Cashless, digital library is inaccessible to some

Your readers may be interested to know the Royal Borough is not merely cashless because a previous administration oversaw an unaccountable loss of taxpayers’ money but also because we can no longer use cash in any of the borough’s libraries.

Under the pretext of saving from not paying Securicor to pick up money from the tills, technocratic and commercial interests are shaping society to be regulated increasingly by artificial intelligence.

While the officially ruling Right are obsessed with saving money regardless of the social consequences, the unofficial Left rule more surreptitiously via management courses and human resources manuals.

In both cases ideology triumphs over common sense and we are left feeling increasingly ignored, powerless, and living in an uncaring and impersonal world.

Seemingly not intelligent enough to realise that people use library computers because they have no internet access of their own and were completely cut off during lockdown, the library carried out its recent consultation and modernisation exercise by email and now wonders where its users have gone.

Meanwhile, I am still awaiting a rational explanation as to why reception librarians are cruelly obliged to stand on their feet all day, and why librarians in general are no longer encouraged to enforce silence or prevent badly behaved children from running around and shouting while their elders are engaged in study.

BEVIS BEAUVAIS Hor ton