Listen to the people was the resounding chant. Shameful full Lambeth council meeting where the councillors refused to listen to alternative more sensible proposals to deliver savings and instead choose to plough on with plans which will slash its statutory provision of library services with professional staff by 50%. Laura Swaffield the chair of the Friends Of Lambeth Libraries received a standing ovation from the audience for her speech received in stony silence by the councillors. They should give her a gong for her heroic efforts over decades defending libraries. Instead they chose to cheer Lambeth cabinet member Jane Edbrooke who was deeply unconvincing in her defence of these omnishambles proposals. Meanwhile at the same time in a Library Conference in Australia a senior Lambeth officer was deploying full Orwellian spin about Lambeth's Library service if you are on twitter check out #Switch15con Never have I felt prouder to stand alongside the Friends Of Lambeth Libraries. They are a pantheon of passionate doers and guardians of their respective libraries and communities. My pride perhaps can only be exceeded by my admiration for the Crystal Palace residents who have been there for our library from all our 5 boroughs at all of the many public meetings to date. It is a huge privilege to live in an area full of such wonderful people. In the wreckage that our politicians bestow on us we will not forget, nor forgive, but we will look after our own and make things better in a way only Crystal Palace can. The fight will go on. This is not the beginning of the end. Merely the end of the beginning.