Time to return to my favourite target: Neil Clark. Always good for light relief combined with nausea, his comments on public libraries was the lead in his latest Morning Star column which was published last Friday. Yet another of his 'good old days' pieces, though he is right to defend public libraries.
The comments section of Clark's blog is always revealing. One of Clark's posters, Mr Piccolo, responding to the piece: "Maybe I am crazy, but I honestly think the neoliberals want regular people to be as ignorant as possible."
Neil Clark @ 21:08 (Monday): "No, you're certainly not crazy: that is exactly what the neoliberals want."
Asked whether he could find find a copy of Salman Rushdie's The Satantic Verses at his local library (in Oxford), Neil Clark wrote at 08:59 (Tuesday): "I very much hope not!" One could have guessed he would see this as an positive part of public provision over any private ownership. In other words Neil, it is can be a means of keeping people ignorant of books and authors you disapprove of. Clearly 'that is exactly what [authoritarians] want' too.
Of Rushdie, Clark writes: "He's a neocon pin-up boy because of his attacks on Islam." But I have written before about his attitude to the Sarkozy government's attempts to ban the burqa in France. Neil Clark rather approves.
