After our last couple of blogs looking at attendances – or rather the lack of them – by some of your local councillors, we read of a timely intervention from Thurrock Council  in Essex calling for voters to have the power to recall councillors that fail to attend meetings or are convicted of a crime.

The council has written to local government minister, Sajid Javid, calling for the Government to introduce new legislation making it easier to get rid of councillors in the event of a ‘significant conduct or ethical breach’.

This would include attending less than 20% of council meetings, being convicted of a crime since the election, breaching the members' code of conduct or failing to engage in constituency work for six months.

The council’s deputy leader, Shane Hebb, was quoted on the LocalGov website as saying: “As councillors, we are effectively immune from our residents calling time on any bad practices until a future election.

“It is the belief of this council that significant lapses of judgement and behaviour warrant sanction far sooner in some instances – and that our bosses – the electorate, should have a say in calling time on such elected representatives.”

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Ten out of ten to Thurrock – which clearly has similar problems to Boston ... as many other local authorities doubtless do as well.

It does seem strange to us that whilst Worst Street sets targets for all manner of things, they mostly apply to staff rather than councillors.

For instance, there is an overall target for absences due to sickness among staff of seven days in the 2016-2017 year … which has been slightly exceeded to stand at 8.6 days.

We have no doubt that in cases where absences are even longer, consideration is given to early retirement on health grounds.

But some councillors can knock up an absence rate of 60% or more from the meetings they are expected to attend without anyone batting an eyelid – and they’re not even under the weather!

Back in June, Council leader Michael Cooper declared:  “I am passionate about Boston and the wider borough and I have a gritty determination to make life here better for everyone.”

Perhaps that could include inculcating this attitude  into some of his colleagues to attend meetings more regularly, and assert themselves more rigorously.

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With its casual abuse of the Data Protection Act, an e-mail arrived in our private mail box from Boston Borough Council last week telling us: “We are no longer emptying blue recyclable bins that contain plastic bags.

“All recyclable waste MUST be loose in your blue bin. Blue recycling bags can be used for excess waste only and will be collected if they are left at the side of your bin on your collection day but must not be placed into your blue bin …

“ … Bin liners cannot be recycled and can hide items which at best cannot be recycled and at worst may pose a hazard to our collectors and sorters.

“Any blue bins that contain plastic bags from now will be classed as contaminated and your bin will be rejected.”

A slightly more civil version appeared on the Worst Street website also told us that bin liners cannot be recycled and that recently such a bag was found to contain dozens of used hypodermic needles.

We suspect that the used needle episode is at the heart of all this – as people have been bagging rubbish to go in their blue bins for years … yet only now are we told that they are non-recyclable.

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What used to be the simple act of throwing rubbish away has now become a minefield of rules and regulations if you live in Boston – and bin lorries are a mobile fortress in their own right.

They bristle with CCTV cameras “to reduce the risk of fraudulent claims for damages or injury, fraudulent insurance claims in respect of accidents and incidents, as well as to improve safety, efficiency, performance and customer service.”

Worst Street brags that the cameras have also been used when residents have claimed their bin has been missed – and in the vast majority of cases CCTV has shown that either the bins were not out by collection time, the wrong bins were left out or the bins were not correctly presented.

This sounds to be something of a sledgehammer to crack a nut – and as is so often the case with the Worst Street attitude to its taxpayers, assumes them to be deceitful and dishonest.

If we found our car damaged in the morning of a collection day when it wasn’t the night before, a reasonable assumption might be that it could have been caused by a council bin lorry .. and we would at least check to see if that was the case.

It’s an interesting juxtaposition of phrases that the council puts the reduction of fraud ahead of improving efficiency and places customer service last.

In the early days of the camera coverage, the council even went so far as to boast that  CCTV provided evidence of the crime of driving without due care and attention  after  an impatient car driver “put bin men in danger by overtaking the lorry on the footpath.”

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In the past, whenever we shredded unwanted documents, we put the confetti in a plastic bag (a recyclable one, no less) and from there into our blue bin.

Now it must be bagged and put in the green household bin – where it will end up unnecessarily in landfill. Another step backwards for the Worst Street high heidyins.

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By an interesting contrast, another episode involving discarded needles failed to get the response expected by Boston Borough Council

A local “newspaper” recently reported the story of a woman who used a nappy to remove drug needles from a park in order to protect children and pets from harm.

The report said she saw the needles in the skate park in Skirbeck Road, Boston, on a Friday lunchtime.

She said she called Boston Borough Council and was assured the two syringes would be removed.

But when she returned to the park on the next day,  she said the needles were still there.

"There were two needles at the entrance to the park. I rang the council and reported it and they said they'd be removed straight away.

"I went back on Saturday morning and they were still there.

"I was shocked to see these needles – it's just a play area.

"I took a spare nappy out of my bag and used it to pick up the needles so I didn't have to touch them with my bare hands and put them in a dog bin.

A spokesman for Boston Borough Council was quoted as saying: "We have no record of this being reported to us. It would have been an easy one to deal with as the location is opposite our environmental services depot where the staff who deal with such things are based.

"Placing the needles in a dog bin should not be done as our staff also empty those bins and then there is a risk of them being injured.”

We find it hard to imagine making a mistake about ‘phoning Worst Street – although perhaps to the list of taxpayer wrongdoings such as fraud and deceit, we would add the crime of Making Things Up

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The idea that if things are broken, they don’t need fixing has never really caught on in Worst Street.

