Red faces, not berries

for Boston's Christmas

With a shudder not brought on the by chilly weather we learned that Boston Business Improvement District is said to be planning this year’s Boston Christmas business activities.
Starting tonight, we will see four consecutive Thursdays of late night shopping – with stores staying open until 8pm.
Aside from a performance by the cast of Cinderella and a tour of the town by the Singing Fishermen, it generally sounds to be the mixture as before.
Fortunately the disastrous skating rink has been dumped this year – which probably means that despite the claims of how successful it was, it was as bad as most people thought.
Providing entertainment for Christmas is always a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you don’t affair.
But our belief is that – aside from Lincoln’s now cancelled monster market – most people don’t travel far for events like this.
Almost all the towns in Lincolnshire come up with their own offer, which basically adds a little entertainment to the deadly chore of Christmas shopping.
We read the piece in Boston Borough Council’s bulletin which trumpeted the “switch-on” of Boston’s Christmas lights – and we disagree with the quote “you couldn’t buy better publicity.”
After initially being made to look daft on the wireless because Boston is apparently the only place in the county that doesn’t have a proper switching-on ceremony, a second piece sought to address this by doing the job over the air.
Somehow, the borough got the idea that this was a publicity coup, when in fact it just highlighted inadequacies, with Boston lending a helping hand.
To call the piece naff is an insult to naffness, and made Boston look dafter than it already did.
Earlier this year, Boston Eye reported that Christmas might be a gloomy affair this year because the council’s existing contract for Christmas lighting had expired and they wanted the BID to help bail them out. But a short time later the proposed Market Place refurbishments were used to kick the idea into touch.
The result is that once again we have the same old lights that we’ve had for years, so perhaps avoiding a switch-on ceremony might have been a better bet.
Meanwhile, we note with dismay, that the BID has still not been able to get a handle on shop opening hours.
Throughout the year, shops open on Sunday when it suits them – rather than for the same agreed hours.
The result it that someone visiting the town for an hour’s shopping before lunch and arriving at 10am, will find that some of the shops they wish to visit don’t open until 11-30am.
We would have hoped that by now the BID could have got local traders to work together on opening times – and we think that this is especially important in the run-up to Christmas.
But no. There is the same haphazard array of hours – made worse by the fact that the BID’s guide offers a key which includes …
“OPEN = open unsure of hours…
“OPEN? = may be open
“CLOSED? = may be closed.”
This guide is about as helpful as the BID’s infamous business directory.
We also note that the Co-Op is supposedly open from 6am to 10pm every Sunday, which must surely be a mistake.
So, come shopping to Boston.
The lights are dim, the BID is even dimmer.
But despite their efforts and the unflagging uselessness of Boston Borough Council – aka the BBI – we are sure that Bostonians will still manage to have a good time.

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