New Boston Eye

If there were such things as political twitchers, they would out in force tonight just as birdwatchers will travel far and wide to glimpse a lesser spotted woodpecker.

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Tonight sees the first full council meeting at Worst Street since 9^th July – just two week short of four months.

As if such a hiatus wasn’t bad enough – after all this time, there are just two items on the agenda.

The first of these is a rubberstamping exercise – to receive the confirmed minutes of the Audit and Governance Committee meetings held on 30^th May, 23^rd July and 17^th September.

It’s a bit late now if anyone has an objection – and in any case as they are all confirmed, the stable door has been well and truly closed.

The other item is to adopt a statement of principles setting out council policy for administering and enforcing licences, registrations and permits in accordance with the Gambling Act 2005 – a piece of housekeeping that is required every three years.

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Stirring stuff, eh?

As with the July meeting that preceded tonight’s the agenda is as dry as the Gobi desert – and just as dusty.

Then, as now, sections C to F of the preliminaries portend a dull and dreary time things …

… to receive communications (if any) from the Mayor and the Chief Executive

… to receive deputations or petitions (if any) …

… to answer questions (if any) from elected members …

… to answer questions (if any) from members of the public …

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One of the many rules that keep Worst Street so thoroughly hidebound demands that anyone wishing to ask a question conforms to a strict timetable.

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Members of the council are allowed one question which must arrive at least two working days before the day of the meeting – so questions for tonight have had to be submitted no later than the middle of last week.

Answers are made available to the questioner four working hours before the start of the meeting, and the questioner is allowed one supplementary enquiry which is usually the way he or she tries to wrong-foot the person – usually a cabinet member – being asked.

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Members of the public may ask questions of the leader, any cabinet member or the chairman of any panel or committee at ordinary meetings of the council – and generally the session must not exceed 20 minutes. As with councillors, a question may only be asked if previous notice has been given no later than 5pm two

clear working days before.

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With such an extended timescale there is no reason for the questions not to appear on the agenda – in fact, once upon a time they did.

But a problem with that for Worst Street was that it gave a heads up to the public and the press if anything contentious or interesting was going to come up – perish the thought.

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The July agenda looked as tonight’s does – but on the night, no fewer than fifteen questions were asked by councillors of cabinet members. But by then anyone who might have fancied attending would have decided that there was no business worth bothering about – which we suspect was the intention from the outset.

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Full council meetings – which were once lively with debate and progressive through argument, discussion and concession – are now attended by and large by a sorry bunch of de-fanged and de-clawed political eunuchs.

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Whilst the agenda lists no questions, we know that at least three were submitted by the Bostonian Independents’ Group which is seeking to encourage more openness within Worst Street.

But their efforts have come to nothing – because a handy loophole for the ruling group and the officer classes has seen the questions rejected.

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The questions concerned some important issues.

One asked whether information about Worst Street officers who ran private consultancies or were directors of their own business was transparent and made public, whilst a second raised concerns about the creation and appointment of a deputy chief executive post.

These were rejected on the grounds that staffing was the responsibility of the Head of Paid Service – that’s the Chief Executive – and not the Leader, and that there no provision to ask him questions at full council meetings

The third question concerned the installation of a biomass boiler at a care home on London Road which we have rcovered in previous issues. It was rejected because the application had been approved and the issue was deemed done and dusted – even though the questions were still pertinent.

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We’ll have more about this and related issues in next week’s Boston Eye.

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Lincolnshire Police last week chose Road Safety Week to launch Operation Safe Pass – itself part of Project Tandem – to educate road users on a safe distance to keep when passing cyclists ... which they have decreed as a minimum of 1.5 metres, to chime with the rhyme “keep them alive at 1.5”

In Lincoln , they used a police officer as ‘bait’ to pull over 27 drivers for passing too closely – an ‘offence’ that could be prosecuted as driving without due care and attention … costing the driver between 3 and 9 points and a fine of between £100 and £5,000.

A report quoted the police claim that: “The main aim of Operation Safe Pass is to make sure that everyone knows the requirement to give a safe distance 1.5 metres when passing bikes and secondly, that they stick to the requirement.”

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The campaign is a rip off of an identical project – dubbed Operation Velo – staged by Cambridgeshire Police in February which recommended a passing distance of 1.5 metres.

By some strange alchemy, the recommendation has transmuted by the time it reached Lincolnshire into a requirement – which as far as we can see is not the case.

The pressure group Cycling UK does not recommend a minimum distance law but would prefer to see minimum distance guidelines within the Highway Code which currently suggests giving cyclists plenty of room.

In March this year, the motoring magazine Auto Express reported that the Department for Transport was investigating new road rules, with minimum distance for overtaking cyclists being considered and that the DfT had also announced a call for evidence on cycling, and funding for three bike safety projects.

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We are particularly struck by the police manipulation of the rules where cyclists are concerned as Boston is a special case in its own right.

