I’ll tell you what happens with impossible promises,
Like thinking that, in the world’s fifth richest country,
We can keep libraries open
And offer communities the possibilities
Literacy affords.
You start with far-fetched dreams,
Like children sprawled on the mat
Reading books,
Old people meeting to discuss
The newspapers and fiction,
The unemployed using computers
They can’t afford.
They are then pickled into a rigid dogma,
A code,
Called a comprehensive and efficient service,
And you end up in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council
-a Labour council-
hiring lawyers to scuttle round a city
handing out legal notices to its own people.

Alan Gibbons – award winning children’s author.