{"id":1155,"date":"2009-09-26T16:13:09","date_gmt":"2009-09-26T21:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=1155"},"modified":"2013-01-04T14:13:27","modified_gmt":"2013-01-04T19:13:27","slug":"british-libraries-now-afraid-to-lend-scissors-to-patrons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2009\/09\/26\/british-libraries-now-afraid-to-lend-scissors-to-patrons\/","title":{"rendered":"British libraries now afraid to lend scissors to patrons"},"content":{"rendered":"

The staff at the Holborn Library<\/a> in London are apparently very worried about the risk of being attacked by library patrons, so they won’t even lend scissors:<\/p>\n

\n

Lorna Watts, 26, a self-employed dressmaker, was turned down at Holborn Library in central London.<\/p>\n

She said: “It’s ridiculous — public libraries are supposed to be supportive of small businesses.”<\/p>\n

A spokeswoman for Camden Council, which runs the library, has apologised and said it would investigate the incident.<\/p>\n

Ms Watts, from Islington, north London, said: “I asked why I couldn’t borrow a pair of scissors and she said, ‘they are sharp, you might stab me’.<\/p>\n

“I then asked to borrow a guillotine to cut up my leaflets but she refused again — because she said I could hit her over the head with it!” <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The way Britain has been going, I’m surprised they didn’t hit Ms. Watts with an ASBO<\/acronym> for the implied threat here: “It’s absurd — there are plenty of heavy books I could have hit her with if I wanted to.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The staff at the Holborn Library in London are apparently very worried about the risk of being attacked by library patrons, so they won’t even lend scissors: Lorna Watts, 26, a self-employed dressmaker, was turned down at Holborn Library in central London. She said: “It’s ridiculous — public libraries are supposed to be supportive of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8],"tags":[52,298,299],"class_list":["post-1155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-bureaucracy","tag-absurd","tag-libraries","tag-paranoia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-iD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1155"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18442,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155\/revisions\/18442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}