Day in and day out, pedestrians in the town run the gauntlet of dangerous cycling which ranges from the simply thoughtless to the downright dangerous.

Selfish and sometimes feral cyclists who think they own the roads and make the laws are part of the town’s history ... probably since the day in 1817 that Karl Friedrich Christian Ludwig Freiherr Drais von Sauerbronn invented the Hobby Horse.

Take a look a this …

Note that the cyclist veers across the path of the car about to move off from a blind spot. The bike is unbalanced by heavy bags of groceries. It has no lights on and it is pure coincidence that the traffic lights changed when they did as the rider’s clear intention was to jump the red light.

A second or two earlier, and the cyclist might have ended up beneath the wheels of the car.

And who would the police have blamed in the absence of webcam footage?

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Last Tuesday was local government’s Our Day – when councils all around the country tweeted about the things they did that demonstrated why they were worth what they were worth.

In Boston, Worst Street went about the business of unlocking doors, sending out bills and similar exciting stuff – at least neighbouring South Holland District Council put together a few short videos that made their job seem more exciting. .

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But for one brief moment the dreary Worst Street day was enlivened by a tweet which asked whether the council had installed weighing apparatus on its refuse fleet and if it planned to charge to collect rubbish by the load.

The emphatic answer NO and NO raised an Eyebrow.

It’s not that long since we mentioned such a purchase at £600 quid a pop, and raised the same question, and our recollection was confirmed by the council’s own expenditure records for March.

The registrations refer to five vehicles in the refuse fleet – and a sixth was listed elsewhere.

So if NO (1) was not exactly truthful, what does that say about NO (2)?

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Thursday sees the switching on of Boston’s Christmas lights – including the fourth big Illuminate parade by arts organisation Transported.

Illuminate is tied to the 400^th anniversary of the arrival of the Pilgrim Fathers in America – an event that has little to do with Boston.

Back in 2015, a report to Boston Borough Council said that: “As part of the lead up to 2020 and the Mayflower 400 celebrations ... an initiative known as Illuminate, is being rolled out ... (with) the intention that on each Thanksgiving Day leading up to 2020 an Illuminate event … be held in the respective towns and cities.

“The fact that these Thanksgiving Days occur at the same time we normally begin our own Christmas lead-in, presents opportunities…

“… We are working … to seek to host an Illuminate event to coincide with the traditional lights switch on.

“If this proceeds and if successful it would be hoped that this could continue in future years, leading to 2020.”

So here we are again with another Thanksgiving event to coincide with the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Indians sharing an autumn feast in 1621 after a successful harvest.

But apparently, no-one in Worst Street cottoned on to the fact that US Thanksgiving Day this year was celebrated last week – on Thursday 22^nd... which is when the hordes of other local councils involved in Mayflower 400 staged their Illuminate processions.
Another motto for Boston Borough Council ... Potius sero quam numquam – Better Late Than Never!

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After we mentioned the Assembly Rooms and the flying of the Union Jack on special occasions, a reader got in touch with a far more prosaic suggestion – which is to get the building’s clock telling the right time. Presumably, it has simply run down – but as the only other publicly visible clock in Boston – above the New Look shop – has stopped as well, it would be a public service to get them running.

Perhaps BTAC could set up a committee called BTICK or BTOCK to address the task.

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It seems that our MP Matt Warman has followed in the footsteps of his predecessor Mark Simmonds.

He recently appeared in the Lincolnshire Live website sexy list – “Our ultimate list of the hottest 50 Yellowbellies features people from all walks of life from the famous and successful to people you've probably never heard of.

“These people embody the word sexy and prove that sexiness isn’t all about looks (although that obviously helps)!

“The list is made up of people who live in, come from or have a connection to Lincolnshire.”

Mr Warman appeared at number 36 – between Swing Out Sister vocalist Corinne Drewery at 35 and fellow MP Victoria Atkins, who represents Louth and Horncastle at 37.

The blurb told us: “The youthful MP for Boston and Skegness since May 2015 has not been one to shy away from a debate – and he's got a little sparkle in his eye at the same time.

“Sexiness can come in many forms and being passionate about what you believe in floats many people’s boats.”

But what about Mr Simmonds?

Shortly before he left the commons his name appeared at Number 66 on a site called SexyMP.co.uk.

Created by ex-Made in Chelsea star Francis Boulle, My Sexy MP showed two random MPs' photos and asks users who they'd rather have sex with.

The site rapidly vanished but not before becoming the most popular banned website in parliament.

Mr Simmonds’ moment in the sun was brief – soon after, when he quit parliament complaining that £112,000 a year wasn’t enough to live on, words such as charmless and moron were rapidly bandied about by commentators.

Having said that it appear that Mr Simmonds retains a fondness for his one-time parliamentary honorific – as this clip from a recent report on the Nigerian National Wire website shows..