Almost two years ago, Boston Borough Council took the unusual step of writing to local newspaper editors more or less asking them to sweep the bad news about Boston under the carpet.

The letter was drawn up by the council’s Chief Executive Phil Drury and signed by the four group leaders at the time.

In part, the letter read: “Coverage of Boston appears dominated by negative coverage, both in profile and allocated column inches. We are sure that you will contend that coverage is balanced with a mix of good and bad. That is not our impression. Front pages are dominated by the negative.

“This is a view shared with us by businesses and residents alike who voice concerns about the generally downbeat and negative coverage of the area.

“We are sure you are very aware of the influence on reputation and image that your newspaper can have. We hope will agree with us that we all have a role to play in contributing to a fair and, dare we say, sometimes promotional portrayal of our borough. The council aspires to see improved housing, growth, economic development and tourism maximisation. We believe that you too have a responsibility and contribution to make in this aim.”

The entreaty concluded: “This letter is not about reporting of the council. We accept the rough and tumble of the media reporting and do appreciate your help in reporting on our releases.

“This letter is, however, about your role in our area and the responsibility you assume in supporting this wonderful borough.”

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Whilst there are newspapers that embrace this approach, ours by and large do not.

And to ask their editors to supress negative news because Worst Street can’t do better is a dire admission of failure.

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The letter invited editors to meet with the council to “explore how we could jointly support wider Boston in being the best it can be.”

We have no idea whether the offer was accepted but suspect not as councillors are now playing the same one note samba over and over again – so much so that it’s time to offer them some sort of reality check.

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We start at the ‘top’ with Council 'leader' Michael Cooper.

Writing about the plight of the Pilgrim Hospital in last month’s Simply Boston magazine he criticises the Facebookers and Twitterers of the borough – i.e. the people who live here and pay their council tax – for failing to sport their rose-tinted glasses at every opportunity.

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“I admit to sometimes being a little shocked at some of the content placed on social media about Boston, often ill-informed and damaging to the town's reputation.

“It's not big and it's not clever.

“We are now in competition for medical staff throughout the country and we all can play a small part in promoting Boston so that any professional seeking career advancement who Googles Boston. Lincolnshire is not then put off by what they find. 

“The facts are that there is much here to recommend historic Boston and rural Lincolnshire, especially to those seeking a better quality of life away from the pressures of city living.

“It's not just me who thinks this – independent Royal Horticultural Society judges have awarded Boston three gold in-bloom awards, and they know a thing or two about pleasant environments.”

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The leader’s use of the phrase “it's not big and it's not clever” is an interesting one – giving the implication that locals who criticise Boston do it for reasons of self-aggrandisement and enhancement of their status in the eyes of their peers.

Not only is this insulting, but it is also tosh!

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The in-bloom awards featured strongly in the laments about the poor treatment Boston received at the hands of Grub Street and The Idiot Box.

Councillor Claire Rylott – Portfolio holder for tourism, arts, culture and heritage (at least until we sell it all off) – launched the debate after BBC Look North featured Boston as the backdrop to a Lincolnshire Police report warning of huge cuts to services unless the force gets more financial aid.

“Look North reported tonight a story regarding future loss of policing in LINCOLNSHIRE.” 

She tweeted. “I wonder who decided to use Boston as the backdrop for this story. Well done Boston in Bloom for the 5 awards at EMIB last week. Where’s the local coverage for this?”

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And the following day she tweeted again …

This prompted a tweet from Councillor Paul Skinner apropos, it would appear, of nothing in particular.

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This also rattled the cage of Alison Fairman – chairman of Boston in Bloom – who tweeted “Really sad that ‪@peter_levy ‪@looknorthBBC  totally ignored Boston's five awards for RHS Britain in Bloom. Top large town, best East Mids garden,WW1 memorial and allotments. #sweptheboard #goodnews #we'renotHull

The timing for this was a Levy’s first ‘live’ twitter session for viewers to raise matters of importance to them – and painted him into a corner from which he was forced to acknowledge the award.

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We pointed out last week that awards in the In Bloom competition are allocated by judges walking a route chosen by the competition entrants and in some cases not normally accessible to the public.

And we asked – what we does Boston get out of it at the end of the day? In Lincolnshire last year more than a dozen towns and villages won medals – far too many to make a trip to see a winner a must-do journey for visitors. 

And across the East Midlands, 57 village, town and city groups from six counties entered the competition, as well as a record number of 182   smaller  ‘It’s Your Neighbourhood ‘Award groups.

All in all, 20 gold, 18 silver gilt, 15 silver, three bronze and         one certificate of achievement were awarded.

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About now, it’s worth issuing a reality check on what makes news and what doesn’t.

Clearly, the threat of major cuts to policing in one of the largest counties in your coverage area is an important story – and if your reporter and crew happen to be in the Boston area as the news breaks (which may or may not have been the case) then why drive fifty miles north to avoid making some imaginary slight on the town?

Our local edition of Look North also covers East Yorkshire. Last year the county as a whole drummed up 78 finalists for the In Bloom competition – although it’s not known how many were from the area covered by the show.

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Announcer: Coming up later in the programme, news of the threat of major cuts to the police service in Lincolnshire – but before that, here’s a list of all 57 award winners in East Midlands in Bloom followed by another shedload from East Yorkshire.

Announcer reads list.

