Nominations for next month's elections are in – and as you might expect there are a few surprises.

Cabinet member Claire Rylott  –  portfolio holder for Tourism, Arts, Culture and Heritage – is not seeking re-election, whilst her colleague for the town centre – Nigel Welton, is after a new, safer seat after defecting from Labour.

A number of other councillors are not seeking re-election, and quite a few more are trying to make a comeback after an absence of one or more four year terms.

They include Anne Dorrian - who was a pioneer member of the Boston Bypass Independents all those years ago, and octogenarian Ossy Snell.

A number of UKIP-pers are standing under that party banner, whilst there might we be some confusion for people looking for the right Independent candidate after the Bostonian Independents Group deregistered the party with the electoral commissioners and so cannot use the name on their nomination papers.

Whilst we already knew that several candidates live outside the borough or do not live in their wards, the precise number of candidates in exile will not be known as a large number have decided not to say where they live in the borough.

In total 74 candidates are contesting the 30 seats in the 15 wards up for grabs.

Of these, 26 are refusing to say where they live – all but one confine their information to “address in the Borough of Boston” whilst another owns to an address in South Holland.

In one ward –  Swineshead and Holland Fen –  none of the three candidates say where they live.

Whatever the reason so many are being so coy – and no doubt they will likely claim it is to avoid abuse or annoyance – this is a new and unwanted move … and one which we think says much about these candidates in advance.

One final statistic – then we’ll have a more detailed anaalysis for you next week.

Of the 74 candidates, 26 are Conservative, 22 Labour, 14 Independent, 4 UKIP, 4 Blue Revolution and 3 others and 1 Liberal Democrat.

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The end of last month saw something called Discover Lincolnshire Weekend – which was celebrated by Worst Street with its customary lack of imagination.

The usual suspects – and nothing special or out of the ordinary – were promoted on WorstWeb … which remains as bad as ever, and almost impossible to follow as easily as it used to be.

Whereas other places in the county offered free admission to sites that normally charged – Worst Street listed 'attractions' that normally were free to enter (even including Central Park) and which in many cases were only open on the Saturday.

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This was an example of Boston Borough Council at its can’t be bothered worst – listing something for the sake of it apparently to be involved in a county-wide event, without taking the trouble to lift a finger.

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And among the attractions, it listed one of our favourite bugbears – The Lanes!

To quote the Worst Street handout … “The lanes – the medieval feeder lanes leading to the Market Place. Explore these for unique and individual traders and places to eat and drink some of Lincolnshire’s finest fare.”

What a load of bollocks.

Take Dolphin Lane – pictured below just six months ago on Google street view

There are at least four empty shops – one of which is the disgracefully neglected former Milletts which runs down the lane for at least 40 feet opposite the wall of a pub for another similar distance.

There there's a barber’s shop, a perfume shop, a dry cleaner, a letting agency, a butcher’s shop, a couple of coffee shops, a vaping shop, optician, brow bar, opticians and a florist which also sells fruit and veg.

And what about Emery Lane?

A vast slab of Cash Generator occupies much of the start of the lane from the Market Place, then there’s a pet shop, a card and soft toy shop, a European supermarket, nail bar, jewellers, a tattoo parlour, phone shop, and cafe and a couple of cheap clothes shops.

“Unique and individual traders and places to eat and drink some of Lincolnshire’s finest fare” they are most definitely not – yet amazingly at one time a senior officer in Worst Street likened them to the Shambles in York.

As we said at the time – our lanes are a shambles, but that’s where the resemblance ends.

Luckily for Worst Street, the Trades Descriptions Act doesn’t apply to such desperate and phoney attempts to con visitors, or the council would have been in court time and time again.

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Among the issues we’ve been discussing in recent weeks has been the important one of councillor quality – or the lack of it.

This has prompted an e-mail from our occasional contributor Scanner – whose words of wisdom are well worth noting ...

May will soon be here and, once more, Boston’s residents will be asked to choose our ‘leaders’ for the next four years.

I am a member of a political party, but, over many years it has been regrettable that party politics, self-interest and personal animosity have cast their shadows over the administration in West Street.

The cabinet system, hailed by Labour as democratic and more efficient, has led to a small group making all the decisions knowing that their majority will carry them without any problems.

The councillors’ system of remuneration was altered at the same time. Councillors used to be paid for the number of meetings they attended. This was replaced by a yearly payment ‘decided’ by a so called ‘independent panel.’ In effect, this means that councillors can do as much or as little as they wish without loss of pay. This has led to poorly attended meetings and therefore, I’m sure, some of them not bothering to turn up as the decisions have already been made.

I hope that any new councillors will put the district’s well being and its future before party politics.

I had the pleasure of knowing the former Councillor Mrs. Margaret

Howarth. I didn’t always agree with her but she would have been my ideal

representative on the council.

Mrs. Howarth was Boston from head to toe and became known for standing up for the district at county, regional and national level. She never took no for an answer. Even after she retired as a councillor, she kept her eye on West Street, almost up to the time of her death. I wouldn’t mind betting that Chief Executives had misgivings when they saw her name in their appointments diary. I have a hope that any new councillors will share her passion for the area, forget party politics and have the motivation and courage (yes courage) to work towards solutions to the challenges we have.

