Election escape

I have been following the election with a certain amount of interest, despite the ringing silence about the future of libraries from most of the main parties (if you have heard anything of any value from any politician please let me know). Yet it does strike me that the library is one of the few places you can go that is an election free zone - yes, we have a poster up telling you about the election, in the window, but it is small, albeit pink, and easily avoided. We have newspapers, and we have the internet if you seek them out, but there will be no-one haranguing you or asking you your voting intentions - a very real hazard in some towns and cities at the moment. Even the councillors, who usually hold surgeries in our library, have departed for a month to hit the campaign trail, so we are truly apolitical.
Unless you count the local blokes who sit in the library setting the world to rights very loudly before heading off to the pub in the afternoon, of course. I did suggest that if we installed a barrel of ale under the counter they would stay all day, thereby improving our visitor numbers, but this idea was not taken up. Beer and a book - it's a winner surely? I'd vote for it anyway. Caffeine addicts can get their fix in many a library these days, so why not cider lovers and ale drinkers too. Maybe I should stand for parliament on a libraries and lager ticket....although of course Dorothea never has anything more than a small sherry....