New Boston Eye

Former councillor Jim Blaylock almost certainly rattled a few cages with his comments about what went on behind the scenes between the Boston Bypass Independents and the Tories at both County Hall and locally. Independent Boston Borough Councillor Richard Leggott wrote to Boston Eye to say: “It was interesting to read Jim's letter and, in places, to compare it with actual events. Yes, there are a lot of things to think about in its contents. But the most worrying thing must be the tales of political shenanigans to which he refers. If accurate, ‘politics’ have not served Boston well. But when did they ever? This worry must point clear/free thinking people to recognise the value/desirability of Independents in local government – and there is approaching an opportunity to send this message to those politicians on May 2^nd. “But he adds: “Jim's letter is not too accurate when it comes to the Improvement Board and its members. It omits to list all the external experts shipped into Boston Borough Council to guide the BBI administration back to good governance. Also all group leaders/spokespersons did offer to serve on the Improvement Board, but this offer was declined by Councillor Richard Austin. Maybe he forgot to tell Jim about this, or, 'could not recollect it.' In consultation with other group leaders/spokespersons, Councillor Bedford realised he could not, in all truth, realistically, satisfactorily perform as a representative of all shades of opposition opinion on the Improvement Board as it considered the way out of the mess which BBI ineptitude had created. We (the other group leaders/spokesperson) appreciated Councillor Bedford's honesty and also his support in pressing for a fuller representation from allgGroups on the Improvement Board.
Talking of honesty, we are reminded of the famous quote by Winston Churchill which says: “History is written by the victors.” The letter from the Conservative group on Boston Borough Council which sparked Jim Blaylock’s response saw the Tories blow their own trumpet loud and long – although we did detect a bum note or two in their recital. Perhaps most notably, they made silly claims concerning the Assembly Rooms. “Councillor Austin’s administration could have sold the Assembly Rooms for £1 million,” said the boys and girls in blue, “but failed to do so, choosing to neglect this historic building. The prohibitive cost of restoring the Assembly Rooms meant that we were unable to restore it to its former glory and had to sell it for only £450,000.” That was something of a low ball, as the building had been systematically neglected by many successive administrations – the majority of them Conservative. In fact, the council leader Pete Bedford went so far as to say at the time of the sale: “Part of the terms of the sale was that the outside has to be redecorated to English Heritage standards every five years, and that’s something that’s never happened in my lifetime.” We said then that this was a sad admission, as Councillor Bedford’s political history with Boston Borough Council goes back to 1991 … which makes him a long standing member of the council club that allowed the Assembly Rooms to decline so far as to be beyond salvation.
Another interesting point raised by Jim Blaylock was in his covering e-mail to Boston Eye. He suggested that the time had come to ask our local MP Mark Simmonds: “How we can get some of the £3 billion promised by the chancellor (for new infrastructure projects) to deliver the bypass for Boston?” He added “I’m quite fed up with the town constantly being ignored and marginalised” and suggested “Perhaps it’s time to run a campaign for an elected mayor?” We recall that Mr Blaylock was a proponent of an elected Mayor way back when, and the subject has been raised several times in the past few years – although it seems recently to have gone to ground. Given the pathetic state of our so-called “leadership” and the fact that we are saddled with it for another two years, this would seem a good time to try for a change. It only needs 2,417 people to sign a petition and there has to be a mayoral election – so what are you waiting for?
Talking of Mr Simmonds – do you recall the Boston Eye reader who wrote to him after a national newspaper story reported that Butlins in Skegness and other centres was advertising for minimum-wage staff in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia and Slovakia, instead of recruiting unemployed locals – including of course, those from Boston. He told the MP: “If a firm has a job to offer, then it should actually be available to those here, it should be advertised here and it shouldn't be permissible to fill vacancies with an endless stream of cheap agency workers purely because some employment sectors see it as a convenient means to circumvent basic employment rights.” Almost a month later a reply has at last arrived to say that Mr Simmonds will take the matter up with the director at the Skegness resort
We were told that once Lincolnshire County Council took on responsibility for car parking enforcement in Boston that the chaos in the Market Place would vanish as if by magic and that all those evil motorists would be brought to book with swingeing fines that would teach them what’s what. Perhaps the Boston councillors who made these promises-that-sounded-like-threats were referring to another Boston. The photo below was taken on Tuesday morning.

