In the last couple of issues of Boston Eye, we have examined the reluctance within Boston Borough Council to engage with taxpayers and connect with them in a helpful and meaningful way.

***

In the last blog for example we criticised Worst Street’s attitude which relies on the internet as its messenger-in-chief – more often than not with poor or non-existent results.

Despite this, the council has decided to do away with its Viewpoint Panel – which has been on the go for donkey’s years.

According to Worst Street: “The Viewpoint Panel is a group of residents who 'Have Their Say' and make an important contribution to improving services …

“ … We ask for your views and let you know the results and what decisions resulted from the consultation.”

But not anymore.

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A letter has gone out to members telling them: “ … the Council has decided to dissolve its Viewpoint Panel. We have been reviewing all the personal information we hold as a Council in light of the data protection legislation coming into force on 25^th May 2018.

“We have weighed the benefits of having a dedicated consultation panel against the privacy impact of holding personal details and we have looked at the alternative methods of informing you about consultation.

“We have concluded that it is not necessary for us to hold your personal information so we will be removing all of your details from our records in relation to consultation.

“We would like to thank you for your valued contribution to Boston Borough Council's consultation and we would welcome your continued involvement in the future.

“We do not need to hold your personal information for this to happen.

“You can find all of our current consultation on our website …by following our Facebook page … and on Twitter.

“You can get hard copies of our consultation from main reception or by ringing and asking for the transformation team.

“We advertise our consultation in the local newspapers. If you feel that there are other methods that we should use then please do let us know.

”Again I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your valued time and contribution.”

Thank you and goodnight.

***

What this boils down to is that Worst Street has used the arrival of the EU General Data Protection Regulation as an excuse to stop consulting people in a way that has worked well for years.

Many users of the internet will have received e-mails in recent weeks telling them about GDPR and informing them of a change in their privacy notices to take this into account – which is all that is needed.

Trust Worst Street to throw the baby out with the bath water.

Now, instead of real people at the sharp end of a consultation, the council has moved further to distance itself from the real world.

There’s a surprise. 

***

Yet another example of how poor the reliance that Worst Street places in the internet as its way to communicate also emerged in the last few days.

An item on WorstWeb – the borough council’s website – headlined “Flower show plan wilts” declared: “Sorry to say that ideas for a Boston flower show have not bloomed. Not enough exhibitors have come forward to make the show, planned for Sunday, June 3^rd viable, so organisers at Boston Borough Council have had to cancel the event.”

This was very much a last minute announcement for something that was to have been held yesterday, with the closing date for competition entries set for 28^th May.

***

As we couldn’t remember ever hearing about this impending event, we looked around further, and discovered that it was billed as a BTAC-ky production …

We still couldn’t recall it, and a trawl through the BTAC agendas and minutes for the past several months left us none the wiser.

So we asked a couple of  BTAC members – and they’d never heard of it either.

When asked about publicity for the event, a spokesman for the council told the Boston sub-Standard the event had previously been advertised on the visitboston.co.uk website and organisers had been contacting horticultural professionals “directly prior” to the decision to cancel – i.e. at the eleventh hour.

***

All this sounds par for the course for Boston Borough Council.

Think up an event; keep it to yourself for as long as possible, then panic at the last moment before cancelling it.

Were Worst Street not involved, it would be unthinkable that it would not be possible to organise a successful flower show in this part of the county.

We were reminded of a passage from the Hitchhiker’s guide to the Galaxy by the late lamented Douglas Adams

It could have been written with Worst Street in mind, couldn’t it?

***

Talking of BTAC-ky, we note that the chairmanship of the committee has passed from Conservative Councillor Nigel Welton to UKIP Councillor Sue Ransome

For around half his term in office Councillor Welton was a Labour councillor, but changed horses and was almost immediately welcomed into the cabinet at the beginning of the year – taking on the town centre portfolio to complement running BTAC-ky

Council leader Michael Cooper said at the time: "This realigns the portfolios and makes them, easier to manage. It made sense for Councillor Welton, as chairman of the Boston Town Area Committee (BTAC) to take on responsibility for the town centre."

Why is that we don’t think it will make similar sense in the case of a UKIP councillor?

***

Back to Worst Street and its obsession with electronic communication.

A recent “digital strategy” document published for consideration declared: “in this digital age where most everything (sic) can be purchased online and delivered within hours, it is not difficult to make most of our services accessible online. Indeed, many other organisations have already done so.

