Light at the end of the tunnel ...? or just another train on the way ...?And to cheer us even further, Boston Borough Council has announced its plans for a festive season to remember this year.
It will feature £35,000 worth of new Christmas lights, a marching bagpipe band, Santa with free sweets for a thousand children, a reindeer parade, music, and singing.
The lights will be switched on by the Mayor on November 24th, followed by a traditional Christmas Market on December 10th and 11th .
Boston Borough Council and Boston Business Improvement District are funding the lights between them – with the council chipping in its same old budget of £25,000 - and the BID topping it up with £10,000 from the levy it imposes on the town’s hard-pressed businesses.
Boston Borough Council’s town centre panjandrum, Councillor Derek Richmond, said: “In extremely difficult circumstances we have pulled out all the stops to make the start of this year’s festive season as vibrant as we can.”
“We?” ... “We?”
As far as we can tell, Boston Borough Council is spending the same as always, apart from chucking in at most an hour's worth of this year’s £80,000 mayoral budget for Councillor Mary Wright to press the switch.
We don’t know who’s paying for the reindeer and the clown (although clowns are plentiful and free in the Worst Street chamber) but the sweets have been donated by Dave Edwards, of the town's Edwards Emporium sweet shop, and entertainment from the Scunthorpe and District Pipe Band during the two day traditional market is being sponsored by local businessman Darron Abbott.
At least it sounds as though this year’s event won’t reprise the 2010 fiasco, when a tacky switch-on ceremony was organised for the benefit of local radio, after Boston took some stick for not having a proper event.
However, given that our council can be relied on to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory whenever possible, we trust that someone has already checked that there will be somewhere to hang the lights in the Market Place – where Lincolnshire County Council has promised conditions will be eased around the Christmas period.
Whilst supporting the project, Darron Abbott was critical because the BID agreed to pay £10,000 towards the lights without asking its members – something he debated with the BID “Manager” Niall Armstrong on Tuesday’s Peter Levy show on BBC Radio Lincolnshire.
Mr Armstrong was on his usual form. When confronted by Mr Abbott's charge that the BID guaranteed £10,000 of levy payers' money to the lighting project without consulting them, he retorted: “This is an old gripe of Mr Abbott’s. I didn’t come on to talk about the rights and wrongs of what the BID is doing … Specifically we did not go out to members and ask them if we should spend £10,000 on the Christmas lights, but the way the BID is set up is that members have the right to appoint five directors on to the board the represent their interests, and clearly its not practical ... to go out and consult with 600 individuals on business decisions ...
Stick that in your Christmas stocking liquorice pipe and smoke it!
Such a response came as no surprise to us, but one thing that did cause a sharp intake of breath was Mr Abbott’s disclosure that last year the council paid £20,000 for the erection of the lights – no wonder that its lighting budget is so high.
Anyway, all being well, we’ll have some better lights this year, a switch on ceremony and a clown.
But as Councillor Richmond reminded us: “Money is tight, the Market Place has been a construction site for months because of the long-awaited improvement project, and, nationally, trading conditions for businesses have been difficult. It’s been a year of challenge and pain for gain. Now let’s look forward to a good Christmas period and an even better New Year with the town centre looking its best and most inviting in 2012.”
Fine sentiments.
But when it's all over, the lights go off. The building site returns to life - until March at the earliest – resuming the chaos that has already seen several business go under because of loss of trade. Meanwhile, Boston Borough Council has spent nothing over the odds, whilst struggling businesses have seen £10,000 of the money extorted from them by Boston BID used to shore up the council - contrary to the BID's promises.
It's called the tunnel at the end of the light...
** We had in mind the sanitised children’s version by Burl Ives - although critics of Boston might opt for the Harry McClintock original, and argue that it shows the town in a more realistic light these days ...
“In the Big Rock Candy Mountains … the handouts grow on bushes and you sleep out every night …
“In the Big Rock Candy Mountains … the little streams of alcohol come a-tricklin' down the rocks …
“In the Big Rock Candy Mountains the jails are made of tin. And you can walk right out again as soon as you are in …”
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Our former blog archive is available at: http://bostoneyelincolnshire.blogspot.com
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