Our Friday miscellany

of the week's

news and events

We remain confused as to whether or not Boston Borough Council was a willing player in Wednesday’s “partners” meeting to discuss the progress of the Market Place refurbishment. Readers will recall that after criticism in Tuesday’s Boston Eye of the short notice for the meeting, Boston Borough Council declared that it was nothing to do with them, and that the whole shebang had been organised by Lincolnshire County Council. But a last-minute entry on the Boston Business Improvement District website declared: “This is a follow-up meeting to that held on Thursday 15th September when various issues were raised by local businesses. The project partners, Lincolnshire County Council, Boston Borough Council and Ringway agreed to look at the issues raised and promised to hold a further meeting to review the project’s progress and to address the concerns raised.” A similar story appears on the borough council website. “The project partners are due to hold one of their regular meetings with businesses to discuss the construction phase of the project. The meeting will be attended by representatives from the county and borough councils, Boston Business Improvement District together with the contractor, Ringway Infrastructure Services.” We wonder who represented the council in the end. The two who most mattered were Leader Peter Bedford - who was out of town - and the cabinet town centre su-pre-mo Councillor Derek Richmond - who also had another engagement, but promised to grace the meeting with a 30-minute guest appearance. At worst it appears that Lincolnshire County Council organised the meeting without informing Boston Borough Council. At best it may be that LCC called the meeting and then told Boston as some sort of afterthought - and caught people napping. Either way, Boston needs to wake up and become properly engaged in the vitally important project.
It’s been a while since last we looked at the list of councillors’ attendances at meetings. While most of them still attend all lessons – even though in many cases we wonder why, as they apparently play no part when they do  - the place at the bottom of the list … previously held by Conservative Aaron Spencer, Boston’s youngest councillor … has changed. The new entry is English Democrat Leader David Owens, who failed to attend six meetings in the past three months,and also failed to send apologies. He tells Boston Eye: “It is unfortunate that I have been unable to attend several meetings of late. This is entirely due to a career change that has drawn all my energies for the last few months. Clearly this is most unfortunate and indeed, not planned. However, the project is nearing completion, and once again I intend to be fully involved in my local council work.” In our e-mail to Councillor Owens, we had asked whether his absence was some form of protest – as we had heard rumours to that effect. But his response was clear. “As for protest at meetings, I am afraid to say that from the meetings I have attended it appears we have simply changed the name of the ruling group and the fiasco continues to leave non-cabinet members totally disengaged and out of the loop, with no influence or impact on any matter the ruling party decide to impose.”

