Our weekly miscellany

of the week's

news and events

We’re uncertain about all the flag waving following the news that Boston’s Guildhall Museum has reported a record number of visitors after scrapping admission charges last year. Numbers rose to around 8,000 – up from 2,400 in 2010. But then it’s not surprising that people will visit something when admission is free. Given that Boston’s income from tourism was worth almost £50 million in 2009  it really seems a drop in the ocean. Time and again – and this latest piece of gung-ho PR was no exception  –  the historically inaccurate information that the museum “is best known as the place where the Pilgrim Fathers were tried and imprisoned” is trotted out. According to the history books, the group known as the Pilgrim Fathers set sail for the New World aboard the Mayflower in 1620. The hapless band referred to in Boston’s version of history was arrested trying to depart for Holland some thirteen years earlier in 1607. They used bribery to charter a boat but were turned in to the authorities in a sting operation which saw most of them spend a month in the Guildhall. Perhaps now that we plan to erase the name of Pilgrim from our local council wards, we should think about setting this other record straight as well –  although somehow, the Scrooby Pilgrims doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Talking of the Guildhall, one of our readers spent a few days at a holiday cottage in the Lincolnshire Wolds near Horncastle last week.  For the benefit of holidaymakers, there were piles and piles of brochures showing local places of interest. Unfortunately, only one of these mentioned Boston – a leaflet for the Guildhall advertising free admission “until April 2012!” Who’s in charge of this sort of thing?
We hope that the economic storm clouds aren’t beginning to loom again after the latest shop vacancy snapshot from the Local Data Company.
The report says that the first quarter saw a rise in the national shop vacancy rate to its highest level at 14.6%  – which equates nationally to 47,497 empty shops. Within the county, Lincoln’s Eastgate shopping centre was rated among the best, but our neighbour, Spalding, was listed second out of the five centres with the worst change over a year.
Which reminds us … Later this month, we will hear the result of Boston’s application for £100,000 to be a Portas Pilot – one of 371 towns that want to win this special funding. Having seen the local effort, we shan’t be nipping into Joe Coral’s to bet on Boston’s chances of success. But either way,  perhaps the front of house organisation for the application – Boston Business Improvement District – should splash out on a spellchecker.  A reader points out that the BID’s website list of what’s on events mentions three separate celebrations of the Queen’s “Diamon” Jubilee. Unless they can’t pronounce their “ds” at the BID, we assume that someone is just being sloppy – but let’s not forget that the BID website is supposed to be a showcase for the town. Not only that, but they might like to note that Boston May Fair is in town until Saturday 12^{th -} and did not end yesterday as claimed!
Our contribution from Boston's Independent County Councillor Ray Newell earlier this week –  lamenting the lack of resources for Boston given predictions of a 12,000 increase in population in the next eight years –  arrived around the same time as an e-mail from another reader concerned about the rapid expansion at Wrangle.  “When we moved here eight years ago the village was quiet apart from the tractors on our road - which of course we expected because it is a farming area,” he wrote. “We got used to the fact that our doctors also doled out prescriptions from the surgery (you go to a pharmacy in the south of England with your prescription). But these days instead of being able to get an appointment within a couple of days you have to wait two weeks unless it’s an emergency, and one week for a repeat prescription. As the government won’t allow life-saving drugs to be given for more than one month, it means that by the time you get them, it’s time to ring up for the next lot. I asked our Old Leake medical centre why it was taking so long to get prescriptions ready to be told that the increase in migrant workers had overloaded the system.  I would recommend that if Staples wants to increase the population of Old Leake/Wrangle further, then they should be made to subsidise or to build a new doctors’ surgery to take this influx of more workers, because let’s be honest no one in Old Leake/Wrangle is going to benefit from this raising of the population apart from Staples themselves.”
Of course, key to any major development these days is affordable housing – which we will need in quantity fairly urgently if Boston’s predicted population explosion occurs. It’s therefore worrying to hear that a housing development in Skegness –  which won permission on condition that it included at least 106 affordable housing units –  has now been told that a much lower number is acceptable. The developer produced documents to show that the scheme was no longer viable with that many houses –  and East Lindsey’s planning committee has cut it back to as few as 30 affordable housing units. We hope that our councillors in Boston are paying attention to this and will try to protect our local interests if at all possible.

