We’re in the season of trick or treat ... and Boston Borough Council has entered the spirit of things by treating us like idiots to try to trick us into believing that everything in the borough garden is blooming.

Last week saw the announcement that the government intended to hold a public inquiry into plans for the £100 million Boston Barrier – something that a spokesman for the project said was: “… part of the application process and an important opportunity for people to have their say.”

Despite the obvious democratic aspects to such a decision – concerns have been raised by local fishermen and others about the siting of the barrier amongst other things – the inquiry will not be regarded as good news by the powers that be in Worst Street … especially the so-called “leader” Pete ‘Nipper’ Bedford.

The intention of the barrier is to reduce the risk of tidal flooding to approximately 900 commercial properties and 14,300 residential properties in Boston – and our “leaders” seem to believe that the work should begin as soon as possible … regardless.

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Almost a year ago, ‘Nipper’ used his Royal Christmas Broadcast to berate any gainsayers.

“I have been disturbed to read that some local unelected politicians have gone into print to ask, at this late stage, for an in-depth public inquiry into the finer detail of the barrier project,” he wrote.

The piece appeared to confuse concern about the viability of the barrier itself with plans for add-ons – dismissed as “bells and whistles” which would maintain a constant high water level through the town which would open the way to tourism benefits.

“The priority, now and here and in these cash-strapped times, is whatever we can get which works to protect against flooding as soon as we can get it.”

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But should this mean that we must have a barrier regardless of any health checks?
At the end of his plea to avoid delaying the project, 'Nipper' said: "Flooding can happen anytime. God forbid that we should have a repeat of 2013 before 2019. God forbid that we should have a repeat in 2019 and the barrier is not in place because of avoidable delays."
He did not ask what people might say if the barrier was built without precautionary checks and balances and turned out to be ineffective or wrongly located.

Boston Borough Council has a track record of wasting public money … something that the government seems to wish to avoid through a detailed inspection of the project.

But in our leader’s world this is unthinkable – and so the council adopted a blind eye approach that would have made Nelson appear to have had 20:20 vision.

The barrier inquiry was announced on Thursday of last week – and made big headlines locally, as you might expect.

But the Worst Street website – normally a haven for anything that mentions the Boston word regardless of relevance – has made no mention of the inquiry.
At the time of going to press yesterday, nothing had appeared –  not even on the lamentably poor weekly bulletin ... which once promised us "warts and all" coverage.
Nor did either of our local "newspapers" carry a comment from 'Nipper' or anyone else at Worst Street. They probably didn't like to ask –  even though a question was clearly needed.

Instead, Worst Street adopted some of the most pathetic diversionary tactics we have seen for a while to snatch some sort of victory from the jaws of defeat …

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Beneath the headline “Welcome to Boston,” last Friday’s website trumpeted: “A new gateway to Boston is taking shape, demonstrating a welcome to a town which is developing in an exciting and vibrant way.”

It flannelled on: “Those travelling on the A16 are already greeted by modern business premises before reaching the new roundabout at Wyberton with the promise of new development on both sides of the main road.

“There will shortly be new residential and commercial development on one side and a new community-centred football stadium on the other.”

This of course the famous Quadrant project – which is scarcely new, but which has been turned into a convenient peg for the council to hang its battered hat upon.

“Construction work has been continuing apace for the past few weeks and now sets the scene for Boston's new quarter, presenting a new face for those arriving to do business, shop, use leisure facilities and live here.” The foam-flecked page goes on to explain that the new road will relieve some of the traffic which currently crosses Boston town centre – although similar rat runs already exist – and open up land for 146 new homes and commercial use.

The other side of the new road will lead to Boston United’s proposed new stadium. The new A16 approach is “heralded” by two new commercial premises at Kirton - the Sports Bike Shop, and a new showroom for Duckworth Jaguar and Land Rover.

Enter ‘Nipper’ – a man who in the past has got excited about the opening of a butcher’s shop in the town …

"All of this signals a bright future for Boston and demonstrates the confidence that business have in the area."