“However, the size of Boston Borough Council – and the associated numbers of transactions – brings with it a number of considerations …”

It went on to look at a number of topics and consider the attendant risks attached.

The document says that some customers will only ever expect face-to-face or telephone interaction with the council, and says that “there can be little or no savings from online services if traditional channels are maintained as-is.”

Under the heading “customer aspiration” the report says that some customers expect to interact with the council as if it were an online bank or retail site, adding: “The complexity of some council services is such that it is extremely difficult to make the interaction as simple as online shopping.”

Dealing with customer dissatisfaction the document recognises that changing customer habits can be a difficult and lengthy process.

“Customers may be unhappy if their preferred service request process is changed with no obvious benefit to the customer.”

Furthermore, it is recognised that some of the services provided are very complex and require several interactions before fulfilment and that as a result, some services might be better provided face to face so the customer outcome can be managed by “an experienced human being.”

And finally, Worst Street says that the borough’s multilingual customer base makes designing online services significantly more complex and increases costs and risks.

***

Reading between the lines of this document tells us that taxpayers who prefer the status quo can stick their heads up a bear’s bum; that it will all be an uphill struggle, but at the end of the day … it doesn’t matter what the punters think so long as Worst Street makes savings – unless that proves so difficult that the council simply won’t bother, and resort to using people once again.

Somehow, we don’t see the outcome of all this ending up as a giant step  forward for Worst Street taxpayers – particularly as the council handles this sort of thing to badly.

***

As Boston Borough Council has noted, we are now a multilingual community, and we are sure that we are not alone when – on many days when we stroll the town we hear English being spoken as the exception rather than the rule.

Not only that, but whereas once upon a time the speakers were mostly all young men of working age– they now range from toddlers and their mothers to grandparents and sometimes even older … the complete generational gamut.

So we suppose that it should have come as no surprise to read reports in a number of national newspapers which showed that Boston is the most changed place in Britain between 2007 and 2017, with the town's population of people born overseas soaring from three per cent to 29 per cent.

The figures were released by the government’s Office for National Statistics – and whilst they made headlines in a number of national newspapers – including the Daily Mail, in which the above chart appeared, the story did not seem to be of any interest to our local media.

We suspect that this is because they have been brainwashed into believing that publishing such stuff is somehow racist.

In fact it provides an argument as to why areas such as Boston deserve special attention – such as the recent grant of £1.39m from the government’s Controlling Migration Fund.

We have been told that this will be used on a programme of projects “aimed at bringing people together through sport, events and community assets, extending the availability of advice services, tackling rogue landlords and anti-social behaviour, strengthening community leadership and whole community volunteering opportunity (sic) and supporting the development of English language skills.”

Quite what change or “control” this will bring about is uncertain – and again, the organisations involved with the council are the usual members of the great and the good, many of whom are long on talk and short on action.

We’re talking the likes of  “Boston College, Boston More in Common, Bringing Learning into Communities (BLIC), Citizens Advice Mid Lincolnshire (CAML), Lincolnshire Community and Voluntary Service (LCVS), Lincolnshire Police,

Royal Voluntary Service (RVS), St Botolph’s Parish Church and Taylor ITex

Community Interest Company (CIC.)”

There’s also an allocation of £10,000 set aside to help fund Christmas lights in Boston.

What has gone unremarked is that the 3% - 29% population change is not redistribution – it is a 26% addition to the population, with all the pressures that accompany such a huge change.

Useful though £1.39 million might be, it is a drop in the ocean.

Better to face up to that now rather than letting a bunch of largely well-intentioned but unspectacular amateurs organise games of ping pong and the like – when what we need is millions spending on improvements to education  facilities, the NHS locally, and housing provision just for starters.

The borough had a total population of 66,900, at the ONS mid-2015 estimate, while the town itself had a population of 35,124 at the 2001 census.

How things stood in 2007 isn’t known – but it seems safe to conclude that the bulk of the 20,000 or so newcomers have integrated themselves  smoothly into this new look Boston, and share as the native population view when it comes to the need for schools rather than sports, and health and housing  rather than endless talking shops.

We need now to approach Boston’s problems as Boston’s problems and not as Old Boston v New Boston including inward migration. 

