Neglect may mean

we pay more to park

We’ve never thought much about car parks, but it seems that they bring blessings and curses in equal measure.
A council report has been taking a closer look at these swathes of tarmac and concludes that many of them need improving – and hints that the cost of parking may well increase.
Once again, it seems that Boston Borough Council has set jobs aside for so long that they have gone from being tasks that might easily have been completed to major chores that are going to cost quite a lot of money.
Boston has 2,900 car parking spaces, of which more than 1,700 – or 60% - are owned by the council – which the report seems to feel gives the borough “considerable influence” over management of parking provision. There are also are about 500 on street parking spaces and 886 supermarket parking spaces.
We’re not so sure about how much “influence” this gives the council..
The relatively new wasteland car park in West Street which charges £3 a day seems to be doing well enough, and it wouldn’t take many more other operators to set their prices similarly before the council found itself in something of a fix financially. Not only does this car park undercut Boston’s maximum day rate by 50p, but it offers a 50p charge for a 30 minute stay – a convenient charge for a convenient time if you just need to pop into a shop or two or go to the bank.
Car parks net £750,000 a year for the council.
The report warns: “In order to protect this income the council must ensure that its car parks are maintained to a standard that ensures that they are fit for purpose. Following a period where minimum maintenance has been carried out there is an important issue to address around continuing repair and maintenance needs. The cost for repairs and maintenance might have to be met from income raised from parking and price policy will need to be considered and set with this in mind.”
Only six of the council’s 28 car parks are deemed to be in good condition, with a similar number considered “poor.”
The bill for getting them up to snuff is almost £400,000, and given the poor state of the borough’s coffers is would seem that an increase in charges to raise some of the cash will be needed.
The report recognises that some car parks are small and under-used and could be sold off – either to increase capacity or create new parking areas.
There is also the issue of Civil Parking Enforcement which has been introduced by Lincolnshire County Council and will see tickets issued by the council rather than the police. The county council has already looked at the possibility of an £80 fixed penalty fine – which would be £10 more than the government’s recommended maximum and the highest in the country.
The report says that the borough must work closely with the county to ensure that the “benefits” associated with CPE are fully realised in Boston – “i.e. better parking enforcement, possible increased parking income, improved street environment, potential to introduce residential parking zones.”
A strange interpretation of the word “benefits” if you’re a motorist.
It sounds nothing more than a list of charges that will cost us all a lot more – including paying for the privilege of parking outside your own house.

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Impressive?
Yes - but for all

the wrong reasons
It sparkles in the sun like a stately iceberg.
It tempts the palate like a beautiful iced confection.
This is what Boston Borough Council would have us believe at any rate, with these two pictures* on the right of the town’s Assembly Rooms.
One appears on the borough website, and the other in the latest edition of the council’s bulletin – which is exhorting us to consider hiring the Assembly Rooms which “rank alongside some of the town’s most historic buildings and, although
one of the grandest, is said to be a best-kept secret.”
Even to an untrained eye, the photographs bear a patina of age – quite obviously taken in better days.
According to the borough, the Grade II* listed building: “still impresses with its typically Regency façade.”
The building - completed in 1822 and possibly built by Jeptha Pacey based on earlier designs by William Atkinson - was altered in the 19th century and again in the 1960s after it was gutted by a major fire. The hipped copper roof is 20th century.
The seven bay front would look quite splendid were it not for the fact that some bays have been replaced with nasty modern shop fronts.
So it’s a bit of a hodgepodge, really.
On Monday, we reported that Boston Borough Council was planning to give grant money to shop owners in and around the Market Place to improve premises that have been “insensitively altered and developed.”
Some, the council told, us “are in disrepair, or have been neglected and are underused.”
What a classic example of the pot calling the kettle black.
Far from being the town’s best kept secret, the Assembly Rooms are the town’s most blatant eyesore – as our photographs show.
Look at this picture* of the façade. It’s certainly impressive. Seldom have we seen a public building in such a disgraceful state.

Note the peeling paint, the foliage growing around the balcony area. Who would hire this for their wedding? Imagine the shame as your guests arrive to a welcome of hanging banners promoting a blood donor session and Boston College’s Open night – and enter through a door where the empty shop next door has a crudely made “to let” sign stuck in the window. 
They say that what you can’t see can’t hurt you – but even so – look at the back of the Assembly Rooms – which dominates the view from the White Hart Hotel*. Again, peeling plaster and foliage growing from the walls.

