IF services go or libraries close down, then community spaces go. So these proposed cuts would, in effect, cut space for the community. 

That’s space that doesn’t exist to make profit, space that doesn’t exist to make rich people richer, or to make money for a corporation.

I want to support the libraries and the services they provide within the community I grew up in, because it’s important people read and it’s important people learn together.  

It’s especially important in diverse communities like Grays that people get along – it’s an extremely diverse borough –  and places like libraries are some of the only community services left that support that. 

Because it’s a library, it’s sending out an important message, not just for learning, but for the community, to remind  them that many of the things important in life are not bought. 

It’s clearly a lesson we need reminding of.

As a self-taught polymath and autodidact, books were incredibly important to me.

A future for children without proper library services is a future I would resist with every fibre of my body and urge children and their parents to make a stand with me. 

I believe every area of the borough should have a library, that is why I am backing the Gazette’s campaign.

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