Wednesday 4 March 2015

The hypocrisy of Mike Freer, Matthew Offord and Theresa Villiers on Barnet Library Closures is breathtaking

I saw this article in the Hendon Times yesterday - http://www.times-series.co.uk/news/11830150.Barnet_s_MPs_side_with_Labour_opposition_in_ongoing_libraries_saga/ - where all three of Barnets Tory MP's have come out against Library closures. I cannot believe the hypocrisy of these three chancers in making this announcement. Quite frankly, anyone who is fooled by this Damascene conversion of thes ethree to the cause of preserving Barnets libraries needs to look at the facts.

Back in 2010, shortly after these three chancers were elected, there Tory chums in the Town Hall announced a strategic library review, with statements that libraries were old hat and that people can buy books at Tescos and read them at Starbucks. The Councillor responsible for those comments, Robert Rams, was kicked out of his formerly safe Tory Seat in 2014. I lead the campaign to save Barnets libraries in 2010 and we managed to head off the review. The only library the Council closed was Friern Barnet and this was reopened after a huge campaign.

During the whole 2010 campaign, we had not one word of support from Mike Freer, Matthew Offord or Theresa Villiers. When we ran the Peoples Library on the lawn outside Friern Library and the One Show and BBC News came down, the local MP's gave us the cold shoulder.

What is different this time? Their seats are up for grabs. They are running scared as they saw what the closure of Friern Barnet did to Robert Rams. It must be pointed out that Sarah Sackman, the Labour Finchley and Golders Green PPC and Andrew Dismore, the Hendon PPC were at the forefront of both campaigns. For the record, I am not a Labour Party member and not involved in their campaign. I do however believe that politicians should be judged on their record, not on a few platitudes just before a general election.

If you don't believe me, click on the Save BArnets Libraries tag at the bottom of this page and look at a few of the blogs I wrote at the time. The sad truth is that all of these, but especially Mike Freer who was happy to see Finchley library shut in 2010, are just a bunch of chancers, who are jumping on the bandwagon to save their skins.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

they can say what they like.. they are not Cllr's, have no vote, and no power to stop the closures if Barnet/Capita are mindful