Think Machu Picchu circa 1911 when Hiram Bingham first rediscovered it, and you’ll get the idea.
The interior photos used by the borough to illustrate how good the rooms can look for a wedding reception are fine.
But they don’t tell the story of the dismal approach, the smell of damp that greets you on arrival, and the perilous slope on the staircase that threatens to pitch you head over heels if you’re not careful. And the lift that seems more appropriate to a warehouse.
If you attend the venue when it’s used for exhibitions you need to tread carefully, as the unsuitability of the layout usually creates a maze of narrow corridors which make it hard to see anything much at all.
Boston should be ashamed of the Assembly Rooms in their present state.
If nothing else, money should be found for an emergency repainting programme.
The rooms feature in countless visitors’ photographs – think of the view from the bridge towards the Stump with Bateman’s Britannia pub in the middle ground, which must have been taken tens of thousands of times.
Is the present image the one we want visitors to take home with them?

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* Click on all photographs to enlarge them

Task & Finish

group wastes time

so BID can have more

What involves five meetings and 14 people – plus a further eleven at various points along the way - to produce an “action plan” that could have been drawn up probably no more than half-an-hour?
The answer is - the Task and Finish Group set up by Boston Borough Council to investigate the running of the Boston Improvement District and determine whether or not it was doing its job properly.
Regular readers will recall that there were many complaints by business owners forced into membership of Boston BID. Not only that, but they were powerless to change things because of a so-called “golden vote” that gave Lincolnshire Chamber of Commerce (which really, like so many organisations with “Lincolnshire” in the title, is a Lincoln-centric organisation) the power to run the show because it outvoted the combined votes of all the members.
Boston BID is a snail in the market garden of business. It moves slowly, eats more than its weight over time, and produces nothing worth selling.
Despite the best efforts of the people at the helm, we eventually reached the point where criticism of the BID became so overwhelming that the Task and Finish Group was set up.
However, to call its findings disappointing would be an exaggeration.
The BID has already been on the go for 18 months with little to show for it.
Its five main aims are: to create an impression that makes people feel safe and secure in the town; to make it clean and attractive; to improve the perception and image of the town centre and bring “PRIDE” (doubtless an acronym that has not been explained) back to the local community; to improve accessibility and be “parking friendly”; be a voice for business support, to promote a strong and active network amongst the business community and to represent them on local issues; and to deliver matched funding.
You may be struggling to find much by way of examples from this list of what has been achieved to date – the BID’s main claim is the employment of the Town Rangers … but they have many critics, and their value for money is uncertain.
You might think that the BID has been given time enough – but the Task and Finish group is minded to be lenient, and give them even more.
The group makes five recommendations.
To improve communications – the BID has been given six months to achieve this.
Reviewing the costs of a BID manager – currently £30,000 a year of the £125,000 the BID demands of its members. One idea is to share the post with another organisation. Again, the timescale for this is six months.
Opening BID board meetings to members with a slot for them to ask questions and make. This should be done immediately … steady the Buffs.
Recruiting volunteers from partnerships including UPW and NSL (more unexplained acronyms) to provide support in cleaning town areas and maintaining green areas. Another six month job, this.
And finally …. that a report on the progress of the BID be bought back to the committee in spring next year, to allow members to monitor the recommendations tendered by the group.
What it boils down to is – as Paul Daniels might say – “not a lot.”
After three months of meetings, a handful of lightweight recommendations have been made which allow the BID to trundle complacently on exacting money from unwilling donors and dragging them through the courts if they refuse to pay.
Where is the Task?
Where is the Finish?
But the time the matter is next discussed, the BID will be half way through its five-year term, and we are almost certain that the great and the good will then decide that it’s not worth doing anything else and just let it sail serenely and pointlessly on.

Footnote: The BID logo, above, is produced by a design company called "Grey Coffee." How apposite to appoint an organisation with such an insipid sounding name!

