In some confusion

GRAHAM Turner's letter in last week's Mercury left me, and no doubt others, in some confusion.

As I understand it Mr Turner was responding to a letter he had received about the library closures in Backwell, Banwell and Congresbury; he eloquently presented the case for closure and advocated multi use facilities to replace them.

He then goes on to explain that only the executive members of the council took this decision and that no councillors outside of the executive took the final decision to close the libraries and terminate the current facilities.

Other councillors he tells us were "able to contribute to the debate, but not vote". He also mentions that closure of those libraries was not an end to the library service to those affected.

This is where I started scratching my head and questioning the premiss of his explanation.

Firstly closing a facility that provides a service to its users is in fact denying that service to its clients so it is, for those users, terminated.

The argument that they can get the service elsewhere does not disguise the fact that that particular service is, albeit supposedly temporarily, closed.

Secondly chief executive Turner explains that only the executive members were responsible for the vote to close the libraries. He fails to mention that all the political representatives on the executive are Conservative councillors.

With more controversial and unpopular cuts in the pipeline and David Cameron warning us that there are hard times to come it would appear that Mr Turner's 'clarifying the situation' is little more than an exercise to shield the policy makers (in our current council that would be the Conservatives) from public criticism at a time when the politics of cuts, cuts, cuts is about to severely threaten our standard of living. Unless of course you're on a fat pension and high salary and when you're told to answer the door and make the tea for your masters that's exactly what you do.

JIM BARTLETT

St Ives Road, Weston