Eideard

The library at Stony Stratford, on the outskirts of Milton Keynes, looks like the aftermath of a crime, its shell-shocked staff presiding over an expanse of emptied shelves. Only a few days ago they held 16,000 volumes.

Now, after a campaign on Facebook, there are none. Every library user was urged to pick their full entitlement of 15 books, take them away and keep them for a week. The idea was to empty the shelves by closing time on Saturday: in fact with 24 hours to go, the last sad bundle of self-help and practical mechanics books was stamped out. Robert Gifford, chair of Stony Stratford town council, planned to collect his books when he got home from work in London, but left it too late.

The empty shelves, as the library users want to demonstrate, represent the gaping void in their community if Milton Keynes council gets its way. Stony Stratford, an ancient Buckinghamshire market town famous only for its claim that the two pubs, the Cock and the Bull, are the origin of the phrase “a cock and bull story”, was one of the communities incorporated in the new town in 1967. The Liberal Democrat council, made a unitary authority in 1997, now faces budget cuts of £25m and is consulting on closing at least two of 10 outlying branch libraries.

Stony Stratford council got wind in December and wrote to all 6,000 residents – not entirely disinterestedly, as the council meets in the library, like many other groups in the town. “In theory the closure is only out for consultation,” Gifford said, “but if we sit back it will be too late. One man stopped me in the street and said, ‘The library is the one place where you find five-year-olds and 90-year-olds together, and it’s where young people learn to be proper citizens’. It’s crazy even to consider closing it.”

Beancounters never think of the support such services provide to the future of a community. I’ve written a number of times of the value and direction provided to my life by weekly visits to our neighborhood Carnegie Library. It was a regular part of Saturday recreation for my mother and sister and me.

Milton Keynes Council should support libraries and independent learning – not work at spoiling the process for others.

A mother in England was penalized financially for spending too long with her baby son’s body before it was cremated.

The crematorium, operated by the Milton Keynes Borough Council in Buckinghamshire, said the additional $145 charge is routine when a funeral runs overtime, The Daily Mail reported. The penalty was more than twice as big as the $54 fee for cremation for a baby…

“The vicar had asked if I would like to spend a bit more time saying goodbye,” Terrie Rouse told the newspaper. “I sat by the coffin for 10 minutes, telling my son how much we loved him and begging him not to be scared.”

Rouse’s son, Zane, died in April of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome at the age of 5 weeks. Her partner, Lee Smythe, said the funeral was delayed because of tests done on the boy’s tiny body.

“It was distressing enough having to wait for the funeral because we were left in limbo, but this has just made it all worse,” Smythe said. “If we had overrun by 30 minutes and had held up proceedings for other people I would understand but this was 10 minutes.”

After this all hit the news, the council said the penalty will not be charged because of “extenuating circumstances.”

House of Divine in glamorous Milton Keynes tweeted to say that Lucia and Karol were working on Sunday while another message offered a “Twitter Discount”. The operation has been exposed in The Sun newspaper, which trumpets: “A BROTHEL is touting its services via social networking site TWITTER.”

Since “adult services” have previously managed to use other communications systems — postal services, telephones, shop windows, email, the web, advertisements in tabloid newspapers — this shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, but brothel stories are probably good for raising your circulation (fnar fnar).

Whether Twitter is good for business is another matter; the @DivineMK account only has 72 followers at the time of writing, and some of them don’t look like potential customers. Since any Twitter user can see who is following an account, this is hardly private. An email circular would provide a more useful and more confidential information network…

The Sun briefly conveyed its outrage with a quote: “Lib-Dem MP Julia Goldsworthy labelled the brothel’s use of Twitter ‘cynical and inappropriate’.” However, @jgoldsworthy — MP for Falmouth and Camborne, which is some way from Milton Keynes — wasn’t outraged enough to comment on her own Twitter account or, so far, her own web site. Nor has she taken up my invitation to DM me.

Har!