Last Wednesday, November 16, a High Court judge ruled Gloucestershire County Council's proposed cuts to the library service to be "unlawful" and condemned its approach as "bad government", saying that it was "important to the rule of law" that the plans be quashed. He ordered the council to scrap them and to pay the plaintiff's legal costs.

Yet anyone reading GCC's own statement about the ruling could be forgiven for thinking that the judge had ruled in favour of, not against, the council.

Furthermore, the judge made it clear that the council's breach of its duties was "substantive, not merely a technical or procedural defect". Yet that same day, council leader Mark Hawthorne told Channel 4 News that GCC had lost on "a very small technical point".

Mr Hawthorne has also been widely quoted as saying "the most important thing here is that the judge said that there is nothing wrong with our plans to transfer some libraries over to communities". In fact, councillor, the most important thing here is that the judge has ruled your current plans unlawful, and has forbidden you to carry them out.

For several months, campaigners – whose approach the judge described as "perfectly reasonable" and "proportionate" – have been warning GCC that its proposed cuts are likely to be in breach of the law. It was bad enough for GCC to ignore those warnings, to press ahead with its unlawful policy, and then – especially in the current financial crisis – to waste taxpayers' money on an attempt to defend it. However, for Cllr Hawthorne to now try to pretend that this judgement is insignificant suggests that he is contemptuous not only of voters but of the law.

– John Dougherty, Stroud.