Our Friday miscellany

of the week's

news and events

Tonight’s Mayor’s Charity Ball has been cancelled due to lack of support. We’re told: “Ticket sales have been slow, perhaps a victim of the time of year (so soon after the expensive Christmas and New Year period) and the times – we are all feeling the pinch. Various charity events have been cancelled over the years when tickets have not sold, which is to be expected in times of austerity.” That being said, perhaps it might have been advisable to have advertised it a bit more, and set the sights a little lower than a black tie affair costing £30 quid a ticket – although that might have let the riff-raff in. We would also question the Assembly Rooms as a venue these days. The good news is that the Mayor’s chosen charities - the Veterans’ Memorial Plaque Committee and the Boston branch of the Royal British Legion – will benefit from other fundraising efforts by the Mayor and her team during her year in office. And it’s also nice to contemplate a headline “Ball’s off” in connection with the borough council - rather than the usual one which springs to mind …!
Boston’s explanation as to why the borough is bottom of the county recycling league is interesting – but baffling. The borough went from being one of the best recyclers in the country when fortnightly collections were introduced nine years ago, to one of the worst. But the good news is, the council knows why! “The only garden waste collection service we’ve offered over the last few years was the Saturday service where people bring garden waste to the lorries,” the head of environmental operations is quoted as saying. “While this is very well received by hundreds of our residents, many thousands still put their garden waste, or elements of it, into their bins. As a consequence, our recycling performance is worse than all the districts who collect garden waste separately, and is also behind that of South Holland District Council who don’t collect it at all, as a large volume of our garden waste counts towards the landfill total rather than recycling or composting.” Whilst last year’s green waste trial improved matters markedly it does seem an odd form of consolation for Boston’s poor rating …
And speaking of poor ratings, a report this week disclosed that Boston’s “in year” council tax and business rate collection is currently is 2-3% lower than all the other Lincolnshire authorities, and slid below the national average in recent years. If that’s the bad news, then the good news is that Boston eventually collects about 99% in the longer term - after six years. Recently the council wrote off large sums of unpaid tax, and we cannot help but wonder whether some of this might have been collected if it worked a little quicker. It’s now reckoned that between the improvements needed that have been identified in the report, and legislative changes currently taking place, collection rates will improve over the next 12 months. But it’s yet another example - like the Task and Finish report into Boston BID – where we will wait a year to discover whether things have improved instead of checking sooner.
There’s been lots of fanfare about the planned replacement for St Botolph’s Footbridge, which will take the form of a bowstring design. The county’s principal engineer for structures tells us: “We were pleased that so many local people took the time to share their thoughts with us,” but the fact is that only 137 people bothered to complete a questionnaire indicating their preferred choice of design – despite an exhibition of the options.

Of these, 44% supported the Bowstring design above, 39% backed a traditional design and the rest liked a low bowstring truss – unless they confused it with a fashion accessory. As often happens in elections, overall, fewer people voted for the winner than for the other competing options. As we said at the time, one concern we had was that was that the bridge was not illustrated in any proper context – with a largely blank waterside and a huge black hangar-like building which presumably represents the Stump – only shorter! Surely, amidst all the ballyhoo about the Market Place refurbishment, the traditional design pictured below

