THE VIEW FOM HEREYOU have just two days left to complete the feedback form issued by the IW Council which (so it says) will help assess the likely impact of changes to the IW library services.
If you have not already done so, I implore you to examine this questionnaire. Not because your feedback is in the least important to the council but because you should see exactly what sort of mindset lies behind those who have charge of our libraries.
The form begins with a "library service update", giving details of the likely changes. So far, so good (though less good if you’re already cross about what’s going on.)
Anyway, there it all is, quite nicely set out, especially if we disregard the split infinitive in paragraph three. Still, that’s what happens when you dumb down the reference shelves and remove Fowler’s Modern English Usage.
"We welcome your comments about the likely impact on you and your family," the council then tells us. "Please also complete the questions … You may feel some of them are a little personal but the information we collect will be confidential."
Goodness, we only wanted to return Agatha Christie and take out Pride and Prejudice. What are these personal questions?
"Are you male or female?" Well, we may as well answer that one, though it seems irrelevant in these days of supposed gender equality. Still, the council may not be aware that lots of women can actually read nowadays, even books with quite long words.
"Are you pregnant or have recently given birth?"
This question, quite apart from being woefully ungrammatical, is baffling. Perhaps the council plans to close all libraries in areas where there are pregnant women, on the grounds the brains of these females are not worth considering.
"What age group do you belong to?"
Oh, here we go. Over-65s are incapable of reading anything except Catherine Cookson, you know. Order up a job lot, unless the women have ever experienced childbirth, in which case close the library.
"What is your marital status? Single/married/divorced/civil partnership/co-habiting/widowed?"
Excuse me? Is there a section of the library sealed off to those who haven’t heard the chiming of wedding bells?
Must friends of Dorothy enter the building by the side entrance?
"Do you have a long-standing illness, disability or infirmity? (Long-standing means anything that has troubled you over a period time [sic] that is likely to affect you over a period of time.)"
Well, whatever disabilities we might have, they couldn’t possibly be as crippling as the lunacy of you lot at the IW Council. Oh, and your grammar continues to be rubbish, too.
"Do you consider yourself to be heterosexual/gay/bisexual/other/prefer not to say." Note the right-on use of "gay." The council clearly considers "homosexual" a rude word, despite it being a perfectly respectable term and, unlike "gay", entirely unambiguous.
And what dark thoughts (perhaps of an entire library section kept under lock and key?) have prompted that inquiry about our "other" sexual preferences? Is the Island teeming with people in orgiastic relationships with sheep but who prefer not to tell the council?
"Have you undertaken, or are you undertaking, gender reassignment?"
Having thus intruded so outrageously upon our genetic foibles, what will the council do with this information so it may improve our library services? Order up the deluxe edition of Little Lord Fauntleroy? Provide a help desk for readers who are trying on their bras for the first time?
Then there’s the usual question about our racial ethnicity. Oh goodness gracious me, we’d better stock the shelves with curry cookbooks and talk to these foreigners very slowly and loudly when they come in to borrow them.
And finally: "How would you describe your religion/belief?"
By this time, the answer must be "none".
This council of ours is utterly beyond belief and I fear even God himself can’t save us from its mad ministrations.
I did ring the council to ask who was responsible for this feedback form and what on earth they thought they were up to.
There was a vague muttering about these questions possibly being "compulsory under the law" (if this is true, which I very much doubt, it’s time for us all to riot in the streets) and an undertaking to find out.
At the time of writing, nobody has got back to me.
Ah well, we voters should certainly insist each and every councillor seeking re-election must declare their sexual preferences and tell us whether they
are undertaking gender reassignment.
That’s only fair, isn’t it?