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This overlooks the lack of confidence shown in recent times by retailers such as Morrison’s, Brantano, Clarks shoe shop, Tesco’s One Stop Shop on Bargate,  and QD Stores – all of whom have either shut up shop or are planning to.

How on earth can these counterbalance the expansion of two long established local companies?

There is so little for ‘Nipper’ to cleave to that he grasps the slightest straws – which in this case appear to have been used to deflect our attention from the announcement regarding the Boston Barrier.

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An early morning dog walker in Garfits Park got a shock on Saturday morning when he spotted a couple doing what comes naturally in the front seat of a car – parked beneath a CCTV camera!

Worse still was the realisation that a carful of men …“well intoxicated, even the drivers of the vehicles,” was parked nearby – apparently waiting patiently to take their turn.

The police were called and turned up – shortly after which another car full of men arrived.

The outcome? “The police gave the two having sex when they arrived a caution and let the others drive away. No-one was done for drink driving.”

This laissez faire approach by the police is unacceptable.

It not long since Boston Borough Council was trumpeting the spending of more than £15,000 on play equipment for Garfits Park to make the area more attractive to children.

Quite how all but turning a blind eye to what appears to be a mobile brothel service in the park fits with that ambition is anyone’s guess.

Needless to say, the Boston Target managed to trivialise the story on its website – as our screenshot below shows.

Yet another of those “stock” photos that have little or no relevance to the report, and serve only to make the publisher look stupid.

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We mentioned earlier Boston’s expertise where wasting money is concerned.

A couple of months ago we  had the Family Beach Fun day in Central Park, which involved bussing in a pile of sand and some donkeys for a couple of days.

According to its website, “the event was sponsored by Boston Big Local, delivered by Boston Borough Council, and supported by partner agencies Mayflower Housing, Boston Children’s Centre, Transported Arts and Boston United in the Community.”

If Boston Big Local “sponsored” the event, could someone please explain then why a recent account of Worst Street’s spending included £5,150 from the revenue budget for the “construction of beach in park” plus £700 to hire four donkeys for two days and £500 for bouncy castle hire and – the last two appearing under the unlikely heading “sports development.”

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Then of course, there’s the simple expedient of blinding people with science, as the answer to a question that appeared in a set of minutes admirably demonstrated.

So … the boilers will save £1 million over 20 years which is £50k a year.

Previous costs were £200k a year. So, over 20 years and excluding inflation the cost will be £4 million – without taking the cost of the biomass into account, apparently.

At the very best, this appears to save a few thousand a year – so where is the “quick payback” mentioned?

Presumably the hope is that many councillors don’t understand a word of this, but because it has been said by an officer, accept it as fact.

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This would not surprise us, given some news about the attitude some councillors have taken towards paying their council tax.

A Freedom of Information survey by the satirical magazine Private Eye showed that three councillors had to be reminded that their council tax was overdue.

Fortunately, the matter ended there as the recalcitrant members apparently paid up – but in term of civic responsibility, such a situation should never have arisen.

However, things might have been worse, as the colour key to the map shows …

Our neighbours to the north in East Lindsey summonsed councillors for non-payment, and just over the border, Kings Lynn and West Norfolk council barred some members from voting.

We don’t know what the score is with our southern neighbour, South Holland, as their lack of co-operation meant that no information could be made available.

What, we wonder, are they trying to hide?

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As Benjamin Franklin almost said in 1789 “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and council tax.”

But at least councillors have a small advantage over many of the poorer members of the community in that as well as an income from either work or pension sources, they also receive an allowance for what they do – or in some cases don’t do.

The basic allowance is £4,400 a year with further money for additional responsibilities –  at the top of the pile “leader” ‘Nipper’ gets an extra £8,070. These figures – and many others – are available in a new app produced by the Taxpayers’ Alliance and tell is that in 2014-15 the total bill for councillors was a stonking £101.612.

