Where's that major announcement?

Forget the Chilean miners, the most exciting news event of the year was to be yesterday's 'major statement on the state of libraries in England and what needs to be done for them to survive and fill a role for future generations' which our hero was supposed to deliver to the Association of Independent Libraries (that's private subscription libraries to you and me) yesterday. CoatesWatch was near Burlington House yesterday, but missed the police cordons and mobs of hacks from the world's media, and Tim's blog remains silent.

We begin to wonder, did the event actually take place? Did it have any existence, except as a delusion in Tim's mind? Not for the first time, we start to fear for our hero's mental health. What will we do if the messiah of England's libraries 'loses it', in demotic parlance, and insists that he is really the heir to the Russian throne, spirited away from the firing squad in 1917?

 

Update at 9:03, Friday. We've found it, curiously, on SINTO's blog. Those with time on their hands can read the full text. We offer you this nugget, which will give you the flavour: 'So in these times of public spending cuts, what I say is that, in terms of the library service, they should have happened a long time ago'. These are the words, remember, of the greatest library campaigner of the modern era.