Council Officers in Libraries

I saw this tweet from my home County of Essex, which currently has a major controversy going on about public libraries and whether they should be closed (i.e. handed over to "volunteers" in the standard euphemism).  It does something that "campaigners" like to do, but which I consider is quite misleading.

The writer refers to the Cabinet and the CC officers as if the library staff were not Council officers.  Of course they are Council officers as they are employed by the Council.  That is actually one of the points of the Essex campaign, that libraries should continue to be staffed by paid properly trained staff.  I suspect the reason that "campaigners" seek to engage in this kind of sleight of hand is that they like to pretend that all the decisions are being made by some shadowy group of malignant people who know nothing of the services that the Council provides.  Actually admitting that the staff recommending the details of the Essex budget are not in a continuum with the same staff that meet on entering the library cuts across that idea.

It is a dishonest tactic in my view.