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Another  interesting entry in the TPA list  tells us that Boston Borough Council owns 506 “items of art”  valued at just over half a million pounds – but that only 29 of them are on display.

Perhaps the reason why so few are accessible is because after spending £1 million on an art gallery – remember the “big glass box of art and artefacts” – the council closed it because it could afford to run it.

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Next month’s surprise by-election for Sleaford and North Hykeham is bringing wannabes galore out of the woodwork – and they run the full gamut of the political spectrum.

So far, we have learned that Conservative County Councillor Richard ‘Bob the Builder’ Davies  has thrown his hard hat into the ring, and whilst there has been no news of other Tories interested in defending a majority of almost 24,000, a decision was being made last night..
Meanwhile, Labour has already selected local man Jim Clarke, North Kesteven District Councillor Mark Suffield has declared as an Independent, and Peter Hill is standing for the Monster Raving Loony Party.

Ukippers are falling over themselves in the rush.

Leadership hopeful Suzanne Evans has shown her interest in the seat along with Victoria Ayling – an East Lindsey councillor and one-time Tory general election candidate who switched parties and most recently failed to win the role of police and crime commissioner for Lincolnshire.

But perhaps more interestingly for us were the ambitions of Robin Hunter-Clarke – who came second at last year’s general election for the Boston and Skegness constituency.

Like The Terminator, Hunter-Clarke – a Lincolnshire County Councillor and one-time Tory – pledged that he would be back to fight in 2020 … but then vanished to Wales where he took on a UKIP administrative role. Last week he contested a seat on Gibbonsdown council in the Vale of Glamorgan where he came fifth out of seven candidates with 6.4% of the vote – just 54 ‘x’s in the box.

After a weekend of cliffhanging Tweets of the "will I, won't I, should I, shouldn't I..." persuasion,  Mr H-C  announced his decision to stand – and then yesterday lunchtime "after discussion with family and friends" decided "it is not the right time for me to seek election to this parliament in this by-election.
Our Political Correspondent, Egon Faice, said: "One has to admire a candidate who doesn't tease or pussyfoot around, but unfortunately, Mr Hunter-Clark isn't one."

We shall be watching the space with interest. 
Nominations for the seat close next Tuesday and by-election day is Thursday 8^th December.

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Some recent minutes shed an interesting light on the official approach to a couple of big issues in Boston – street drinking and cycling in pedestrian areas.

A visit from Boston Policing Inspector Andy Morrice to B-TACky – the Boston Town Area Committee – revealed that the police had succeeded curbing drinking in the Market Place, but not in Red Lion Street, where there were also reports of drug-taking.

The big surprise was that whenever the police arrived to move miscreants on … they returned a few minutes later once the people in blue departed.

The same problem occurred with people warned for cycling in the town centre who simply remounted and rode off once the police had turned their backs.

But the best excuse of all for twiddling the constabulary’s thumbs was that “it was difficult to prosecute someone for cycling through an area that buses were allowed to drive through.”

We’re sure that would be acceptable if we tried to drive our car through Strait Bargate!

One possible solution was equally unhelpful – a cycle path beside the bus route, indicated by double white lines.

Surely, the easoer answer is to ban pedestrians from the pedestrian area so that they no longer impede the flow of traffic.

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Finally, does any of the following sound familiar to you?

“Issues with the paving have included people finding it hard to distinguish between the path and road surface, pedestrians falling, and sections breaking and sinking because of the weight of buses.”

Whilst this may sound like Boston’s Market Place, the quote came from a Grimsby newspaper which reported that North East Lincolnshire Council  is to replace controversial block paving in Grimsby's town centre with tarmac.

The brick-style covering had been the subject of much debate since it was laid in December 2013 as part of a massive £6 million town centre transformation plan.

How long before Lincolnshire County Council follows suit in the mess that we now call Boston Market Place?

Certainly a close look at the surface in Strait Bargate suggests that the day when a bus creates a sinkhole  in the drainage system cannot be far away.

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