From Roger Pearse

I live outside London, and I really don't see a lot of value from the British Library. Why shouldn't it suffer cutbacks? It's an institution that makes nothing much available online, and charges like a wounded bull for any of its services. Isn't it just a bloated bureaucracy? It's telling, surely, that its reaction to threatened cuts is not to cut staff but services to the public -- the reaction of every self-serving bureaucracy.

Can someone explain to me why we, the general public, need to fund this organisation? With figures that show the benefit to us all?

Thank you to 'Paige Turner' in Wales who spotted this article by Andrew Motion in the Independent on Sunday

Who is it that has tried to define the argument about libraries into 'books or computers?' -- how stupid can you be? What a waste of time that argument is.

And why start off by saying that public libraries need more money? Who from? Who is going to pay more for a service that -overall at least - is rich and wasteful. How many times do we have to go over this ground before the officials who have obviously advised Andrew Motion learn to get the story right?

Over the decade during which this blog has followed and described the decline in use of the UK public library service we have avoided extrapolating from the very particular issues of libraries into wider comment about civil administration of the country. I have analysed the detailed performance both in figures and in documents so that when I write about libraries I try to be as informed as I can be - and am happy to stand by anything that I say, because it is based on fact.

However there are important observations about the wider landscape that can be made with justification. The first is the extraordinarily poor performance of ministers and shadow ministers in the conduct of their duties. We have watched over 10 years a whole succession of ill- trained, unwise, arrogant people who have been given the exhalted role of Minister, or Secretary of State. Within the government there has not been one who commanded any respect or who had any understanding of the leadership which is expected of them.

The second is the low standard of management operated by high grade civil servants, officials of quangoes and senior local government officers. Among the hundreds that one has watched in operation a mere handful earn any kind of respect for ability and sagacity.The national press who watch these matters do not focus sufficiently upon the power exercised by these people and the poverty of their work. There should be much more naming and shaming of senior state employees than there is. Until there is an improvement the country will remain an economic mess, dependent on technical windfalls, as unpredictable and elusive as the lottery.

We need a Government who will place fundamental reform of public sector structures and management at the top of their agenda

And by the way one person of ministerial standing who has impressed during this time is Mark Field, MP for Westminster, who was dropped from the Conservative front bench team after some very good work. That was a shame and a mistake that should, in my view, be corrected. He was analytical, correct and courageous. We need him back and more like him. Another good and effective MP is Michael Fallon. He, also. undertook his duties with impressive ability.