***

After something of a rollercoaster ride in office, there was a happy ending for last year’s mayor, Councillor Brian Rush, when he and his wife Jayne attended a Buckingham Palace garden party last Friday – a traditional visit enjoyed by the outgoing first citizen.

“What a great it was for Jayne and I to get to go to the palace, amongst dignitaries from all over Britain and indeed from around the world,” Councillor Rush told Boston Eye.

“I cannot believe how lucky we were, to have been within touching distance not only of our wonderful monarch, as well as maybe the King in waiting, Prince William.

“Whilst we both were in awe of those around us, it nevertheless was a great privilege to have been there to represent the Borough of Boston.

“This was the icing on  the cake after what was for us a glorious and very successful year.

“Thank you to the fantastic people of Boston.”

***

And finally, we were pleased to see that BBC Look North has again decided to acknowledge Boston’s existence on its weather maps.

The map on the left was the one we featured a couple of weeks ago, whilst the one beside it was screened last week.

  

You can write to us at boston.eye@googlemail.com   

E– mails will be treated in confidence and published anonymously if requested.

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

We are on Twitter – visit @eye_boston

Even though the local council elections earlier this month did not involve us in Boston, they ought to have set alarm bells ringing in Worst Street.

That’s because they signalled just a year before the elections on 2nd May 2019 which will see all the seats on Boston Borough Council up for grabs.

You can track how long there is to go with the Boston Eye countdown calendar on the top right of yhe page – which we are sure will bring a frisson of fear to those councillors whose days are clearly numbered.

***

Unlike, for example, Lincoln City Council – where one third of the members are for re-elected each year – Boston suffers in that any major changes in political allegiance means a massive influx of councillors who often have no previous experience of the job that they have been parachuted into.

Examples from recent years include the Boston Bypass Independents’ landslide in 2007 and the 2015 UKIP surge where they tied with the Tories on 13 seats each before almost immediately falling out and fragmenting.

***

This year’s results showed gains for Labour and the Liberal Democrats at the expense of the Tories and UKIP – the latter being the biggest victim, losing 123 seats, and ending up with just three out of the 4,404 contested.

The current make-up of Boston Borough Council is: Conservative – 16, UKIP – 6, Independent – 4, Bostonian Independents – 4.

Given the way things appear to be going it seems reasonably certain that UKIP’s six councillors have the most to fear, followed by the Bostonian Independents (not to be confused with the private wing at the Pilgrim Hospital) – one of whose members, whilst said to be “part” of the group even though he works out of the area – has attended only one out of the eight most recent council and committee meetings … a meagre and measly 12%.

The “Independents” political potpourri – comprises two who have declared allegiance to the Conservatives, former Tory leader Peter Bedford who quit the party when he lost his role, and dyed in the wool Labour councillor Paul Gleeson who needs a group allegiance to retain his committee chairmanship.

***

This doesn’t make the Tories the good guys either. At least one has an attendance record of only three out of the most recent eleven meetings at which he was expected – a 73% absentee rate.

***

We would expect anyone who can’t be bothered to turn up on a regular basis not to seek re-election next year.

We would also expect a number of other councillors to call it a day – if nothing else due to the march of time.

All things being equal we think that there could be as many as 12 new faces at Worst Street in less than a year’s time.

So watch this space – and follow the countdown clock as the election rolls inexorably nearer.

***

Having talked about attendances, the     issue becomes moot when applied to full council meetings for the rest of the year with just three … in July, September and November.

Whilst it could be argued that they are merely rubber-stamping exercises, and therefore not as important as they once were, there seems to be a growing tendency to ease rank and file councillors out of the decision-making process as far as possible.

***

An interesting example of this involves desire to offload the council’s leisure and cultural services on to a private, third party operator  to meet the cuts it needs to make – such has been done with the PRSA.

But a recommendation to develop a proposal with a non-profit organisation with charitable status created by East Lindsey District Council four years ago got a rough ride and was subsequently withdrawn.

During the debate concerns were raised that the proposals should have been subject to scrutiny before being considered by the council and that the number of service areas involved was too wide-ranging.

Whilst the principle of the proposal was accepted, the majority of members who spoke said that alternative options and service providers should be considered, including an in-house company, and that scrutiny was the appropriate first step in such a process, as with all major decisions.

***

Now the report has again appeared on an agenda – and again, apparently without undergoing any preliminary scrutiny process.