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Don't rush to restore

For more years that we can remember, the Market Place in Boston and the connecting medieval lanes that feed it have been allowed to decline.
Not just to decline, but to be vandalised by the granting of permission for unsuitable signs and frontages that were completely out of character with such an obviously historically important area.
With an extraordinary gift of turning a blind eye, successive councils let old shop fronts be ripped out. Historic buildings that would today be listed were torn down and replaced with modern monstrosities.
A good example was the demolition of the Red Lion coaching in that stood on its site from the Middle Ages until it was demolished to make way for a Woolworth store.
Now, the great and the good are shedding crocodile tears over the architectural wasteland that their predecessors condoned so eagerly – and are rushing to make amends.
That’s something that worries us.
We have moved from a state of supine acceptance of the mess they call the Market Place, to a frenzy which has lasted barely a few months in which a £2 million refurbishment plan has been cobbled together are is due to start and finish later this year.
As our old granny used to say: “More haste, less speed.” She also used to say: “Where’s the gin?” – but that’s another story.
Even before a new slab has been laid – let alone an old one removed – Boston Borough Council has announced a scheme to help property owners of historic buildings in the area restore and repair their premises.
English Heritage has approved an application by Boston Borough Council for grant funding – with £120,000 ring fenced for a first phase and more money following a review after the first year.
The first £50,000 is available immediately and will not require match funding.

Eligible properties will include shop fronts and the floors above them, and most of them are either listed or “sensitive.”

The grant scheme will be kept as simple as possible on the basis of a straight 50% of eligible costs for repairs and 90% for reinstatements.

All of this sounds such good news, that we wonder why we seem to hear the downhill pattering of the first small stones that presage an avalanche.

Surely, repair and reinstatement of the buildings surrounding the Market Place ought not to begin until we can see what sort of Market Place we have once refurbishment is complete.
It may well be that an improved frontage done now will look inapparopriate once the Market Place works are finished, when – if we had held our fire – we might have spotted a few adjustments that would have made a world of difference.
The starter money of £50,000 will go nowhere these days. How many premises can it help with? Would it not be more prudent to wait until the kitty is larger, and thus more effective?
Then there is mention of “reoccupation” of upper floors of some shops. A hundred and fifty years ago, town centres were more vibrant because people lived above their shops.
But that was because they had to. Most of them could not afford an out of town house as well as their business premises. Shops stayed open for longer, town centres were busier. It was a different level of business and social life.
This is now no longer the case. To put money into the pockets of landlords whose sole aim is to make a quick profit from their tenants would be to waste it.
There is not enough money available for this sort of luxury, which would only dump people in the centre of a town where the only thing to do after 6pm is to go to the pub. Not a good idea.
Softly, softly please, Boston Borough Council.
Spend the money wisely and well, rather than fritter it away as soon as you get it and regret your actions later.

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Your local "newspapers" forgot to tell you, but Boston Eye remembered ...

British Summer Time starts at 2am tomorrow - you should move your clocks and watches an hour forward

Week ending 25th March

Our Friday miscellany

of the week's

news and events

When people talk about something not being worth the paper it is printed on, they seldom have political candidates in mind. But it seems that as our local elections draw nearer concerns are being raised that, on occasion, candidates with no chance of being elected to a particular seat have been nominated simply to make up the numbers. This pointless exercise plays a deceit on the electorate. Voters may be tricked into supporting a party on the assumption that the seat would not have been contested if the group in question did not believe it could win it. This might have the effect of robbing a genuine candidate of a chance. Even worse, if by some fluke the "paper" candidate won, how interested would they be in their council duties? The BBI has shown us what can happen when lacklustre councillors are elected. They show no interest, seldom speak, and vote as they are told. History should not be allowed to repeat itself.

