A read for for you

[Janner]

This is one for those of you who are dedicated to Tory knocking here on the forum

Yes . . . . You . . . . You know who you are!

Go to your local library and take a look at "This is going to Hurt" by Adam Kay

A very good, funny read, yes . . . . . . .but . . . . 

 

John

[Nick Jones]

Not specifically a Tory knocker...... but knocker of all the over-ego’d self-important incompetents that infest Westminster, whatever colour their t-shirts.

Thanks for the reminder though, it is a book I want to read. Will be interesting to see what my wife makes of it too after 30 years in the NHS, most of that in hospitals.

[Janner]

16 minutes ago, Nick Jones said:

Will be interesting to see what my wife makes of it too after 30 years in the NHS, most of that in hospitals.

I know what your wife will make of, after she has stopped, laughing and nodding grimly 

 

John

[Nick Jones]

Yep, I reckon I do too. 

Wonder where Hunt gets his healthcare.......? Should be banned from the private sector imo.... might change his outlook.

[oldtuckunder]

4 hours ago, Janner said:

This is one for those of you who are dedicated to Tory knocking here on the forum

Yes . . . . You . . . . You know who you are!

Go to your local library and

unfortunately after a decade of Tory Council budget cuts we don't seem to have any of those left within striking distance!

alan 

[Janner]

17 minutes ago, oldtuckunder said:

unfortunately after a decade of Tory Council budget cuts we don't seem to have any of those left within striking distance!

alan 

Our council is planning to close about 50% of our librarys, due to falling footfall.

They are happy to hand over a lot to charities or residents to run.

 

This is a Tory plan, being implemented by a LibDem controlled council

 

Go figure 

 

John

[Scooter]

Drive to library, if it’s open, pay to park, find book needs to be reserved from store, wait a week, drive back, pay to park, get book.

go on Amazon, click on used version of book, it arrives the next day for often little more than pennies.

 

libraries - like typewriters, their day has gone.

[Janner]

7 hours ago, Scooter said:

Drive to library, if it’s open, pay to park, find book needs to be reserved from store, wait a week, drive back, pay to park, get book.

go on Amazon, click on used version of book, it arrives the next day for often little more than pennies.

 

libraries - like typewriters, their day has gone.

Not as far as I am concerned Scooter

I identify book I want to read

Make reservation on line from my sofa

Receive notification when it is ready for collection

Drive or walk to collect (no parking fee either way)

Enjoy read

Nope, libraries are very much alive, kicking and a part of the 21st century

 

John

[JohnD]

I'm a library fan, but here's another option - the Oxfam bookstore!     There's one in our high street, quite seperate from the other charity shops, and I pop in every week to see what has come in.     £2.50 for a brand new, unopened Terry Pratchett, or for a dog-eared, yellow-edged copy of a cheap American copy of an obscure SF writer's early work.    Either way it's a bargain, AND a donation to a good cause!

There are 650 stores in the UK, so a good chance there's one near you!  Find it here: https://www.oxfam.org.uk/shop/shop-finder?pscid=ps_ggl_Google+-+Trading+-+Shops+-+Searches_brand_book_shop_phrase&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIpd3BhbWn4wIVL7HtCh2HYwsdEAAYASAAEgKtq_D_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

John

Edited July 9, 2019 by JohnD

[zetecspit]

We raid some of the local charidy shops for books prior to a holiday. ( I can read several on a lazy 2 weeker) and return them once read. Or pass them on...

But yes, a big fan of that system. Less hassle than a library, especially since the local one shut.

[Janner]

9 hours ago, JohnD said:

I'm a library fan, but here's another option - the Oxfam bookstore!     There's one in our high street, quite seperate from the other charity shops, and I pop in every week to see what has come in.     £2.50 for a brand new, unopened Terry Pratchett, or for a dog-eared, yellow-edged copy of a cheap American copy of an obscure SF writer's early work.    Either way it's a bargain, AND a donation to a good cause!

