Within the space of a few weeks, Alan Milburn had returned to the Cabinet with responsibilities for the election campaign and Tony Blair had announced that he was planning to serve a full third term. As for the great blight of the reading household – the endless demand for new bits of wall to put bookshelves on – libraries can sort that problem too, without the sacrifice of a single inch of medium-density fibreboard.d.orr independent.co.uk
More from Deborah Orr. For those on a budget, libraries are a great asset as they are for students and for children. But they are also fantastically environmentally friendly, and for this reason alone their concept should be extended as we move into the millennium. Over the summer there was bitter complaint from those running libraries so badly, that so few of their number were invited to a conference organised by the Government to discuss ideas for improving libraries.

Yet if they have dynamic ideas about what change ought to be, they are keeping oddly quiet about it.What has come out of the conference is a modest proposal indeed. The Libraries Minister, Andrew McIntosh, yesterday announced a set of national guidelines on how many new books public libraries should buy – 216 per thousand of the population they serve – and how often they ought to replace worn-out stock – every 6.7 years. Simple as it seems, the truth is that a visit to the library is disheartening most of all because the shelves are so empty and the books so tatty. If Britain’s libraries are to be turned around, this is where to start. But there’s much, much more to do.If the idea of public libraries now seems paternalistic or out of step with the ideas of ownership that our consumer culture worships, then that is because it is not only the managers of public libraries who have lost touch with library users, but the rest of the population too. It would be a strange victory if the BBC’s production capacity was irreparably damaged as a result.. Human history is shaped by ideas.

Seventy years ago at Cambridge, Professor Ernest Rutherford first split the atom, clearly one of the most fundamental experiments of the 20th century. He was visited by some American scientists who were amazed at the cramped facilities in which he worked, and the poor quality of the equipment. Rutherford explained that good science did not need plush laboratories. He said, “It is true we don’t have much money, so we have to think.”

Human history is shaped by ideas. We are facing a future of unprecedented competition in business and intense pressure to deliver quality public services that meet people’s needs.