Sir – Oxfordshire County Council leader Keith Mitchell cries crocodile tears as he announces that 20 of our county’s much-loved public libraries face closure.

Behaving like some Burmese military dictator, he arrogantly tells us that us that it’s no use us protesting about the closures or organising petitions as there’s no money left in the kitty, yet there is of course enough money to pay the totally outrageous £189,158-a-year salary to Oxfordshire’s chief executive Joanna Simons.

The reality is that Mitchell’s assault on public libraries is ideologically driven and has nothing to do with financial necessity.

Mitchell wants volunteers to step forward to run some of the threatened libraries, as part of the government’s Big Society programme. But the ‘Big Society’ should really be called ‘The Big Con Trick’ as it is a non-too subtle way of introducing back-door privatisation of local services and getting people to work for nothing.

As an Oxfordshire resident, whose local library is one of those earmarked for closure, and also as co-founder of the Campaign for Public Ownership (www.campaign4publicownership.blogspot.

com), a cross-party pressure group formed to defend public services and oppose privatisation, I can assure councillor Mitchell that his plans to destroy Oxfordshire’s excellent public library service will be fought every inch of the way.

Neil Clark, Botley