This time it popped up for discussion at last week’s meeting of the cabinet of curiosities

Instead of the recommendation to develop a proposal with East Lindsey together with a timeline and a three stage process which would see two more  reports come to the full council during 2018, the new report recommends  inviting expressions of interest by publishing a formal notice in the Official Journal of the European Union, then a timeline, and again, a three stage process which would see two more reports – initially  for consideration by and Overview and Scrutiny (at last!)  ahead of cabinet and full council meetings during the year.

Whilst the original ambition was for “a go live date” of 1^st January 2019 it has now been put back to sometime in the first quarter of next year.

As before, the report leaves mention of the impact on staff until the very end, acknowledging that “the council is aware a proposal will have implications for its staff.

“Staff and staff side representatives will be fully briefed and consulted on an on-going basis as the proposal develops and be key stakeholders in the shaping of a final proposal which is in the best interests of the borough council and its residents.”

Whatever Worst Street says, the bottom line is that this is all about savings – in this case around £250,000 – so really, service no longer matters … the council is merely divesting itself of assets to cut its budget.

As is often pointed out when economies are on the agenda, the services provided are largely discretionary – but Worst Street has hoist itself on its own petard after years of lame attempts to improve the health of the borough and stressing the importance of the facilities it is now trying to dispose of.

***

We had a rather frustrating dialogue with a senior member of the council as an aside to a Twitter debate the other day.

The bottom line was that we were told “… it's better to use your talents in a positive way … to be involved … rather than produce criticism from the side-lines.”

An example of the positive use of talent that we were given was attendance at five back-to-back meetings in a single day  with the accompanying snipe … “Look forward to some positive actions promoting this fine and Historic (sic) town of ours.”

As we pointed out – and not for the first time – our criticism has nothing to do with Boston, but the many hapless councillors who run it.

In a previous life, we spent many years working for the BBC, whose lifeblood – as with local councils – takes the form of meetings up the ying-yang.

Looking back, it is hard to recall a meeting that did much more than waste the time of the attendees – and five back-to-back meetings in a single day most likely do nothing more than was five times as much “talent” as does a single meeting.

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We mentioned last week the uselessness of Worst Street’s sharing of information with the taxpayers – pointing out the only content given out is an agenda a week before the meeting and a scrappy summary of what happened in the minutes accompanying the agenda for the next meeting some weeks later.

As if that isn’t bad enough, the Boston Town Area Committee – B-TAC-ky – is striving to go one further.

The committee which now commands one of the biggest budgets in Worst Street meets on Wednesday  without the customary standing item on police issues and two other agenda items which take the form of “presentations” rather than reports which … means that there is no clue as to content.

Frankly, the meeting may as well be held in secret for all the contribution to democracy, openness and transparency that it makes.

***

Speaking of which …

The anonymous author of the Boston sub-Standard comment column Observer was recently taken to task in a pithy little whinge from Worst Street after he mistakenly suggested that the council – rather than an outside group – organised a recent public event.

However, he made a point with which we heartily agree – and which underlines the dog in the manger attitude adopted by Worst Street when it comes to passing on information.

 Time and again, the only source of information is via the council website – WorstWeb – and as with this most recent example, other information in public areas is conspicuous by its absence.

In these days when the need to inform is integral to good public relations, this sort of attitude simply will not do.

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Here’s another example of the attitude we just mentioned.

Not quite a timely reminder with less than 45 minutes to go, is it?

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The Worst Street deadline for expressions of interest to manage this year’s Christmas lighting in Boston has passed with just one submission

Despite the fact that Worst Street did not want a town-wide solution from a single group, the bid is for … a town-wide solution from a single group – in this case the tradesmen who did the job last year and who now call themselves Christmas in Boston 2018.

The idea was for applications for six smaller areas to be decorated and lit  –  the Market Place and Christmas tree, Strait Bargate, Wide Bargate,  Bargate End Car Parks, the War Memorial, West Street, the traffic roundabouts – at Boardsides, Tesco, Chain bridge, ATS and Spirit of Endeavour, and Wormgate/Pen Street.

It was hoped that this would encourage more groups or individuals to come forward, and better spread the workload.

However, given the infighting over the project in recent months, it would seem that volunteers would rather steer clear than risk a load of hassle, which is a pity.

