Very sad to see that all staff looking after the Cuming Museum artefacts have been made redundant, as reported in this week's Southwark News - this at a time when the Labour council has increased its cabinet size (and therefore payments to cabinet members) to include pointless roles such as "Deputy Cabinet Member for Digital Strategy", "Deputy Cabinet Member for Excellence In Design" and "Deputy Cabinet Member for Careers and Employability". Esteemed local historian, Stephen Humphreys, has warned that the collection could be put at risk by this action.
I'm not sure that 'all made redundant' is exactly right - some of them have taken voluntary redundancy for various reasons ...
But what, I believe, it does highlight is the complete and utter disregard that local councils have for their historic collections. Southwark Council now have no-one on staff that knows this particular unique and important collection. It shows a level of disregard for staff that have worked hard to keep the Cuming in local peoples consciousness by running outreach and education projects, after the devastating fire at the Museum. Plus the enormous task starting to oversee the restoration and conservation of their collection.
Running a Museum collection is a skilled and accredited job ... Southwark Council don't appear to recognise this. Or the treasure they have. Unless of course they can put a price on it and sell it off .. which they wouldn't dare do, would they ...??!!
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