s all it was, right? Just a ‘moment of madness’? Not organised greed and thuggery…

So, what’s top of your list, then?

The members and overpaid senior officers of Labour-run Brent Council have no excuses of youth, despair or deprivation. These boorish jobsworths have committed vandalism of a graver sort.

Graver than burning down businesses and killing people? Really?!

What the hell have they done, because I’m pretty sure it’s not made the papers?!

Not content with winning the High Court case last week that sought to halt the closure of six branch libraries, Brent council – with indecent haste – dispatched wrecking crews.

Oh. That’s it? They argued their case before a judge and won? Those barbarians...

On Thursday they were sent around the borough to board up buildings that for more than a century have brought enlightenment and inspiration to residents.

Enlightenment, inspiration, and Catherine Cookson novels….

Of course, the library service requires reform. Many options exist to refresh dowdy branches.

Oh, indeed there are. I've highlighted a few in this very blog. And they tend to drive away as many people as they attract, so it’s really a losing proposition all round.

For now, though, the Brent campaigners must be allowed to challenge this official crime against an entire community. And their appeal must prevail.

Must it? Well, we’ll see….

Sad And Revealing...

Book-lover Brian McKeown had almost 50 copies of his favourite read - All Quiet on the Western Front - to hand out at Clacton library as part of a million-book giveaway.

He expected to be swamped by budding bookworms after telling local secondary schools about the free offer.

Oh dear. You can see what's coming, can't you?

But it ended up being all quiet on the library front after youngsters snubbed the chance.

Maybe he'd have had more luck with 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar'?

Mr McKeown tried to interest a group of teenagers who wandered in.

"One of them turned round and aid he couldn't read and the others said they didn't read books," he said.

"A member of staff said that summed it up."

It does, doesn't it?

Mr McKeown couldn't believe schools would miss the chance to add free books to their libraries.

"English teachers would have jumped at the chance 25-30 years ago," he said.

That was long ago, and far away.

I wonder if Alan Bennett* will be along to pontificate on this as he did with the proposed closure of libraries?

Is it still 'child abuse', Alan, when they choose to 'abuse' themselves?

*H/T: CJ Nerd via email.

Want To Check Out A Library Book?

Better get that CRB check sorted then, in case this wacky plan ever gets off the drawing board:

Schools could be asked to house public libraries and children’s centres to save on running costs, a council boss has indicated.

/facepalm

Mr Tinlin said: “We are looking at doing things differently, like having a children’s centre and library in a school.

“We don’t want to go down the same route as other local authorities in closing things.

“Instead, we need to think about bringing together some of our services, like children’s services, youth centres, schools and libraries.

“If they were run from the same building, we save money on overhead costs, maintenance, staffing and cleaning.”

Yes, because teachers are going to be happy to be part-time librarians for nothing, parents are going to be just delighted that all and sundry are now encouraged to access the increasingly fortress-like schools, and pensioners will no doubt be more than happy to undergo a CRB check just to take out a Catherine Cookson novel…

Some ideas should be strangled at birth.

Maybe You Should Get Back To Shelving Books And Saying 'Shhhh!'..?

From John Harris' column in CiF on the 'savage cuts to the library service' made by the 'Tory-run North Yorkshire council', comes this plea for rescue from a librarian:

"We do so much more than issue books, shelve and say, 'Shhh' to people," he wrote. "We cater to our public from birth to death. We go out to antenatal and postnatal groups to sign up the youngest in our population, thus trying to help those families who do not read … We offer free sessions to under-fives, know all about school curriculums and how best to work with schools.

"We know our looked-after children, our troubled teens, our users who suffer from mental health issues … We know how to help with homework, teach internet skills to all ages, help unskilled people find jobs … We embraced using volunteers, but can they run our libraries without us? No. And in my authority they are losing about 60% of librarians."

So, basically, their claim to be spared the axe is because they are doing the work that should be done by parents or by other public servants? Or doesn't need to be done at all, at least by the state?

Mind you, in taking money for doing everything other than their actual job, perhaps they are only following the lead of their quango, as North By Northwest points out?