Much of the reason for such a response can be guessed after the Christmas in Boston 2018 group published an “open letter” (read it in full here) http://newbostoneye.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/is-it-freeze-no-its-flood-of-hidden.html to Boston Borough Council calling for the cabinet’s recommendations to be discarded to let the group complete the project again this year.

The argument “… why should we have to apply again …” was at the core of this, with the vaguely menacing reminder that: “We hold over fifteen thousand pounds worth of lights to put up this year.  Why are you intending to give this (the task) to someone else to light up the town and buy more lights when we have them already?”

The group demanded that the council pay £10,000 set aside for Christmas events from the migration funding grant for 2018/2019 and 2019 /2020, directly to them as soon as possible, to let them plan their “volunteer” work for Christmas 2018.

As an application to stage an event during the time of peace and goodwill to all, it more closely resembles an iron fist in an iron glove.

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It seems that memories are short in Boston Borough Council's Markets Review Task Group – formerly known as the Prosperous Boston group … or as we preferred in the Preposterous Boston group.

Beneath the headline “Students to give teenager views of markets,” WorstWeb reports that students from Boston schools and academies are to give “insights” into the town's markets from the perspective of the younger generation.

Preposterous Boston spent almost two years long waffling – yet as long ago as September 2016 – it  recommended introducing a young peoples’ market on the lines of a “Teenage Market,” that was first established in Stockport in 2012,  when two teenage brothers put out a call out for young traders and performers and were overwhelmed when hundreds of young people applied to take part.

The markets are now a well-established feature nationally, and there have also been several staged in Lincolnshire.

In July last year, Worst street went so far as to appeal for support for a crowd funding bid to raise £1,000 to help run a market this year and next.

This was organised by the Boston Youth Council – another of Worst Street’s big ideas, in this case from six years ago – aimed at 13-19 year-olds who are “passionate” about young people's issues and who care about living in the borough and want to learn more about local government, democracy and how they can influence decisions.

As this was a project involving Worst Street, the result seemed inevitable – and it was.

So, Preposterous Boston takes two years to complete its task – which ended last October, then waits another six months to explore what young people want from the town’s market … having already proposed an answer which has been seen to lack support.

Words fail us.

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We’ve lost count of the number of times that people talk about putting Boston “on the map” – which is where it has been for centuries, of course.

Perhaps, then someone might have a word with BBC Look North about their weather map – as we are sure than Boston merits a name check.

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Last week we  pictured an image of Boston in Bloom if you live in town but not on the lily-walk especially gilded for the competition judges to inspect.

Shortly afterwards – and most certainly unconnected with our comments, the grass was cut …

The picture on the left is of the first bin south of Vauxhall Bridge, with nettles left tall enough that they might sting anyone trying to put their litter in, and a bag of doggy-doo nestling against it..

The brown mess in both photos is the cut grass left to rot.

Perhaps it might have been better to have left it alone.

***

There no Boston Eye next week – because it’s another bank holiday. Join us again on Monday 4^th June.

You can write to us at boston.eye@googlemail.com   

E– mails will be treated in confidence and published anonymously if requested.

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

We are on Twitter – visit @eye_boston

It’s the same with buses – you wait an age for one and then three come along at once.

Our last issue came out on the morning that the full council was due to meet to give most members a decent pay rise while trying to make it look like a freeze, and councillors were being asked to approve borrowing £20 million over fifty years for the benefit of us – the common herd.

Also on the agenda for approval was a revised code of councillor conduct – which we interpreted as calling them more to account than previously.

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So how did it all go?

Well, we understand that the first two items were approved – but the conduct issue was put on hold because some members felt that it was asking a little too much of them.

Bless the little snowflakes.

***

Boston Borough Council is rapidly becoming a law unto itself these days, with little if anything by way of challenging or questioning decisions in the council chamber – and even less outside of it in our so-called local “newspapers.”

We are told that they were not in attendance for the full council meeting, and … search as we might … we can find no sign of anything picked up after the event to let the taxpayers know what is being done with their money – which in some cases is funding rises in allowances of between 30% and 150%.

***

Nor can Worst Street be relied upon to keep us in the picture – despite all its hollow promises of openness, transparency and communication.

We’ve made our thoughts about the borough’s website more than clear in the past.

Whilst it purportedly exists to tell us about the goings-on in the council, it mostly carries lightweight stories which are often completely unrelated but serve as pabulum to make the place look busy.

