A disturbing story has come out of the UK in the last few days. Apparently, British pensioners, hard hit by an exceptionally cold winter, and a 40% increase in the price of natural gas, have taken to burning books to keep warm. With a 20kg bag of coal costing over $8, and a decent sized hard back book selling for about 8c, some people have been raiding used bookstores to find cheap fuel. According to a report on Metro.co.uk a charity shop in South Wales has seen senior citizens snapping up volumes of old encyclopedias to keep their fires lit overnight, because they burn slowly and are cheaper than coal.
I see two issues here: First, it is an abomination that the elderly should be driven to such straits. If a society is to be judged by how it treats its most vulnerable members then this is a terrible indictment of modern Britain. I have a recurring vision of octogenarians struggling through the snow and ice in order to carry home heavy loads of obsolete Encyclopaedia Britannicas. Either the structure of family life has broken down to such an extent that the elderly are left to fend for themselves, or socialism, the substitute for the family, has failed. This should not happen, especially in one of the most prosperous and advanced countries in the world.
There is, however, a second isuue, which probably should not concern me, but it does. What on earth are they burning? Some of the most valuable books in my collection came from charity shops. For example, I have a full set of the works of G. Campbell Morgan, in about a dozen volumes, that is one of my treasures. I bought the lot for five pounds in a jumble sale in Newcastle. I have a 1630 Thomas Buck Bible, printed in Cambridge, which I also picked up for five pounds. I wonder how many old family Bibles are going up in flames? I wonder how many priceless volumes are being sacrificed in order to keep people warm?
People are more valuable than books, of course. But I can't help remembering how the fall of great civilizations has often been accompanied by the burning of books. To burn a library is to destroy a symbol of the accumulated wisdom of the society that is passing away. Maybe that image is just a little too close to the truth?
Image credit: maddogfargo.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html
1 comment:
That's awful!
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