EARLIER this month, about 300 Botley residents turned out to attend a meeting about the proposed closure of their library.

Keith Mitchell graced us with his presence and we were given the hard sell about volunteer community libraries.

Apparently, a fleeting weekly visit by a mobile library is part of the so-called quality support network. Quite obviously, those who run the council have no idea of what a high quality support to the community a permanent library can be.

Two sinister implications were made. Firstly, that saving individual libraries would put more pressure on other libraries (although if they intend to close all those on the hit list it can’t make any difference). Secondly, that saving the threatened libraries would lead to greater cuts in other services, the example chosen being adult social care.

This is a low form of moral blackmail, to lever our consciences by suggesting that reprieved libraries would directly lead to human misery.

If the council had not wasted so much money giving Cornmarket more resurfacing jobs than an ageing Hollywood star, fixing 20mph signs all over the city when the police made it quite clear that the limit was unenforcable, coming up with the half-baked Transform Oxford scheme which has led to unnecessary and inconvenient re-siting of bus stops and other forms of financial waste, then there might have been the reserves to weather this storm.

I urge everyone to sign petitions to save their local library.

But here’s another thing. Not only is the online petition on the council website difficult to find, it will only accept one signature from each email address. So in houses with only one email address, it is certain that some people will be unrepresented.

Also, as many library users are elderly and may not have computers, they are likely to be excluded.

Of course, they could always visit their local library and use the computers there.

Obviously, we should all sign the paper petitions in the local libraries or those being circulated by campaigners.

On one final point, last summer, Mr Mitchell came up with the egregious idea that young offenders should be marched down to the local recruiting office and pressed into the armed forces. Perhaps he will soon be suggesting that they could be sentenced to community service as librarians.

Martin Roberts, Stone Close, Botley, Oxford