You do not say anything about academic libraries, which are just as vital to the education process as anything in the public sector. Nor do the libraries of SW1 get a mention. No cuts there that I can see. The same libraries minister again will be a perfect fit for what is going to happen. Public sector librarianship practised by professionally qualified librarians is already dead. Time to face up to the fact.

If you are a young person with not much hope of a job then you can join up, fight and die for your country (the U.K. for the time being) but your country cannot afford to allow you to read books funded by local council tax, paid for by the people you are thinking of fighting and dying for. If you should die fighting for your country then only a very well-heeled minority will be able to read books about it, the kind of people who never used public libraries anyway. There will be fewer books, as publishers limit their print runs to take account of the loss of the public library market.

Oh well, perhaps I am overstating my point, but it is a point.