Even the Into Town bus that normally carves its way so distressingly through the pedestrians seemed to be struggling to make progress at times, as cars were parked completely randomly – in many cases seemingly abandoned wherever the drivers felt the need to leave them. And guess what – not a traffic warden – or whatever you care to call them these days - was anywhere in sight. We hope that Lincolnshire County Council isn’t being paid by Boston taxpayers – and thereford by us – to manage this mess.

Readers of the Mail on Sunday will have spotted the return of Peter Hitchens with some more comments regarding Boston – some 18 months after his infamous Boston Lincolngrad feature on immigration and the town. His update is far from encouraging. “We had all got used to London being different, long ago. The former mill towns of Yorkshire and Lancashire, with their huge new mosques and veiled women, were a place apart. But Lincolnshire? If it could come here, into Deep England, then it would come to everywhere,” he writes. “It really is not much good the Prime Minister turning round now and saying to the people of Boston ‘this must stop’. Even if anyone believed he can or will do anything … the event has happened. The greatest mass migration in our history has taken place. The newcomers are lawfully here. They have the jobs, live in the houses, use the NHS. Their children are in the schools. Come to that, they are paying tax. Our leaders only had to go to Boston, any time in the past five years, and they would have known. But all our leading politicians were afraid of knowing the truth. If they knew, they would at least have to pretend to act. And the truth was, they liked things as they were.” Read the feature in full by clicking here
We accept that organising such things as rubbish collection is not an easy job, but our heart sank when for the second year running our brown bin remained unemptied on the first date that it was due for collection. We wrote to a senior figure responsible for this task – and again some days later when no reply was received. Finally a response came from someone completely different. He told us in the patient terms normally reserved for a slightly truculent child that although we had put our bin out on a Tuesday, “your collection day is a Thursday,” and that “the crew that service the area have confirmed that your bin was behind your gate on the Thursday of collection which they noted. I’m sorry if this may have caused any confusion …” We replied to say that the confusion seemed to be entirely on the part of Boston Borough Council, and attached a copy of the helpful council-produced guide – which is the only source available to the public if they want to know their collection dates – and which clearly listed our collection day as a Tuesday. The response? “I was unaware that this was on the website.” Not for the first time, a left hand in West Street is not told what a right hand is doing … incorrectly as it happens. And was there any hint of apology. Of course not!
When you see the result of a Freedom of Information request it becomes instantly clear why members of the borough council leadership are so anxious to withhold as much as they can from the people who elected them. The cost of running the Garfits Lane playing field – moved at the eleventh hour from the main council budget to that of the Boston Town Area Committee so as to braise the books and let the council to claim that it hadn’t increased its share of the council tax – is just such an example.

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A quick perusal of the figures shows a charge of more than £5,000 just to open and close the gates. Any bidders out there to do the job cheaper?

The latest big idea from the ludicrous Boston “Improvement” District is to try to find a condom machine capable of dispensing the infamous 3D maps that they commissioned almost three years ago. Why they are doing this is beyond our ken, as they apparently already know of such machines tailor made for such a job in use in Stamford and Chester – so why this wasn’t taken into account beggars belief. Readers with long memories will recall that these maps are worth their weight in gold. At the commissioning stage, the BID board was told that there would be a £9,000 charge for producing the maps and £7,500 for an initial purchase of 25,000 copies – or 66p a copy. But within a couple of months, the cost had been “quantified” at £17,000 to include 10,000 map booklets – or £1.70p per map – an unexplained rise of £1.04 a copy. We have serious doubts about using condom dispensers to issue maps. Stand by for a series of unwanted pregnancies being blamed on the fact that “the map must have torn!”
Last week’s comparison between a Boston town ranger and the Beano comic character Wilfred from the Bash Street Kids has been successfully challenged …