My Fletters are a long standing feature of such publications that still have a letters page, rather than below the line comments, particularly of course from time to time the Guardian.
I’ve been writing them since the mid-1980s and up to now they have been entirely written by myself and April Fool aside they still will be
However with the development of AI, after checks, its clear that AI tools can write a decent Fletter, albeit perhaps sometimes a little longer than is ideal. There is an example below. It makes good points but the language is flowery and it is an essay not a letter
So I won’t be passing the task of Fletter writing to AI notwithstanding a rather too long list of other things I should be writing, perhaps even including a memoir.
AI Fletter
Dear Editor
It is with no small measure of indignation, and indeed a beard-bristling sense of urgency, that I pen this missive concerning the latest assault on our public libraries. These hallowed institutions, bastions of enlightenment since the days of Victorian philanthropy and the Mechanics’ Institutes, are now under threat from the philistine scythe of austerity, wielded by those who evidently believe that knowledge should be rationed like sugar in wartime.
One might as well propose dismantling the British Museum or burning the collected works of William Morris as suggest closing our libraries. These are not mere buildings filled with books; they are the beating heart of working-class culture, the nurseries of radical thought, and the last refuge for those who seek solace in the wisdom of the past. I recall, as a young man in the 1970s, spending countless hours in the Islington Central Library, poring over pamphlets from the Chartist movement and debating the finer points of Marx with comrades over cups of weak tea. Such experiences are not relics; they are vital.
The government’s claim that digital resources can replace libraries is as hollow as a Tory promise. Not everyone has access to the internet, nor should they be expected to navigate the labyrinthine depths of Google when a kindly librarian can point them to Orwell or Engels. Moreover, the library is a social space—a place where ideas collide, where the unemployed rub shoulders with the retired, and where the seeds of resistance are sown. To lose this is to lose a piece of our collective soul.
I call upon all readers, bearded or otherwise, to rally to the defence of these institutions. Join the campaign, write to your MP, and recall the words of Shelley: “Ye are many—they are few.” The battle for libraries is not just about books; it is about the very idea of a society that values knowledge over profit.
Yours in solidarity and with a firmly set jaw,
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