Power plays and feet of clay
What certain people in positions of power miss is that libraries are more than just books stacked on shelves.
Tom Petty is dead and Terry Jones (of Monty Python fame) is suffering from dementia. These things, it’s strange to say, seem to strike one a little harder than, for example, the recent massacre in America, tragic as that was. It’s a question of personal distance, of course, something that needs to be factored into the mix to explain such an apparent anomaly.
Closer to home, the untimely death of Hamilton city councillor Philip Yeung, at only 60 years old, will have saddened the whole community connected with such a caring and dedicated man. He was the first ethnic Chinese elected member to the position and respected by all for his hard work and commitment to the city’s wider cultural groupings. Hamilton was made all the better because of his outreach within the deliberations of city council.
There is a time to mourn and a time to celebrate and the Waikato Museum, in its present manifestation, turned 30 this year. As part of the activities to mark the occasion, an exhibition which tracks the history of the institution is on display, showing a chronicle of its development from inception right up to more recent times, with various notables headlined.
In the eyes of some, the institution almost died in the late 1990s when Hamilton City Council, in its wisdom, decided that it didn’t need to be professionally run on a fulltime basis and appointed a director who also moonlighted as a city head librarian. The mana of the institution suffered as a result of this Pythonesque schmozzle and top people left.
This was one of those unfortunate experiments conducted by people who had little knowledge of, or sympathy for, how such institutions are run and operated and, as a consequence, cost us our reputation dearly. The road to recovery has been a long, hard and painful one.
The library also suffered during the same fiasco when long time, loyal, professional personnel were made redundant. There was protest, meetings held, but no one at HCC was listening. It was an expensive debacle in every respect.
It seems like the same scenario is playing itself out over the library again. City councillor Garry Mallett thinks the age of libraries is over. It’s the digital age now and libraries need to be put down or go away and quietly die, according to the man.
Virtual or real is, of course, a false dichotomy. It’s not one or other but both, and libraries nowadays cater for each. What certain people in positions of power miss is that libraries are more than just books stacked on shelves. They have become a kind of community hub and a good deal of learning and activity goes on inside these facilities to do with research, the repository of archival material and early educational endeavours, not to mention venues for book promotions, poetry readings and the like.
They are one of the cultural foundations of a civilised society, begun in ancient times and the digital revolution has merely added to, rather than subtracted from, the grand sum total of that. Libraries are far from dead.
Speaking of things digital, I see that there have been moves afoot among the Waikato District Health Board, fronted by chairman Bob Simcock, to create doctor digital. You can now buy an app that will diagnose your illnesses, terminal or otherwise.
I’m all for empowering the individual but, when it comes to my health, I’d rather rely on the expertise of a real doctor with a lifetime of experience in the field on a person-to-person basis rather than on some electronic gadgetry operating at a distance.
I’m sure many feel the same but that didn’t stop the DHB from spending $8 million purchasing a virtual health system promoted by Simcock who can’t recall doing so and in the absence of what some say was a complete business plan.
Revealingly, there has been reluctance to join the system despite pressure being applied specifically on DHB employees to sign up. Others have been stung by the same idea. Millions spent for little return.
This was the brainchild of DHB chief executive Nigel Murray, since resigned over allegations of lavish spending on overseas travel and accommodation. There’s a pattern emerging here, as there is with Simcock who chose to ignore advice on the appointment of Murray. The chickens have come home to roost and now we have to go through another expensive process of recruitment.
Simcock is the same man who presided over the construction of the $70m Claudelands Event Centre which is now sucking millions each year out of the public purse and Cr Mallett wants to hock it off for a dollar.
Simcock was also associated with the expensive shambles that was the V8 event. When one adds all these things together, it’s not hard to understand why there are many out there who feel that the man has done his time and enough damage to the city already with his poor judgments, overreach and cavalier attitude. ‘‘Free Fallin’’ ain’t the half of it.