Announcer: We had hoped to bring you a report on the threat of major cuts to the police service in Lincolnshire – but I’m afraid we’re out of time. Here’s Paul with the weather …

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Whilst we can understand where Claire Rylott and Alison Fairman are coming from, it’s simply not realistic to put news from the parish pump ahead of something that affects thousands of people and is certain to provoke reaction and comment.

An interesting for instance a few years ago saw a Russian news website try to find good news positives in everything for an entire day .

The result? Traffic almost halved.

And a long time ago in America, a publisher  decided to produce a good news only publication; it went bust within six months.

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Having said all that, we can sympathise with Alison Fairman, who  has probably done more for Boston than anyone else in the past four decades, and who was awarded the first Freedom of the Borough honour to be issued since 2006 to recognise her contribution to the town – which you can read about here ...

Just think – if all the Worst Street councillors and officers who moan about Boston’s coverage in the media did half as much as Mrs Fairman, there would be nothing for them to bleat about.

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Almost a year ago, Worst Street was gifted a £1.39 million grant from the Government's Controlling Migration Fund, to promote community cohesion in partnership with various local charities and organisations.

Projects mentioned at the time included improving access to English lessons and bolstering advice services as well as an increased focus on tackling and remedying the impact that rogue landlords and anti-social behaviour have had on the area. 

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So it came as something of a surprise to learn that £95,000 of the money has been hijacked for a major refurbishment and expansion of Boston's Geoff Moulder Leisure Complex. The work will see the main gym renovated and extended with additional cardio-vascular resistance equipment and free weights.

Quite how this chimes with the declared aim of the grant aid is anyone’s guess.

At the time, Worst Street ‘leader’ Michael Cooper said: "We've been awarded this money in recognition of the impact that migration has had locally. Our partnership will focus on doing things that our residents have told us are important to them.

“We will use the funding to bring people together in various ways including through sport, events and making the most of our physical assets such as St Botolph's Church. We will extend the availability of advice services, enforcement capacity, community leadership and volunteering opportunities and, importantly, we will support the development of English language skills to support people communicate effectively with public services to help save time and money and increase efficiency and effectiveness."

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Quite where tarting up a gym fits in with all this isn’t really explained – although we suspect the use of the ‘sport’ word will be used as a catch all in this case.

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It also appears that the Controlling Migration Fund is becoming all things to all men.

Recently, when Boston’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Councillor Aaron (“We’ve been able to improve our overall budget position since I’ve been doing the job”) Spencer was boasting of his financial prowess in meeting the target to avoid a potential £1 million black hole by 2010, he said: “We have plans in place that we can meet that within the year and the programme is constantly evolving.

“When we first set this target we didn’t have the money from the Controlling Migration Fund, now we’re taking another look at it to see how we can do it differently because we have more money to invest in the place, so maybe we can do it and meet those targets in a different way and potentially out-do them.”

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We may sound like simple souls – but think that the role of a Controlling Migration Fund ought not to include refitting a gymnasium, or helping paper over the cracks caused by reduced government funding.

Another point worth remembering is that the Moulder Complex is on a list of services drawn up by Boston Borough Council's cabinet which could be hived off to outside companies.

Echoes of the PRSA, on which Worst Street faced a bill of £840,000 on repairs and improvements at the PRSA to make it shipshape for its new owners.

And let’s not forget the £749,000 that has been spent on biomass heating at the PRSA and Moulder – and expense that appears to have had scarcely any impact on the conventional gas and electricity bills.

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Hats were thrown into the air when it was announced that Boston was to get yet another coffee shop – this time in the former Clarks shoe shop.

The application was made a year ago, and earlier this year, it was announced that the opening would be delayed until August or thereabouts.

Here we are in October, with the shop still requiring a lot of work, and no reason given as to why it hasn’t opened.

Still we suppose that the owners are doing as best as they can to get things moving.

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A lot earlier, we mentioned BBC Look North – and last week we wondered whether the show was indulging in a little political censorship.

It was during Peter Levy’s first Twitter Q&A.

But when we decided to take a look, we were greeted by the following message.

Our tweet asking why prompted a response from a reader followed by the Bostonian Independents Group to say that he, likewise, has been banned.

After we queried the reason for our ban – we had never tweeted Mr Levy in the past, and nor were we trying to do to on this occasion – the veto was lifted.

But it makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

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Finally, our piece last week on the globe-trotting councillors Alison and Richard Austin saw them get a free puff on WorstWeb, the borough council website.

Beneath the headling 'Boston, USA, visit to set up Boston, Lincs, heritage conference' we were told: “Borough councillors Richard and Alison Austin recently paid a private visit to Boston, Massachusetts, hosted by the Historic Partnership of the two Bostons.

“One of the aims of the visit was to meet the two speakers from America who will be addressing a Boston Heritage Forum conference at the Blackfriars Theatre on September 7^th 2019.

“The title will be Boston and the Foundation of the USA – An Untold Story. Barry Cotton and Eve LaPlante, from the partnership, will be the keynote speakers. The chairman will be the TV presenter and historian Jonathan Foyle.”

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As with last week’s news of the visit, the piece raised more questions than it answered – principal among them why Worst Street made public a private visit after what we hear were some grumbings among other councillors.

Perhaps to paper over some cracks, possibly.

What next on WorstWeb?

Reports on where our councillors spent their holidays?

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We’re back again next week. Join us on Monday 15^th October.

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