I acknowlede that you are bending over backwards to be fair. This is always appreciated and why you can be trusted by all.

I think fair points here. The message I was trying to put across is that library members of staff are human too. Let’s give you a string of hypotheticals here to show what I am saying … I have seen some fairly personal insults directed at library workers over the years and I’d think that some over the years have been tempted, however privately, not to feel wounded by such comments and not like those insulting them. As such, it would be human but entirely unjustifiable to say something to that effect in private. And if that private comment was ever FOI’d then the person who said that, quite rightly, may then be disciplined or lose their job. You and I, and everyone, sends private emails and many of those – well OK not perhaps everyone – would be humiliated if they became public. So I’m saying that private work emails should be treated, in the light of this FOI, as public emails. That’s all.

As for visiting a library unannounced, again I can see some purpose to this, as long as one also meets the campaigners as well at a different date. The councillor is not going to learn anything about the branch if he is met with a bunch of people with placards. He or she will just be dealing with them and not seeing the library itself. It is a different matter if, as you suggest with Mr Vaizey, he had no intention of meeting the campaigners at any point. By my lights, the campaigners (or loyal library users would be another term) should have been met with as well.

By the way, don’t mistake me for having any extra wisdom or secret information in this. I am a junior library manager and unaffected by such heady considerations in my day job. I am also at least 200 miles away from Devon. All I am saying here is the implications that the case has. Almost like a lawyer, heavens save me.

How widely held by public servants are these sentiments that such a warning needs to be issued??

Viz the Axminster email strings reproduced on Twitter – the one discussing how to keep an official visit to the library quiet so as to avoid campaigners – Isn’t Devon’s chief librarian (and current president of the Society of Chief Librarians) agreeing with the wisdom of perpetrating a subterfuge? Have I misunderstood what she said?

Reminds me of a time, years ago now, when Ed Vaizey rolled up at my Library in Swindon, unannounced, even though what had triggered his visit was campaigner protest. He and his local entourage met no-one, of course. Didn’t want to see the common people, one presumes.

Is such contempt for the public excusable when ministers, senior staff and councillors are having “a stressful and busy time”? Sorry, I do not agree. People whose library service is being ruined are having the “stressful time” and unlike these officials are not paid to have it.

We, the public, need to see these people’s true colours, so as to have an accurate measure of their worth. If we conclude from indiscretions that the behaviour appears pretty despicable, then so be it. Do NOT pile insult upon injury be advising public servants to be even more duplicitous!