***

No mention appears of the outcomes from the April full council meeting – but then you would expect WorstWeb to keep as quiet as possible about how our money is being spent.

However,  it did deem it important to blag a couple of free goes on the May Fair’s “scariest ride” so that a couple of members of staff could share their opinion of it with us.

The lack of communication and information from Worst Street – coupled with the indifference of the local media is surely just what this council wants.

The only way to discover what the council is thinking is to scour the agendas for its meetings – which appear just a few days in advance.

Then, unless you attend in person, you must wait until the minutes of the meeting are published with the next agenda – with the exception of the most recent full council meeting that we have been talking about.

That meeting was held on 30^th April.

The next one – the Annual General Meeting – is on 14^th May – but there are no minutes being made available.

Instead, you must wait until at least 9^th July, when the next meeting is provisionally scheduled.

That’s ten weeks before Worst Street is prepared to tell you what happened at a quite important meeting.

And don’t forget the minutes are scarcely comprehensive – more like a few scrappy scribbles in crayon on the back of a fag packet which are sure will delight future historians.

***

Even changes to the way the council is run are dropped into WorstWeb without anyone feeling the need to draw attention to them.

***

The last full council meeting recommendations on councillors’ allowances recommended that there should be just one deputy leader – on a much bigger allowance, of course.

Apparently this is going to happen as – on the agenda for rubber stamping at next week’s council AGM – is a revised cabinet structure.

Not only has the role of deputy leader been allocated to Councillor Aaron Spencer, but the man with whom he used to share it – Councillor Mike Brookes – has completely fallen off his perch.

The new cabinet member is Councillor David Brown, who is also chairman of Planning Committee, and represents Wyberton Ward:

Councillor Brookes (remember him?) has been a Boston councillor since 1997 and a Lincolnshire County Councillor since 2009 … almost ten years.

***

Whilst the recent goings-on have been kept from the public at large, our regular readers suffer no such deceit.

One of them – using the appropriate pseudonym Grumpy after the allowance disclosures –  said: “My girlfriend, a career NHS nurse, saw this and could only muster a ‘glad to see that we are all still in it together’ remark as she collapsed onto the couch after another debilitating day spent on her feet.

“These worthless petty bureaucrats really need to wake up and smell the coffee – and stop feeding from the trough they continually seem to be enlarging at every opportunity.”

***

The deadline to bid for a £100 million share of the government’s billion pound pot for road improvements has now passed and again as far as we know – because Worst Street has stayed stumm – the only action apparently forthcoming has been from the Boston sub-Standard.

Its petition received 1,281 signatures – which whilst it is better than previous efforts by the paper – represents around 2% of Boston’s 2011 census population estimate of 64,637 … and suggests that Frank Lee and Mai Deere don’t give a damn.

Worse still, the petition was not a Standard-alone affair.

For want of doing little else, Worst Street  sent at least one senior manager and assistant to stand in the Market Place  and beg for signatures to the Standard petition, whilst MP Matt Warman also piped up – meaning that the efforts of three hands to the pump produced a result of impressive paucity.

Certainly, it’s somewhat at odds with the message from council leader Michael Cooper when he said: “It is vital that we send the biggest, loudest message we can to government that we deserve a share of this new money.

“We tick so many boxes – an opportunity to deal with traffic congestion, a plan for that already at an advanced stage, better transportation in an area vital to the nation's food security, a boost to economic development and job creation, more much-needed housing and a chance to address long-standing air quality issues.”

Such high-flying phrases are all very well – but it would be interesting to know just what Worst Street has been doing apart from waffling.

***

Last week’s bank holiday delivered a harsh lesson about the need to plan properly for new shopping developments.

Although we make it a general rule never to take the car out during these holidays, we had to break that edict for once to head to Boston’s B&Q, on the site it now shares with Lidl and Tesco.

It then took about an hour to get out of the car park!

The reason – which no-one apparently took account of at the planning stage  – was that traffic for all three stores enters via Westbridge Road off the A52.

A left turn off this road takes you to B&Q and Lidl – and the way out  from them is to turn right across the inbound Tesco traffic.

The result of all this on the bank holiday was that traffic leaving B&Q blocked the traffic trying to leave Lidl – in some cases trapping cars in their parking bays – whilst the right turn across the road leading to Tesco was almost impossible to access because of the incoming traffic flow.

