• The council elections loom ever nearer: click here for information from West Berkshire and here for Vale of White Horse on how these will be conducted. Wiltshire and Swindon will not be holding elections this year. (If you want to know which councils hold elections when – it’s not straightforward – click here.)

• This week’s Newbury Weekly News has a front-page story about the Conservative Party’s election material which claims that the party was responsible for ‘securing community services in Hungerford…including the Library.’ This claim is completely inaccurate.

West Berkshire’s original inclination as a result of the cuts (imposed by a Conservative government) was to close the library or to reduce its staff mainly to volunteers. The recently-formed Friends of Hungerford Library did not feel that its alternative views had been taken into account in the plans that West Berkshire Council announced on 30 January 2017, and said so. The Council later admitted that its communication of the matter could have been better. It was not until later in 2017 that the current model (by which Hungerford Town Council took ownership of the building, that it was run by a charitable trust and that the Library Service was continued) was agreed. This was an imaginative and innovative solution that was entirely the work of Hungerford Town Council (mainly the then Mayor Keith Knight, the then Deputy Mayor Helen Simpson and Town Clerk Claire Barnes, as well as many people who were involved in the Friends of the Library group, including Peter Harries). Council officers, particularly Paul James, did become very supportive of the plan: but its inception owed nothing to West Berkshire Council. Anyone wanting to read more can click here to see the article we wrote at the time (often updated, and with links to previous and subsequent posts: it was a long-running, complex and at times divisive issue).

The NWN article ends with a comment from Councillor Dominck Boeck which puts a completely different spin on the situation. He also makes the startling claim that in Hungerford the work was done by ‘innovative and hard working and Conservative party members,’ the clear inference being that only members of that party were involved in this process. This is plain wrong. He also  said that ‘elected members’ were ‘heavily involved’ in this. I’m not sure which elected members he’s referring to. Hungerford’s councillors are technically elected, though effectively co-opted: some of those, particularly the two named above, were indeed ‘heavily involved’. If, however, he’s referring to District Councillors James Podger and Paul Hewer (neither of whom are standing this year) then I’m not aware that they played any particular role in this. Hungerford Library was saved as a result of the efforts of Hungerford Town Council and its staff, the Friends of Hungerford Library and, later, certain officers at West Berkshire Council. For anyone else to claim credit for this is deeply misleading. 

• Aside from exposing another unedifying example of political life, the whole episode of Hungerford Library (and many other organisations) makes one realise how unprepared local councils were for the cuts (even though the signs must have been obvious for some years). For decades they had run many services and their immediate reaction on being told they could no longer afford to do so was to close them: it simply didn’t seem possible that anyone else could take them over. As a result, there was no information available on the costs, leases, contracts, obligations and other details of these services, all of which facts the newly-formed volunteer groups needed to squeeze out of West Berkshire and other councils by slow and often unwilling degrees.

A senior West Berkshire councillor said recently that the cuts had been almost beneficial in the way they have galvanised the activities of the voluntary sector and parish councils. This could have been more happily phrased, but I see what he was driving at. David Cameron was groping toward this idea in 2010 with his vision of the ‘big society’, which was quickly ditched. It’s a pity, for it might have provided a useful framework for debate and action about a situation – the shedding downwards of responsibility for a wide range of services – which has now come to pass, almost entirely as a result of policies which his government set in motion. However, in most cases this transfer has been done as a last resort, rather than as part of some well-understood and national problem. It might also have sparked a debate on whether we were prepared to pay more taxes to retain these services in the old way. That, I concede, is unlikely, as I can think of no political party which has been elected on the basis of raising taxation.

• The Newbury Weekly News also has further criticism of West Berkshire Council, this time of its processes rather than its politics and on this occasion by none other than its former leader, the Conservative Gordon Lundie. The issue concerns what he claims was ‘wrong’ procedure in handling the change of use connected with The Malt Shovel in Upper Lambourn. I was aware of the closure of the pub and its proposed conversion (also of the expected dismay that was felt in some quarters) but this story is about a quite separate aspect of the matter. Have a look at the paper and decide for yourself.

• And still with the NWN, the paper has a good deal of information about the various parties and candidates contesting the elections with, this week, articles on the policies and plans by Labour and the Greens (the Conservatives and the Lib Dems were covered last week).