Even after at long last getting a handle on providing Christmas lights in Boston by appointing a “civilian” committee to do what it couldn’t seem to manage, the meddling municipality can’t keep its grubby fingers out of the Christmas pudding.

Out of the blue – and to the surprise of some members of the Christmas lighting group – Worst Street has announced an additional festive market on Sunday 17^th December starting at 9.30am with a range of stalls and festive entertainment, and a visit from the Ice Queen and Jack Frost.

In the afternoon there will be a free screening of the film Elf in Boston Stump.

Yet again, though, the event has  a tinge of unpreparedness about it, as the Worst Street website tells us that the market still has room for more traders.

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Talk of Christmas returns us yet again to the question of what remains from the £35,000 gifted by BTAC-ky last year to the Boston Town Team.

The lion’s share of the cost went on projecting Christmassy pictures on to the Boots and Cancer Research shops.

There has since been the matter of whether the two projectors used were bought or hired – and if they were bought (which at a combined cost of £25k seems more likely) – then who owns them, and where are they?

Certainly there has been no mention that they might be used this year – but we need to find out which black hole is now home to such a large sum of taxpayers’ cash.

Nothing has been heard of Boston Town Team – part of the Lincoln-based county Chamber of Commerce – for an age.

Its website invites us to its annual general meeting in September last year – whilst the most recent entry on its Twitter page is “looking forward” to the launch of the Lego model of Boston Stump … more than a year ago.

The BTAC-ky minutes for last November’s meeting say:

“With respect to 2017, the Town Team had just met and had agreed to re-evaluate the process in January …

“… A report would be made back to BTAC, though it was recognised that the committee’s contribution had been a one-off payment …

“Costs would reduce to £13,860 in 2017 and would reduce still further in the following two years …

“ …With an early start in 2017 with respect to funding requests and a local campaign to promote sponsorship they would get more people on board.”

We’re waiting …

Perhaps someone in BTAC-ky should be asking questions.

  

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It must be difficult playing politics when contentions issues receive publicly – but that seems to be what our MP Matt Warman is doing.

The recent data from the Office for National Statistics showing that more than 50% per cent of babies born in Boston had one foreign-born parent compared with the average across Lincolnshire of 23 % apparently prompted the comment that the figures showed that immigrants to the area were committed to their adopted country.

Mr Warman is quoted as saying: “It's common knowledge that thousands of people have come from abroad to live and make their homes in Boston – the fact that these new communities go on to have children in our local area is often testament both to their commitment to their adopted country but also to the unprecedented strain that our NHS is under.

“It's why I've continued to press for further investment in hospitals and also in schools, as well as in community integration initiatives.

“Lincolnshire's health budget is rising, but I believe it needs to rise further to deal with on-going pressures.”

Some might agree with his latter claim and question his used of the word commitment.

We couldn’t possibly comment on what is really a case of damning with faint praise.

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Our piece last week about the diminishing availability of the Boston sub-Standard from our local shops prompted a reader to e-mail: “We asked for the Standard 5/6 weeks ago in WH Smith and were told ‘head office won’t allow us to sell it anymore!’

“What?  It can be bought from Johnson’s garden centre on Wainfleet Road if you’ve got transport!

“But the Standard really does not promote Boston in any way – you might as well call it the Lincoln standard!

“Love reading your blog – keep it up! Thanks”

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We have received some feedback from former Boston councillor Carol Taylor over our comments last week about drinking in Central Park – when we questioned the future of the planned Oktoberfest beer festival after Worst Street declared that drinking in the park was banned and cancelled a licensed bar for last week’s film shows there.

“The saga of drinking/not drinking in the park will continue due to confusion by all of us!” Ms Taylor  wrote to say.

“My interpretation of this is twofold.

“No drinking in the park to me means unlicensed/unsupervised drinking.

“Drinking of alcohol is permitted in a controlled environment under the full licensing laws.

“Perhaps I am wrong, although there seems to be no right or wrong – just different opinions.

“I agree that there should be no drinking when the events are for children.

“When it comes to Oktoberfest, it is about experiencing different types of beer in a controlled situation.

“The amount of criticism of the council is endless from the good people of Boston. 
“The council can’t get anything right no matter what they do.”

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Every so often Boston’s former Chief Executive Mark James makes the headlines in Carmarthenshire where he moved after leaving Worst Street.

It’s inevitably controversial stuff – he recreated the Princess Royal Sports Area fiasco in Wales at a cost to the public purse of many millions of pounds, and has been involved in a long running legal wrangle with a local blogger after he took exception to her comments and sued.

Now another former chief – Nicola Bulbeck – who followed Mr James into office in 2002, is in the news after Teignbridge Council rejected a weekly newspaper’s Freedom of Information request because of the “unnecessary distress” it would cause her.

Ms Bulbeck, who served as the authority’s chief executive until June, is in the spotlight after a whistle-blower released figures which showed that she left with £160,000 towards her pension and £160,000 of redundancy pay.

Reports say she also caused “uproar” last year when she was given a 12% pay rise which saw her total pay package increase to just under £142,000.

In turning down the FoI request, the authority said the information concerned Ms Bulbeck’s private life because it related to her “identity and financial standing”.

But the newspaper now intends to appeal against the decision to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

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Finally, the tweet below caught our eye and tickled our funny bone at the same time

We don’t know about you but this is the oddest demonstration of “action” that we’ve encountered for quite a while!

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Cartoon photo credit: Mleesmith.com