Considering that the public often get cross with their councillors, when one councillor gets annoyed with another we have a potentially volatile situation. Such was the case when Councillor Anne Dorrian of the Better Boston Group became frustrated with the BBI’s Alison Austin. Unfortunately, according to local newspaper reports, Councillor Dorrian used an “inappropriate” phrase in an e-mail - but apologised within hours. That ought to have been the end of the matter. But Councillor Austin – whom we have never thought to be a shrinking violet – responded with a formal complaint which led to a year-long investigation that cost us taxpayers £4,366.42. She told the newspaper that she regarded the episode as “bullying” and Councillor Dorrian’s apology “can never reverse the effect upon me of what was written about me.” Funny, we have a similarly bad feeling about such a terrible waste of our money – especially as the council committee which heard the complaint didn’t deem it serious enough to warrant any kind of punishment. Oscar Wilde said “Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much,” while Mahatma Ghandi observed “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” Between the two, there’s a message in there somewhere.
Having said that, this seems to be a week of unforgiveness by the Austin council family, who are clearly in combative mode. Mrs A’s other half – BBI Leader Richard Austin – is pursuing the Conservatives with a complaint to the Electoral Commission over statements in the newsletter produced by Tories on Lincolnshire County Council. The newsletter says the BBI took the council to the brink of government intervention, and made large cuts in staff and services. Hyperbole is a mainstay of politics. It is defined as “the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device or figure of speech. It may be used to evoke strong feelings or to create a strong impression, but is not meant to be taken literally.” And anyway, are we wrong when we seem to recall Councillor Peter Jordan telling a meeting of the full council a year or two ago that the borough was almost bankrupt?
When Polish President Lech Kaczynski died in an air crash. Boston Borough Council was quick to fly the EU flag at half mast and open a book of condolence. A fortnight ago a disastrous earthquake and tsunami struck Japan – killing thousands and reducing whole towns and cities to rubble. Boston is has “twinning” links with Hakusan City in Japan. Has anything been done by way of sending a message of sympathy? Not as far as we can tell.
There’s a lot of publicity about the news that a scheme which helps homeless migrants in Boston to return to their native lands is to continue for another year, after a bid for £55,000 was successful. No doubt some of the 30 people already sent home under the scheme were here illegally. The latest announcement ignored the earlier news that illegal immigrants paid to leave the country can apply to return after just two years instead of current five-year minimum. Critics call the combination of payouts and swift returns a “fare-paid holiday at taxpayers’ expense.” Doubtless we’ll soon find out.
Another long letter from BBI Councillor Ramonde Newell in the local press laments the billions spent on wars that could instead have been used to ease our national debt and help with the budget deficit. His tour de farce is equally unforgiving to both the coalition and the previous Labour government. Councillor Newell signs himself as “Major (RTD) – which is short for “retired” … not anything else that might come to mind. This leaves us wondering why someone who spent so long in army service – as you have to do to reach the rank of major – is so averse to fighting. The dictionary defines an army as “a large body of people organized and trained for land warfare” so the odd battle ought not to come as a surprise. Mind you, they have Majors in the Salvation Army as well, don’t they?

A fritter ...

In the endless battle of the blame game, BBI Councillor Richard Dungworth must at least rank as a Brigadier. In another letter in the local papers, he says that the “previous Conservative-led council” missed an opportunity to refurbish the Geoff Moulder Leisure Pool when it had the luxury of a £40 million windfall from the sale of council housing stock. The windfall arrived in 1999, and it seems entirely possible to us that the pool was not then in need of refurbishment. Councillor Dungworth blames the old administration for frittering away money on the Haven Gallery and the PRSA. Strangely, we seem to think that huge amounts of money have also been frittered away by the BBI in the direction of the PRSA as well and are continuing to be so – but somehow, that goes unmentioned.

Elsewhere in the local papers is the news that Boston’s Early Morning Swimmers’ Club is closing after 31 years. A report tells us “after the council decided to demolish the training pool and closed it in 2009 a user group was formed in which the club participated to try and save the pool.” Swimmers’ Club Chairman David Lamb added: “With a petition of over 8,000 signatures, the council reversed their decision – but it has not acted to re-open the pool.” Comments, please, Councillor Dungworth.

Let’s see if we’ve got this right…. The cells at Boston Police Station are likely to close, with prisoners transferred to Spalding. This is because of the “state” of the cells in Boston, and the move would mean that money would not need spending on refurbishing them. So far, so good, but Spalding Police Station is set to undergo redevelopment which will see an increase in its cell capacity. Surely, a sensible answer would be to refurbish the ten cells in Boston and keep prisoners there, rather than building more cells in Spalding. At the root of all this, says Assistant Chief Constable Keith Smy, is the fact that Boston is “an old building.” Old? That’s a matter of opinion. Our recollection is that the police station was opened in the late 1970’s, which scarcely puts it on the list of Boston’s medieval monuments.