• I was looking at the awful footage of Notre Dame in flames and thinking about the stunning stained glass windows there. Amazingly, most of them seem to have survived. The building occupies a pretty important place in the average French person’s mind and I’m struggling to think of an English equivalent. Westminster Abbey, St Paul’s or York Minster are impressive but only St Paul’s is distinctively identifiable. Its main claim on our affections is probably its survival during the Blitz, captured in a famous photograph, when so much else around it was destroyed. However, it’s not that beautiful. Any other nominations? Before anyone suggests Big Ben, I don’t think cuts it either, being quite recent (mid-19th century, the same sort of age as Notre Dame’s spire which was burnt this week) and tainted with the dysfunctionality of the building to which it’s attached. It’s also in very poor condition, as is the whole Palace of Westminster: between £3.5 and £6 billion needs to be spent on the whole place PDQ if it’s not all to slide into the Thames, burst into flames or perhaps just gradually fall to pieces.

• The student climate-change protesters were out again in Newbury last Friday. This took place during the school holidays, so undermining the rather feeble accusations that have been made by some people that they are only doing this at all to get a couple of hours off school. Click here to read the text of a speech made by a nine-year-old student at the most recent event and here for reports on previous ones. See this week’s NWN (p15) for more.

 • The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has committed a big faux pas by emailing over 300 journalists by using cc rather than bcc, so allowing them to see each other’s details. The Minister said that this was ’embarrassing’, which is about the mildest word one could use as this is the department responsible for our data protection laws. Those at the top of the DDCMS tree are doubtless already studying the article written late last summer for Penny Post by Nick Richards of local data experts Laudis which details some of the fines handed out under the new GDPR regulations. More have been added since. I suppose the DDCMS will have to fine itself.

• The quiz night I mentioned last week (which was in the Croft Hall in Hungerford in aid of St Lawrence’s Church) did not result in the hoped-for victory: contrary to the hopes of our captain there was no section devoted to early-20th century suicidal lesbian poets, nor even a single question. Nor, contrary to my hopes, was there anything on the Fourth Crusade. I was pleased that we were asked for the sister ships of the Titanic: this was not a question I could have answered six months ago but it came up in the East Garston quiz in the autumn, suggested by quizmaster Ed James’ elder son who knows more about that unhappy ship than most other people (the Olympic and the Britanic were her sisters, BTW). The prize was  won by Deputy Mayor Keith Knight’s team, for the third year in a row, I understand. Congratulations to them and to Nigel Perrin for setting the questions.

• If the Roman Catholic Church needs any fresh ways of making itself appear defensive and hypocritical, it found it last week in a pronouncement last week from ex-Pope Benedict. According to this report, he claimed that the widespread and constantly increasing catalogue of clerical sexual abuse should be blamed not on those who committed the crimes but on the sexual liberation of the 1960s. With more or less justification, that decade has been held responsible for a number of things but this accusation is truly startling, even if one leaves aside the fact that abuse of all kinds by Catholic priests had been going on for centuries before then, my father having been one of their victims. A friend of mine at university – his brain addled with chemicals that did find their first expression in the 60s – wrote an essay in his first-year exams claiming that the Italian Renaissance was inspired by the writings of Adolf Hitler, a silly anachronism for which he was rightly sent down. Something of the same ought to happen to Benedict: though how does one sack an ex-pope? Nothing in all the dusty tomes at the Vatican can provide a precedent, for there is none. 

• If you’re an EU, EEA or Swiss citizen, you and your family can apply to the EU Settlement Scheme to continue living in the UK after 30 June 2021, regardless of any deal that the UK government may or may not make with the EU. Click here to see the help that’s available with the application process from West Berkshire Libraries.

• Healthwatch West Berkshire is running two online consultations about the future of healthcare provision in the area. Click here for details. You have until the end of the month to make your views known. 

• The animal of the week is…well, take your pick from any of these ones. If I had to vote, I’d go for the pig-nosed vampire rat myself. 

• The letters pages of the Newbury Weekly News this week includes several on the subject of Brexit; several from various political parties; a further tribute to Councillor Marcus Franks, who died earlier this month; the surprising suggestion that there’s ‘a lack of debate’ on climate change and that any measures might in any case be ‘unnecessary’; and an statement from West Berkshire Council about its policy on electric-car charging points.  

• A number of good causes have received valuable support recently, including: Marlborough LitFest (thanks to Brewin Dolphin); Guide Dogs for the Blind (thanks to several pupils at St Bart’s); Asthma UK (thanks to Darren Lovegrove); Arts Together (thanks to David Wilson Homes).