A sensible thing to do would be to turn left as if going to Tesco and then follow the road in a complete circle but on the  day that we were there it didn’t appear to occur to many people.

Having said that, it’s not a driver’s job to find a way around the pitfalls created by the planning system – and we hope that someone thinks to take an early look at the problem.

A simple solution is to create an additional exit from the Lidl car park, which would solve the problem in a jiffy.

***

As we reached the closing date for Lincolnshire County Council’s good citizenship awards, Boston Borough Council was talking about doing away with our local equivalent – which has been on the go for almost forty years.

A report to the corporate and community scrutiny committee wailed that the number of nominations received has declined in recent years … from more than ten each year to two or three.

According to Worst Street, nominations are sought from the public, parish councils and borough councillors to recognise the work of individuals or groups who make a significant contribution that has made a difference to their local community.

Yet again we are forced to the conclusion that the root of the problem is Worst Street itself as the problem suggests that councillors are hopelessly out of touch  with the grass roots.

How many readers can remember seeing much by way of publicity for nominations?

What form does the request for nominations from parish councils take?

We have eighteen of them, and a number have borough councillors as members.

Despite the growing lethargy within local communities – it must surely not be beyond the powers that be to come up with at least 20 nominations a year.

And let’s not forget our local charities – they must surely be good for a few names.

Events such as these encourage and empower our communities, and need encouraging rather than disowning.

***

We wonder whether the £20 million loan that we mentioned earlier indicates a change of direction for Boston Borough Council.

It seems that Worst Street’s Cunning Plan is to become a property investor as it believes that there are “significant upside forecasts” towards financial benefits associated with such a strategy.

“These would arise through revenue returns, capital appreciation and the avoidance of future inflated borrowing costs.

“These are prudently valued at approximately £86m over 50 years.”

Jackpot!

Borrow £20m over fifty years at 5% … repay £1m a year in interest over that time and presumably the principal at the end of it … and theoretically have £16m ‘profit.’

***

It sounds too good to be true – and historically, whenever Worst Streets embarks on something that sounds too good to be true … it usually is.

An appendix to the report proposing the loan stunt gives vastly disparate examples … and then only two of them.

West Lindsey District Council has bought an hotel in Keighley – which is outside its district – using its own money and not a loan, and which it reckons will bring in £90k a year.

The second example is of Spelthorne Borough Council – which bought the BP campus in Sunbury-on-Thames in September 2016 for £358m.

How on earth can that be anything by way of help or guidance to Boston?

If the idea of Boston Borough Council running an hotel or something similar stretches your credulity, then how about something different?

***

The council meeting before last which baulked at the idea of Worst Street’s leaders flogging off  Boston’s  leisure and tourism assets to a private operator saw the suggestion withdrawn pro tem.

But whilst the principle of the proposal was accepted, most councillors thought that alternative options and service providers should be considered – including “an in-house company”

This from a council that cannot organise a brew-up in a brewery!

***

News now of our erstwhile MP Mark Simmonds – the man who quit parliament four years ago complaining that his combined salary and expenses of almost £120,000 weren’t enough – has just got another job.

Investment company Vertu Capital has appointed him a non-executive director.

Simmonds was foreign and commonwealth office minister responsible for Africa, the Caribbean and UK overseas territories international energy and conflict prevention when he quit.

Currently he holds a number of  international roles, including chairman of the Global Advisory Board of investment platform Invest Africa – and is also chief executive of Mortlock Simmonds … his estate agency company.

Hopefully he is making ends meet by now.

His latest job is the ninth or tenth that he has taken on.

***

The record temperatures of the past few days tend to make us forget that it’s not so long ago that parts of the county were buried beneath snowdrifts, trapping many drivers in their cars.

Reports at the time praised the farming community in particular for turning out to help plough the snow away – and the overworked word heroes was used time and again to describe their contribution.

So we were surprised to see an analysis by BBC Look North last month which told us that whilst …

The amount paid to farmers was getting on for 40% of that.

Certainly, it’s an heroic payment if nothing else!!

***

Finally, the annual hoo-ing and haa-ing about this year’s Boston in Bloom competition is gathering pace.

And whilst it’s nice to see carefully chosen areas of the town receiving colourful and fragrant embellishments – even though many of them are ignored once the judges have visited – we again feel the need to highlight what life is like for our taxpaying residents unfortunate enough to live more than a fag end’s throw from the town centre.

  

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