Communications appear to have sunk to a new low with the network volunteer group that is seeking to have their business proposal taken seriously by the community this week with regard to the local library.
In a comment posted by their new communications supremo, Daniel Brookbank he says, ‘it’s a pity that only the friends of Pevensey Bay Library are the only ones that Bay Life promotes, one wonders if there’s some kind of financial incentive’.
One wonders of course what one is saying does one not? Does one begin to wonder what one does with Daniel Brookbank?
There is no payment for the publication of articles about the Friends of Pevesey Bay LIbrary. and there is no financial arrangement
We have supported the Friends of Pevensey Bay Library for two and a half years, since the day after the flood in the library in January 2015, and we will continue to support the Friends in their efforts to save the library in Pevensey Bay library.
Daniel Brookbank also makes the claim that the article is plagiarising in some way the work of his own group. That claim is hard to fathom taken at either face value or with scrutiny.
The article considers research done with regard to the notion of subscription libraries in this country and current business models with subscription memberships in community venture libraries across the country.
On the same day that Daniel Brookbank infers that this publication has a financial incentive of some description in relationship to the Friends of Pevensey Bay Library, we are also sent a media release by this group, which, presumably it is intended that we publish.
You could not make up this sequence of events if you tried could you?
Why will we not publish media releases by this group? We would have thought that the question is pleadingly obvious.
So many of their claims are open to question, that is why.
As their proposal fragments with the kinds of display seen at the extraordinary parish council meeting held on January 30, people will be left to wonder how much longer this proposal will continue.
The four people that spoke on their behalf were ill briefed.
When local choir director Diana Terry spoke on their behalf, the show was all but over.
Confusing councillors into wondering whether it was her or William Morris that set up the National Trust, she went on to claim that 382 people had signed a petition in support of their proposal.
This was not the case. The 382 people had signed a petition to save the local library, most of those people, we would surmise, were not even aware that in adding their signatures, they were, in the process, being signed up to this particular group and their proposal.
Like so much else done by this group for a significant length of time, in the view of Bay LIfe, there is manipulation of facts in their attempts to see their proposal taken seriously.
The kinds of communication now being undertaken on their behalf by Daniel Brookbank are not helping their case.
No doubt at some point, what this group is doing will be opened to public test of some description.
What would be helpful is if the group began to consider the future of the library and the question of sustainability, rather than their own concerns.
Whatever happened to the notion of a library, self-education and self-enlightenment and the cause of the story of libraries in this country? Are we entitled to ask why they talk so little about the public purpose of a library, or would that be too much to ask?
It is clear that a subscription model for the library of some description, is resonating in some way with the local community.
Bay Life, both as a web platform and as a newspaper, will continue to support the Friends of Pevensey Bay Library, as we have done over the last two and a half years, and the development of their proposal and business plan to found a sustainable local library, here in the heart of this community, that is fit for the 21st century.
Simon Montgomery
Editor, Bay Life