I will be judging any prospective candidate myself for these qualities. That’s if any of them manage to reach my doorstep in person. I must be getting old and cynical.

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A couple of weeks ago, we mentioned a farce at a recent meeting of BTAC-ky in which an officer’s report became a frantic photocopying exercise due to lack of foresight when anticipated electronic assistance failed to materialise.

Although complaints to Worst Street are inevitably whitewashed, one was made, nonetheless – receiving a response that included the lines: “The officer was not ill prepared for the meeting, the necessary equipment was not available. He was able to print hard copies of the presentation and hand them round at the meeting so the presentation went ahead as planned – just on paper instead of on the screen.”

BTAC-ky meetings begin at 6-30pm, whilst we imagine that an officer's day ends about an hour earlier – which gives ample time to check the availability and functionality of any necessary equipment.

So really, there was no excuse.

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Which of course does nothing to diminish the downward loyalty which the complaint generated – something that it worrying in itself as it reflects an attitude  from higher up that we could do without.

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Which brings us on to job descriptions

The response to the complaint was signed by Worst Street’s £60,000 a year Head of Place – a job that once upon a time was known more prosaically as Head of Town Centre, Leisure, Events and Culture … more of a mouthful, perhaps but a job we could all understand.

Head of Place is a meaningless job title.

But in Norway, a head of plaice is considered something of a delicacy.

Appropriately for Boston, plaice and flounder are closely related – so at least something makes sense here.

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Another recent post with a questionable title was that of Growth Manager. Can you spot why we don’t like that?

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We mentioned Worst Street’s new look website last week – and we’re sorry to say that it remains as opaque and as bad as ever.

Initially, we gave it the benefit of the doubt and concluded that much of what was wrong with it was down to teething troubles -– but it seems that it will need more than a rub with a drop of Bonjela to ease this painful sore.

One thing that we have noticed is that so much of what was formerly easy to find is now absent ... the news archive is a good example. Whereas Google posts a link to it, the WorstWeb cannot find it. More records that are no longer available.

Once it was possible to browse the council website and learn a lot about about the it, which must surely have its benefits for the authority.

But we wonder if the aim of this new site is to conceal information rather than to share it.

If it is it would be entirely in line with the apparent policy of reducing the data made available to councillors and taxpayers.

Some years ago, a Conservative election candidate told of a unanimous shout of agreement when a demand was made to seize power back from the hands of officers to councillors if the Tories gained a majority.

Whilst the latter occurred the former did not.

The problem now is that senior officers consider themselves the conductors of the Boston Borough Council Brassy Band rather than the instruments, and this attitude needs to be reined back.

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Which brings us back the matter of the arbitrary decision to cancel the recording of council meetings – and the waste of £25,000-plus spent on state of the art recording equipment bought little more than a year ago.

Labour councillor Paul Gleeson tells us: “As I understand it the recording of council meetings was stopped because of the amount of staff time dealing with enquiries, providing extracts of recordings etc. If of course the recordings were made available online, as many councils do, that would not be an issue. If, after the elections, my group is in a position to re-introduce recordings we will do so.”

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That, of course, is if the work-shy officers decide to go along with any such decision.

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Having said that we note some progress being made – although nothing has officially been announced by Worst Street.

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MP Matt Warman told us on his Facebook page how pleased he was that the government has given £145,000 to Boston Borough Council to support rough sleepers in the area ‘into safe and stable accommodation where they can rebuild their lives.’

He said that the money will be used to help rough sleepers into accommodation, increase existing accommodation and providing new temporary accommodation, including night shelters and hostel spaces.
As far as we can discover, Worst Street has had nothing to say about this so far.

But expect to see an advertisement for a two year £25k pa homelessness officer post any time now.

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The second disclosure was by Clive Gibbon – the Economic Development Manager at Boston Borough Council, who told us: “Our Future High Streets bid has now just been submitted. A massive thank you to all stakeholders who attended the consultation workshops, especially those students from our schools and ⁦‪at Boston College – your fantastic ideas and conversations helped bring this about.”

The fund comprises a government kitty of £675 million and a place like Boston needs help badly.

That’s why we hope that more information will be made available soon and also to hear that more input has been received than that of a group of students – helpful though it may have been.

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It’s a couple of years since we published the picture on the left of one of our Welcome to Boston signs in poor condition on the A16 approach to Boston from the south.

Needless to say nothing has been done to improve it.

But now we’ve seen worse.

The appalling mess below is on the Sleaford Road heading east towards Boston from Downtown.

We don’t know whose job it is to look after these signs – but as they are at the moment they say a lot about the powers that be and their attitude to Boston.

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Our Smile of the Week award goes to Lincolnshire County Council and the long-awaited clean-up of St Botolph’s footbridge … something that we pointed out was needed a long time ago.

Ahead of closing the bridge, a spokesman at Clownty Hall told us: “This is a difficult bridge to clean, so we have to bring in specialist equipment to get the job done.”

Specialist equipment?

How far can our council be behind the times when it uses that description for men dangling from ropes with buckets?

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