The good news and the bad news ...

At last!
Fuddy Duddy ol' Boston has come up with a great idea to launch the town into the headlines.
It's just been announced that JORDAN is to be the town's next Mayor.
And won't she just look swell in ermine?
What?
Oh, not Katy Price?
The other Jordan?
You mean Peter "Grumpy" Jordan, the former deputy leader of Boston Bypass Independents?
That master of words who said that his party could walk on water?
The one who told councillors that draft budget problems facing the borough really were Armageddon?
The one who famously described developers Modus, the firm that planned to build to build Merchants Quay "a wonderful company. They are the sort of straight dealers I want to be in bed with" - not long before they went bust.
By a great stroke of good fortune, Councillor Jordan will don the tricorny hat just in time to get a year in office beneath his ample belt before the politically predictable certainty that the voters will give the Boston Bypass Independents the elbow.
How much of Councillor Jordan's election is a well merited coincidence, or how much it achieves a longer term ambition is unclear.
Our contributor "Scanner" wrote back in February 2008: "Last May, within hours of the BBI taking control of Boston Borough Council, Councillor Peter Jordan became the Council’s 'underleader.' It seems that he also expected to be the new Mayor. Not bad for less than two weeks service to the Borough? Also, they completely disregarded the Council’s Constitution. Councillors chose the present system about twenty years ago. Then, it was decided that the Mayoralty would be awarded to the councillor with the longest length of service who has not already been Mayor. This was the fairest, transparent and most straightforward way and prevented any of the problems that had dogged previous methods.
"Under the present system, Councillors Bedford (17 years service), Dennis (five years), and Rylatt (two years) are the next mayors, if they accept the honour when offered. Our 'underleader' is not daft, he has, obviously, done his maths. If the rules aren’t altered and the present councillors take their mayoralty, then poor old Peter must fight an election before he has the chance to become Mayor. If he stands and is re-elected, unless he pulls rank, he faces selection from the councillors who have served the same length of time that he has."
Well, of course, the rules were altered, and after a couple of years of following the old system to make themselves look good, the BBI have their mayor in place for their final year in power.
Amending the rules caused considerable controversy, and it was left to one of the BBI councillors to clear things up for the great unwashed.
In a letter to the Boston Standard, he suggested that a vote for the BBI was a vote for change - yet the remnants of the last administration still clung desperately to the 'status quo.' He asked: "What about the thousands of Bostonians who elected the BBI party? Are they not entitled to have a Mayor who represents them?" And who was the author of this letter? Surprise, surprise, it was the then deputy leader Peter Jordan!
Given his previous gaffes of the like reported earlier, we thought it a shrewd move to quit the deputy leadership and lie doggo to avoid any further clangers which might have harmed his bid for the mayoralty.
Councillor Jordan was elected by a secret ballot of councillors, which one observer says was an attempt by the BBI to cover its tracks.
It's such a shame that the BBI seems incapable of doing anything in the open air and daylight that accompanies honesty and openness - even the centuries old selection of a mayor is made to seem somehow shabby.
After the election, Councillor Jordan told councillors he felt privileged to be the mayor-elect. He made no mention of being surprised.
He pledged to do his best to be a "good ambassador for the borough" and to be "fair and impartial" in the mayor's role as chairman of full council meetings.
We don't doubt he will want to achieve the former, given his yearning for the post, but given the BBI's track record since it was elected, the second could create some internal strife.


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