We’ve never considered casting Boston Councillor Raymond Singleton-McGuire in the role of Cupid before – but all that has changed in light of a planning application by the joint deputy leader to change of use of part of his house and garden for civil wedding ceremonies, including provision for parking and occasional erection of marquee in rear garden.

The proposal includes using the front ground floor room for ceremonies, and making the front first floor bedroom over the garage available for the bride and groom. It’s some weeks now since we mentioned Councillor Singleton McGuire’s new website at WWW.SMG.co.uk   promising a wide array of services ranging from aviation, to security, property and furniture. But it seems to be the matrimonial side of things – in which Councillor Singleton-McGuire is joined by fellow Tory Councillor Yvonne Gunter as his wedding planner - which is getting all the attention.  Who can tell – perhaps one day aviation and matrimony will combine to offer a mile-high wedding service!
Whilst people in Louth are leaping up and down with their objections to a proposed Sainsbury local store in the town, we wonder if someone would like to invite the supermarket giant to set up shop here in Boston. A look at their list of Lincolnshire outlets again shows that anywhere is apparently preferable to Boston when it comes to setting up shop. Lincoln, Grantham, Sleaford, Spalding and even Spilsby and Bourne all have a Sainsbury’s of some kind. We must be about the only sizeable place that hasn’t. Isn't it time for someone to ask why that is?
As we see our policemen and women on the streets so infrequently these days, we suppose that a plan to put a private company logo on some of their uniforms won’t really matter too much.  It follows a £200 million deal between Lincolnshire Police and the private security company G4S -  and the uniforms are being worn by about 200 staff who transferred to G4S, including front counter staff at police stations. The Police Federation feel that the uniforms will confuse the public - but Lincolnshire Police say they won’t make any difference.
Chief Constable Neil Rhodes says: "I firmly believe that the community is more interested in cops out on the beat rather than a small additional logo on the epaulettes of inquiry office staff.” Does this mean that he plans to put some of them on the street then?  Paul McKeever, chairman of the Police Federation, said the uniforms will "cause confusion in the public mind" and be less of a deterrent to criminals. "The people we are trying to target will know the difference immediately," he said. "The deterrent effect of having warranted officers is lost." We tend to agree – especially here in Boston where we already have Town Rangers and Pescod Security staff to muddy the waters.

We wouldn’t have thought it should have been necessary to beg people to show some enthusiasm for bringing high speed broadband to Boston – but it seems that, not for the first time – the borough is top of the technology apathy list. An appeal by Boston Borough Council for “broadband champions” shows that at the latest count 126 individuals, nine businesses and four community groups had registered from the Boston borough area.  “Leading the villages was Fishtoft, with 55 registrations, followed by Wyberton at 30,” said the borough website. “At the other end of the table were Algarkirk, with just one, Wigtoft and Fosdyke at three and Benington at five. Boston borough has fallen down the scale for registrations in the last 30 days, with 22 compared with East Lindsey and South Kesteven, both at 135, West Lindsey (72) and  South Holland (97.)”  However, you can bet that if for some reason broadband for Boston is delayed, there will be no shortage of complaints from those individuals and businesses who feel left out.
We’re grateful to Boston Standard columnist Observer, for providing yet another example of the apparent disregard that Lincolnshire County Council holds for Boston. He reports noticing the council chairman’s official car parked in the centre of the Town Bridge last Saturday in blatant defiance of the yellow lines which deter  (and fine) us lesser mortals. The writer assumed that the Chairman was attending the May Fair declaration at the Assembly Rooms. “Nice to know the rules don’t apply to him; also nice to know that he has found out where Boston is!”  he observed! Whilst we second those remarks, we doubt whether knowing where we are will make the slightest iota of difference.
Finally, we turn again to the Standard, and a letter that had us nodding in agreement. “I would like to express the views of myself and many others who just cannot understand the fuss about watching a number of complete strangers running round and round in circles and jumping over things” said the writer. “It seems a totally pointless activity, although, I suppose, the competitors themselves enjoy it. And please don’t even think about the cost.” We thought that this summed Boston Borough Council to a T – and then we realised that the writer was referring to the forthcoming Olympic Games!

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