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The extent to which the police are withdrawing their service from Boston continues to emerge . They no longer deal with illegal parking, are seldom seen on the streets, and most recently have rewritten our perceptions of their role in controlling anti-social drinking in the town. But we were concerned to come across what appears to be the introduction of two-tier policing, in the form of a “new service”  The item on the right appears in the autumn issue of Boston Mayflower’s newsletter, and tells us: “A new service has been launched following consultation with residents. We recognise not all anti-social behaviour (ASB) occurs while our offices are open, so from 1st October, Mayflower’s residents can report any incidents of ASB outside of office hours by calling 01205 351830. The service sounds to be a real Rolls-Royce -  promising to answer calls within ten seconds, ensure a member of the area team gets in touch the next working day if follow-up action is required, and, amongst other things, allows third party reporting on behalf of Mayflower's residents.What great news if you happen to be a resident of Mayflower – your get own personal police service. But what are the implications for those of us who live elsewhere?  Could it be an even further reduced service?
A visit to the Boston Protest March Facebook page since matters have calmed, discloses the news that a meeting has been arranged with Boston MP Mark Simmonds any time now -to discuss the effects of immigration on Boston. Hopefully this means that he has changed his tune about talking to the hoi-polloi who elected him. Only three weeks ago a local “newspaper” request for a comment about the march, received the reply: “This is an extremely sensitive issue, and Mr Simmonds is in conversations with both Boston Borough Council and Lincolnshire Police.” That was polspeak for b***er off, in case you didn’t know.
With every week that passes, we find ourselves wondering increasingly where Mr Simmonds is coming from. With so many vital local issues demanding his attention, his latest big idea to enhance the lives of his constituents is to lobby the 2012 Olympics Authority to try to get the Olympic torch to visit the constituency. The torch will be in Lincoln overnight on June 27th,  and Mr Simmonds has declared his determination to ensure that people living in Boston and Skegness have an opportunity to engage with it. "To succeed in having the torch come through our part of Lincolnshire would be a very positive beginning to the main Olympic event next year," he says. In what way, pray tell.
Meanwhile, the pro-Tory Boston Standard has given Mr Simmonds a chance to clarify why, even though he “fully understands” our concerns about the UK’s relationship with Europe, and admits that membership now means something entirely different than it did in 1975 (when he was 11 years old,) he voted against a referendum on membership … even though he favours such a vote. Cynics might argue that it boils down to doing what the Tory whips tell him, and then smoothly to explain it away. After all, we are  mere yokels in a brute and beastly shire,  who clearly cannot appreciate grown-up politics. The Standard accorded Mr Simmonds guest columnist status – which he used to re-run one chunk of his explanation from last week’s paper. Still, it saves time - and, after all, time is money.
Elsewhere, the Standard reports what Boston Eye readers were told some weeks ago – that Mr Simmonds earned a mention in the satirical magazine Private Eye for earning £50,000 a year as a strategic adviser to something called Circle Healthcare. Mr Simmonds told the paper that the payment was  on the register of MP’s interests, and  that no rules had been broken. “It is imperative that MPs have an understanding of the ‘real world,’” he added. What the Standard neglects to tell us is that the £50k payment comprises four quarterly instalments of £12,500 - each for ten hours’ work a month . That's £415 an hour. Nice “work” if you can get it – and it reminds us of our entry in last week’s blog  - in which we criticised Boston Borough Council’s apprenticeship rates of £2.71p an hour – totalling £95 for a 35 hour week. Now, that’s what we call the real world.
In a rush of activity, no fewer than eight stories appeared on Boston Borough Council’s website on Wednesday. Of these, more than half had already appeared in that day’s newspapers – which gave the surely unintentional impression that the papers were somehow on the ball  and had  got them in advance of the borough - rather than having been sent them some time earlier. There is never a week when reports and photographs supplied by the council appear in the papers – but the trend increasingly appears to publish them … and the photographs that often accompany them … word-for-word  ... as if they are the paper’s own efforts. Sometimes that impression is reinforced with the use of a byline. Of course, everyone does PR these days, but we worry that the relationship between the council and the local press is becoming slightly too cozy, as the soft option of letting someone else fill your publication becomes harder to resist. We worked at the Boston Standard in the days when it was a newspaper, and recall that reporters were encouraged to get out and about – yes, walk the town’s streets, just as the police used to do – with their eyes and ears open to see and hear what was going on. Somehow we don’t believe that this happens very much any more. Our own walks around town these days never fail to find something of note – shops opening … or more commonly, closing … issues that could be turned into local talking points, people to chat to with tales to tell  – but somehow nothing like this ever finds its way into today's newspapers. The chime that announces “you’ve got mail” is the event that these days signifies another story has arrived to fill some space without the need to leave the desk.
When we expressed concern over Boston Borough Council’s apparent desire to dash to spend cash on solar panels to generate power and save the council money, we were at least happy that the issues would be debated in a thorough manner. Despite the uncomfortably short timescale, the recommendation to the borough’s cabinet meeting on Tuesday was: “That Full Council is recommended to support the installation ... at Geoff Moulder Leisure Complex because of the projected return on investment and energy savings.” But reports of the meeting quote Council Leader Peter Bedford as saying that “the mayor has agreed that such a decision should be treated as urgent.” This apparently means that the matter will  not  now go before the full council – which was due to meet in just over a fortnight,  and which could probably have convened in special session for such an important decision. This means that the decision has been taken on the say so of just seven people – two of whom are new to local council politics – at the urging of a mayor recently quoted as saying “women have far more important things to do, like cook dinner and look after their husbands and families than attend meetings in the evenings.” On this basis, at least £125,000 of council taxpayers’ money is being spent. The mind, as they say, boggles!
Meanwhile whilst our leaders rush to cut the council’s power bills, our neighbours in South Holland are once again showing what can be done if the taxpayers are put first. The district council is preparing to negotiate with energy companies to get cheaper prices for residents, and is believed to be the first authority in the country to buy gas and electricity collectively for domestic customers. Up to 34,000 households in the district spend about £40m on gas and electricity, and South Holland says that its buying power will create huge savings for residents. Geographically, we are so near ... yet ideologically and practically, so far!
On a recent visit to the Boston Business Improvement District website we were reminded of the joke about the man waiting in a queue who tries to short circuit matters with the classic line “do you know who I am …?” and expecting to move to the front. The punchline is that the man in charge of the queue announces over the  public address system ...  “could someone call a doctor, please. We have a customer here who has lost his memory.”
The reminder came when we saw this headline above the BID entry in the section “Discover who the Boston BID are and what we are for.”

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It’s a question that most of us have been asking for some considerable time – and if they don’t know, what hope is there …?
Finally … we mentioned earlier the phrase the “real world”  - and wonder whether the Boston Standard is subscribing to the Simmonds view - given the ideas suggested in a so-called “advertising feature.” The feature – which oddly carries no relevant advertising - suggests ways to make the most of the extra hour since British Summertime ended. The plan is to increase your “beauty prime time” with a series of ideas to look better – like the one below …

Aside from the fact that one’s face becomes “taut” after a winter walk – rather than being given a lesson - you probably get the drift of  the feature. But it was the cost that took our breath away - the proposal that readers living in Boston and following the advice given in the feature should spend  a total of £185 on beauty creams and equipment for just 58 minutes’ initial use!

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Our former blog is archived at: http://bostoneyelincolnshire.blogspot.com