Boston Borough Council has been fluting about its namecheck on BBC Question Time programme, when a broad-based discussion on the pressures caused by immigration and the imminent arrival of more people from Romania and Bulgaria saw the debate suddenly turn to focus on the town.
According to the borough’s website, a council report on the impact of population change on the town “received praise on national television …”
… when panel member Mary Beard, a Cambridge University professor of classics,  declared "the most impressive single document that I have read on this issue comes from Boston council".
She went on: "It looks very carefully at the changes which have been happening in Boston over the past ten years. It identifies particular management issues with an influx of any kind of population..."
Beyond that, the council told us nothing more about what Professor Beard was shouting from the rooftops.
Professor Beard – famous for the BBC2 series Meet the Romans and for being called “too ugly for  TV” by writer AA Gill – went on to say: “It (the task and finish report on population change) does actually answer the question about public services, because it looks very carefully at the changes which have been happening in Boston over the last ten years.
“It does identify particular management issues with an influx of any kind of population – but at the same time what it makes absolutely clear is that actually we can cope with this and we can benefit from it.
“It is very clear for example that the European migrants have a low use of the benefit system, they have a low use of the health care system – they tend to be fit, strong people – and they take very, very, very small amounts of social housing … only one per-cent of social housing is actually occupied by people who are economic migrants.
“And I think that this report – partly because it actually does deal directly with local people’s concerns in one particular area with particular agricultural issues, not mass industrial issues – managed to draw the right boundary … denying that there was a problem, but also not being totally catastrophic about it. The answer is that public services can cope.”
Enter Rachel Bull, who has become someone of a celebrity in her own right since she challenged Professor Beard.
She told the Question Time panel – which was broadcasting from Lincoln: “I have a business in Boston, I have family that live in Boston and we’ve got land at Boston and we’ve had major issues with workers who’ve got nowhere to go, camping on our land and we can’t move them off because the police aren’t interested.
“Boston is at breaking point; the locals can’t cope any more.
“The services, doctor’s surgeries, hospitals – I have a family member who is a midwife at the Pilgrim Hospital – the facilities are at breaking point because of these people coming into the country.
“And nothing is being done.
“There are hardly any locals there anymore, because they are all moving away. You go down Boston High Street and it’s just like you are in a foreign country. It’s got to stop.”
Interestingly, Mrs Bull is better qualified than many to comment on this issue – she  is descended from immigrants whose experience of life in Britain couldn’t be more different from those of their modern counterparts.
One set of grandparents was born in Boston, but her paternal grandfather was a Polish airman who served in the RAF during World War II and settled in Lincolnshire with his wife, another Pole.
But now, she says, Boston is seeing “a different generation of immigrants who are disrespectful and not bothered anymore.”
And from someone who knows whereof she speaks, it’s back to Professor Beard – an undoubted expert in the ancient Romans – and a big fan of Boston Borough Council ...
“When I referred to the report, it was really the fact that there are huge numbers of myths about the number of people who have entered Boston, and also the drain on public services, and there was a rather charming coda to this report, which said that the maternity unit of the Pilgrim Hospital had probably been kept open because of the increase in the population of Boston, rather than being closed.
We’re certain that this claim – first made by local MP Mark Simmonds to reinforce the idea that immigration is good for you – is true.
Only yesterday, a report from the Royal College of Midwives placed Boston in the top three of UK birth rate “hotspots” –   with a 53.5% increase in births between 2002 and 2011 –   behind Corby on 63% and Bournemouth with 54.1% in the same period.
Another panellist on the programme – former Communities and Local Government Minister Grant Shapps – also dared to contradict the professor, saying: “I had the leader of Boston council come to see me when I was a local government minister. There certainly are a lot of strains there; they are very concerned that the census information doesn’t represent it.
“Boston is an unusual case in that regard – they are right at the extreme end of the stresses on services which are very real.”
Who do you vote for?
A classicist and expert on life in Roman Britain – 43 AD until about 410AD?
Or a local person who knows what she’s talking about?
We think that it is termed a no-brainer!
 

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