Another Government body is up for sale - Land Registry - an organisation that holds all the information on sales and purchases of any property, details of all mortgagees and charges and a lot more.  The Consultation deadline is tomorrow.  I went on and had a look at the Consultation documents and the questionnaire you could fill in and return.  All the questions were weighted to a presupposed sale, which there undoubtedly will be, at a hugely undervalued price, to a Tory Crony.  More locally, Shropshire Council is looking to offload it's responsibilities for Library and Recreation services - as you may have seen from this week's Oswestry Advertizer.

I understand the need to realise cash - especially if you are strapped for it, but these actions are like recklessly flogging the children's bicycles because you need the readies for the lad's night out in Blackpool. 

The Library, and our parks and recreation facilities are vital to our wellbeing, both mentally and physically.  In an age where the government are trying to decrease our girths and increase our educated marketability, you would think that those areas would be safeguarded.

I grew up in a library - it was only a small one, with a teeny tiny children's section, but every day after school, I was in there, doing my homework, reading the huge Encyclopaedias, huddled up to the radiators for warmth. The library allowed me my first glimpse into a world of literature far, far beyond The Famous Five or Secret Seven, and what I gravitated to was Science Fiction - amazing tales of amazing worlds that would lift you out of the magnolia lined walls of the Adult Fiction Section to the nebulous gas clouds of space.  I suppose now films and online games take the place of those books, but there is no imagination required to look at or play an online game.  Reading activated my mind, made me imagine what life was like on a distant planet, made me think about issues of life and death, colonization and integration, loving the alien and much more.  It stretched me mentally and taught me so much. In my home town the library was opposite the park (or 'rec') as we called it, and you could, on  a summer evening, load up eight books on your card and scootle off to the park, plant yourself under a chestnut tree and read to your heart's content.

To lose a library or a green space is a grevious thing.  Shropshire Council have a 'consultation' on the library at the moment, but if it is anything like its last one, it is a pile of Orc Poo.  If you want to save your local assets, you have to fight harder.  If you don't, well the Queen of Maybe will see you now.