There are 650 stores in the UK, so a good chance there's one near you!  Find it here: https://www.oxfam.org.uk/shop/shop-finder?pscid=ps_ggl_Google+-+Trading+-+Shops+-+Searches_brand_book_shop_phrase&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIpd3BhbWn4wIVL7HtCh2HYwsdEAAYASAAEgKtq_D_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

John

John

You are right, some great books to be found in charity shops

I tend to buy mine from my pet charity The National Trust.

Having read the books, I then return them to the NT so that they can be sold, again.

 

John

[Janner]

All

You may be pleased to know that our local (Essex) council have reversed the decision to close libraries across the county.

There will be no closures for the next 5 years.

Unfortunately, there are 10,000 fewer library users here than 10 years ago, so, something has to change.

Methinks Essex libraries are going to be seeing different ways of raising money.

 

John

[Janner]

3 hours ago, Janner said:

All

You may be pleased to know that our local (Essex) council have reversed the decision to close libraries across the county.

There will be no closures for the next 5 years.

Unfortunately, there are 10,000 fewer library users here than 10 years ago, so, something has to change.

Methinks Essex libraries are going to be seeing different ways of raising money.

 

John

All

Wrong number . . . . .sorry

Not 10,000 but 120,000.

I blame dyslexic hearing

John

[TR5tar]

It's sad to see the loss of libraries. I remember as a child the mobile one that used to come to our village each week. What an adventure it was to go and pick out a book. 

Many of the independent, specialist, second hand, bookshops have also disappeared. There used to be one in Oxford that I'd visit as a student (when visiting home from where I was studying in London). It was marvelous, in that it was possible to find the most obscure, out of print books on my subject there, all of which I still have. Quoting from books that few of my lecturers had read gave them some headaches and me some fun. 

I do, however, wonder how much use a typical library gets nowadays. I've not stepped foot in one for over twenty years at least. Access to cheap books is now so easy, either in charity shops, or secondhand from the many online sellers there are. I've just purchased a second hand copy of Howard Carter: The Path to Tutankhamun,  all for £3.60 including delivery. It would cost more to travel to the nearest town and take the book out of a library. 

Then there are digital books. Even my wife, who is an avid reader and lover of books, switched to Kindle a few years ago and has never looked back. OK, not everyone can afford such devices, but prices are always falling. Easy access to books and reading material is far greater now than ever before. All of which leads me to wonder, is it the loss of libraries that we mourn, or is it the passing of a way of life?

Shhh!     

   

Edited July 30, 2019 by TR5tar

[JohnD]

Good points, TR5tar!     

I remember the library that our local Boots the Chemist used to run!    Jesse Boot was a great philanthropist, but his wife Florence made him set up libraries in his pharmacy branches.     The Wiki tells me that that ended with the Public Libraries and Museums Act as recently as 1964!     That was the Act that obliged local councils to provide libraries, when previous legislation in the previous 100 years only allowed them to.     So, if you like, 'universal' free access to literature is as short as that.   

In the face of digital media, many other institutions that were founded on print and broadcast must completely rethink and rebuild themselves, from newspapers to the BBC, and locally sourced and distributed media are especially vulnerable.

John

[PeterC]

Our local library often has more users on the computers than scanning the shelves. Rural b'band is so awful or expensive that the library is their best option. There are many isolated hamlets with no b/band.  Costs me £40 per month for 6Mbps via a private wireless system when the best Openreach can do is....28k dial up. Its ironic that our library is helping remedy the digital divide while being threatened by it.

Peter

 

[JohnD]

Peter,

Around here BA4N, Broadband For the Rural North, has made a name for Hyperfast broadband.    They provide 1000Mbs, to the premises!   See: https://b4rn.org.uk/about-us/

Their USP is that local communities, they call them parishes, do the spadework, literally, digging the trenches etc. than BA4N come in and run the fibre cables and fit the connections.    Very successful in the Lune Valley, and west and north of Lancaster, but they have expanded to Cheshire and to East Anglia(!), so might be worth talking to them about your parish!

