Knowledge It Used To Be Power

3.30 p.m. The Building Formerly Known As New Cross Library, South East London.

Just another statistic and a building that is now boarded up and left to decay on a faded high street in a poor area of South East London. I'm sure many people in area never even bothered to step inside this Library and will now feel little for it's loss. But, for many it's a loss of not just somewhere to go to borrow books, but of a place to meet people, learn, study, and gain knowledge.

If you don't know the Borough of Lewisham is one of poorest in London. With a high immigrant population and in the Top Ten highest level of youth unemployment in the country, you would think that surely the local library would be haven for people to gain confidence through training courses, careers advice and just simply meeting people in similar situations. To see letters taped to a corrugated shutter from schoolchildren pleading to keep their library as it is a refuge and an oasis of calm for them to study in the midst of a fast moving and chaotic city is heartbreaking. Sadly, successive Labour and Tory governments have no interest in advancing poor communities, there simply isn't any money to made from us. They may talk about getting more poor students into university placings, but it's mere talk and there is no real ideology from any political party to successfully adopt these policies.

Our only course is to keep fighting and possibly adopt the persona of Howard Beale.