It makes you wonder what the enemy clothes horses were like

I bump into Ken Barmy, who is throwing pineapples at a lamppost in Market Street. He is in a bate.

"You'll never believe the latest proposal," he says.

Given that everyone I'm speaking to these days have either been sent letters asking if they want to take voluntary redundancy; letters telling them that they are at risk of redundancy; letters telling them that they are being made redundant; or all of the above, I shudder to think.

"We're going to Hell in a handcart. They're cutting staff and services and threatening to sell us down the river to a bad master. And all the while our library managers having been wringing their hands and telling us that nothing can be done, but take heart! because they have made sure that the power of the library service strategy stays in their hands.

"And do you know what the end product of a year's high-powered heavy-breathing strategic thinking turns out to be? Do you?"

I confessed I didn't.

"They're going to slap a lick of paint on the fucking wall and change the fucking name of the main fucking library. That's what."

"You don't sound impressed, Ken," I ventured.

"I am sore vexed," he admitted.

The public library service is safe in the hands of people who went to library school.