John

[Adrian Cooper]

I discovered the unique benefit of libraries when I worked as the Deputy Head in a 'tough' school and needed to sort out the bad behaviour, especially in the library. I would spend as much time as I could in the library and in those hours I found a variety of fascinating books about subjects I had no idea would be interesting, they just fell to hand as I was browsing the shelves. Without that serendipity I would never have read books on the influence of railways on modern warfare, about Scandinavian wood lore and on the development of farming techniques in post-war Germany; trust me, once started I couldn't put these, and many others, down. You don't get that experience on Amazon.

Adrian

[JohnD]

I have enthused before about our local Oxfam bookshop, but now I have, IMHO, really scored there!

Adrian Newey, one of the greatest F! car designers, published "How to build a car" in 2017.     I've just bought a copy in pristine condition, don't think its ever been opened, for £5!    Bargain!   Originally five times the price, and on Amazon for three times, I paid and sprinted out of the door, in case they changed their minds.

Support your Oxfam Book shop!   JOhn

Edited July 31, 2019 by JohnD

[PeterC]

3 hours ago, JohnD said:

Peter,

Around here BA4N, Broadband For the Rural North, has made a name for Hyperfast broadband.    They provide 1000Mbs, to the premises!   See: https://b4rn.org.uk/about-us/

Their USP is that local communities, they call them parishes, do the spadework, literally, digging the trenches etc. than BA4N come in and run the fibre cables and fit the connections.    Very successful in the Lune Valley, and west and north of Lancaster, but they have expanded to Cheshire and to East Anglia(!), so might be worth talking to them about your parish!

John

Tks John,  The villages here have decent fibre to the box bb . Its the outlying propertise that are the problem. I am about 5km from the nearest fibre supply and of the intrevening handful of properties half of them dont use the internet. It means trenching fibre is way too expensive. Our wireless sytem works well for us ; we dont do Netflix or gaming, and has a huge advantage if it goes wrong that the engineers are in the local town. We also have 4 G (  25 Mbps) so dont feel too digitally deprived.

Peter

[mpbarrett]

4 hours ago, JohnD said:

I have enthused before about our local Oxfam bookshop, but now I have, IMHO, really scored there!

Adrian Newey, one of the greatest F! car designers, published "How to build a car" in 2017.     I've just bought a copy in pristine condition, don't think its ever been opened, for £5!    Bargain!   Originally five times the price, and on Amazon for three times, I paid and sprinted out of the door, in case they changed their minds.

Support your Oxfam Book shop!   JOhn

excellent book. Had it as a present for Christmas (I did have to drop lots of hints).
Very interesting and lots of detail about F1 car aero design and development....

Really enjoyed it.

mike

[Janner]

4 hours ago, JohnD said:

Support your Oxfam Book shop!   JOhn

John

Like you, we have an Oxfam Book Shop in the city, a short bus ride away

Many don't have that luxury, so, can I widen your exhortation to; 

Support your local charity book shop, be it Oxfam, BHF, Sue Ryder, Helen Rollinson, NT et al.

 

Many kids nowadays, don't read, it's boring!

We have 4 grandchildren, split evenly between the read / don't read camps.

It's a bugger trying to get the don't reads interested and combining the library, for finding interesting books for them, with the charity book shops, for sourcing more of the same, is a fiscal boon for the families.

 

John

 

[richy_rich]

14 hours ago, JohnD said:

Adrian Newey, one of the greatest F! car designers, published "How to build a car" in 2017.     I've just bought a copy in pristine condition, don't think its ever been opened, for £5!    Bargain!   Originally five times the price, and on Amazon for three times, I paid and sprinted out of the door, in case they changed their minds.

Definitely a bargain John, it's a great book.   

One other thing I used to use our library for as a youth was music. Once I had discovered that you weren't restricted to the small selection of Max Bygraves records on the shelf and could actually order records to pick up a week later I was off demanding all kinds of esoterica that I'd heard on the John Peel show.  Most of it was then carefully transferred to the vastly superior format of C90 cassette tape (tsk!) to add a bit of hiss and muffle and was then doomed spend the rest of it's days kicking around the passenger footwell of my (technically my mum's) car.

Again, like with Kindle and books I suppose this service isn't really needed any more either.