would have been more suitable – and we would even go so far as to suggest that as it came so close, it should still be chosen. After all, our councils have a history of ignoring taxpayers’ wishes, so why change the habits of a lifetime?
A sharp-eyed reader notes that two councillors make a regular habit of ignoring double yellow lines around the town. One is a regular in West Street despite having a parking pass for use at the rear of the Municipal Buildings. The other – and we’re told an even more frequent parker – “seems to totally ignore the time limit in place to mere mortals of two hours around the Central Park on the occasion he manages to not park on the double yellows. Perhaps their awareness of lack of any parking enforcement in the town leads to this behaviour. One would hope they may change their ways if the council eventually takes over parking issues and tries to turn the issue into a money maker, and that they will be dealt with without any exemption.”
Proof that there’s life after death came in the New Year Honours list - and the award of a CBE to former Boston Borough Council Chief Executive Mark James. Mr James, who left Boston in 2002 to take over at Carmarthenshire County Council, will long be associated with the Boston’s Princess Royal Sports Arena - which he famously promised “won't cost the taxpayer a penny.” In an echo of that, a rugby stadium built for Llanelli Rugby Club, with huge investment of public money from the council, saw serious concerns emerge about the club’s finances after accounts published in 2010 fell short of profit expectations by more than £4m, and revealed losses of more than £3.3m. Plus ca change, etc etc. One thing that may excite some Boston Eye readers, though, was Mr James’s willingness to call the police and see a local blogger arrested for filming a council meeting on her mobile phone.
During our absence, one letter in the local newspapers struck us as the most preposterous excuse to date to justify Into Town buses using Strait Bargate as a rat run. It came from former councillor Sheila Newell who said: “To walk from the Market Place to Wide Bargate is easy and enjoyable for most of us, but clutching bags of shopping, in the snow and the rain with ice underfoot and the bitter wind blowing through Strait Bargate may make those with mobility difficulties, the disabled and the elderly suffer!” Although that sort of weather occurs from time to time, the description makes Boston sound like some Siberian outpost. As far as we are aware, shoppers managed to cover the few yards now travelled by the buses without complaint for several centuries. Using Mrs Newell’s argument, all elderly or disabled people should get a door-to-door pick up to spare any possible suffering. The buses are noisy, intrusive, polluting, and are damaging the surface of the precinct. There is no justification for them to use Strait Bargate other than the fact that it’s easier for the bus company, and that Boston’s “leaders” have kowtowed to Lincolnshire County Council – for a change!
Still looking back – a reader tells us that even though Boxing Day is known to be one of the busiest shopping days of the year, the borough-run public conveniences were closed. Please tell us that it wasn’t so!
We hope that the expectations of the Boston Protest March group concerning the Task and Finish Group due to meet on January 31st are not being raised too high. An entry on their Facebook page reported a meeting to sort out the group and how it will work. ”Meeting went well and we’re looking at the first meeting being held end of January and hopefully fortnightly thereafter. I’ve got five seats on this group and members have been contacted to attend so we’re all set for the first meeting.” Since then there have been suggestions that without an acceptable result, the march could be on again. And if the council felt that the recent talks with Housing and Local Government Minister Grant Shapps would reassure people, it seems that the reverse is the case. Protest group leader Dean Everitt told his Facebook followers: “Love the way the council are trying to cash in on our misery. Let’s make Boston more inviting so we can attract even more migrants to an already over populated town. Well done Mark Simmonds and Peter Bedford GREAT WORK. What muppets.”
With no little sense of pride, the Boston Standard relates how its report about the green “figure” replacing the green “man” on pedestrian controlled crossings appeared on local TV and in the national papers. What it neglects to tells us is that the reports invariably were critical of Boston for excessive political correctness. Thanks, Bos-pratt, we can always use a little more negative publicity around the place. Worse still, when the material is republished out of context, it can make us look even dafter. In the Standard, the comment below from one councillor was quite correct in pointing out the silliness of it all.

But by the time it reached Rod Liddle’s Sunday Times column, the comment had taken on a different emphasis entirely.

Still with the Standard, we wonder at what point a newspaper’s duty to advertisers to publish what they submit clashes with its responsibility not to make the advertiser – and indeed the newspaper - look stupid. The paper which recently brought us the entertaining concept of a bridal rather than a bridle path, this week devoted an entire page to advertising Blackfriars Theatre. A reader drew our attention to the fact that there were now fewer than twenty spelling errors in the large type display – including “monthley, Februaly, wonderfull and escence.” Surely there comes a time when a newspaper must proof read correct what it is sent to publish if for no other reason than its reputation is tarnished if it does not.
We mentioned political correctness earlier – which we think is perfectly captured by the advertisement below, which recently appeared as a Public Notice.

An “end of life, vehicle de-pollution, dismantling and storage facility….”
Would that be what Harold and Albert Steptoe would describe as a scrap yard?

You can write to us at boston.eye@googlemail.com   Your e-mails will be treated in confidence and published anonymously if requested.
Our former blog is archived at: http://bostoneyelincolnshire.blogspot.com