Boston’s green waste collections are under threat after four years because the money has run out. Although it was a good try, and collected some 3,000 tons of green waste which might have otherwise have gone to landfill, it was far from perfect. It required residents to bag up their waste, and then drive it to a not-always-convenient location in a narrow time frame to get it collected. The council says that if we can’t compost out own waste, we can take it to the LCC tip at Wyberton. But the problem for many is the same as with the old collection system. What do you do if you don’t own a car, or for other reasons (possibly of disability,) are unable meet the conditions? Some years ago, Boston Borough Council mooted a garden waste collection scheme where residents would pay £20 a year and receive a special wheelie bin which would be emptied once a fortnight in the growing season. Why this idea was never progressed, we will never know, but it seems time to reconsider it. Certainly things work well in both South Holland and East Lindsey. In the former, you can buy garden waste collection bags and leave them out for collection. In East Lindsey, bins are provided and collected as part of the service. We are sure that many people would be quite prepared to pay a reasonable charge for a collection service in Boston. Why not test the waters?

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Yes - the waffle's even

bigger than this

If you think that this looks like a lot of waffle, can we refer you to the report to tonight’s performance Review Committee of Boston Borough Council –about the Placecheck scheme?
You’ll remember that on Monday we mentioned calls for proof that value for money had been achieved by this £100,000 project.
Well, the answer is purportedly in the report.
There are 1.68 full time equivalent employees in post to deliver Placecheck on the ground. Between 2008/9 and 2010/11, they were paid by the windfall funding the Council received - but from 2011/12, will be funded through the mainstream revenue account.
That’s just as well, since the full time post in the project has already been made permanent.
The impression we got was that Placecheck was a one-off project - something that would get the community organised along the right lines and then become self reliant – something that the word “windfall” implies.
But not only are we taking on more staff to keep the work going, the report tells us that the Council is currently carrying a full time Principal Officer vacancy in its Communities team and that this “is not sustainable in the long run.” Stand by to stick another £42,000 a year on the council’s wages bill.
Add to this the cost of a Neighbourhood Projects Officer at £25,288, a Local Communities Officer costing £18,496 and charges pro rata for the time of the Head of Service – a meagre £15,154 - and you have a grand total of £101,081.
Apparently, when not involved with Placecheck duties the staff have other vital tasks as well – such as “attending and contributing to the Boston Disability Forum, attending and contributing to Tension monitoring meetings, attending and contributing to ASBAG* meetings – don’t you just love that acronym? - coordinating the national “11 million Take Over” days, supporting the Boston Showcase steering group, attending and contributing to Boston Youth Council meetings, representing the council on the Lincolnshire Capital Grant assessment panel, coordinating the BTAC grant programme, contributing to bids for external funding – such as the Migration Impact Fund, and last – and quite probably by all means least - representing the council as an observer on the Bicker Trust Panel.
It’s a dirty job but – as they say, someone’s go to do it.
Or have they?
The benefits from Placecheck are claimed to be manifold and far reaching - ranging from a reduction in crime to residents getting a “warm fuzzy feeling” from the scheme.
You need to read the report in full and come to your own conclusions about whether of not the scheme provides value for money – which is the object of the exercise.
Placecheck organisers went out to local communities, sat them down and asked them what was good and bad about the areas where they lived and then drew up scheme that in some cases involved little more than planting a bulb or two.
In the old days, communities that shared concerns about the state of their neighbourhood got up on their hind legs and did something about it.
Placecheck made them look for problems where in some cases, we are sure that none existed, and then made them feel good and involved.
The real need that it met was to feed the BBI’s obsession with nannying us all – but at a considerable – and ongoing cost.
Accounting for the money spent is not the same as demonstrating whether value has been achieved – and in the case of Placecheck, we do not believe that it has.

*ASBAG – anti social behaviour action group … not to be confused with GASBAG!

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Will "reverse whirlwind"

blow BBI away?

As the election draws ever closer, one of our regular contributors – someone who “counted them in” on election night – is now wondering whether the reverse will be true in just a few weeks’ time … and they’ll be out for the count!
“Will May 5th deliver yet another historic record for the Boston Bypass Party?” the writer asks.
“Will the people of Boston turn out again just as they did in 2007, but this time to sack them?
“The reverse of the political whirlwind would be ironic; in fact one would think it will be a dangerous decision for any of them to stand again, given the abject failure of their term of office.”
Failure?
Not according to the BBI - but then our contributor’s memory is longer than ours …
“Do any of them really believe that the people will have forgotten ....?
“The central promise to fight for a Bypass was abandoned within weeks of election!
“There was a complete U turn on previously condemned road widening schemes.
“Placid acceptance of Lincolnshire County Council allowing buses in the Strait Bargate pedestrian area.
“The promised financial investigation into the PRSA was dropped, then it was funded again and again!
“The loss of the Athletics Club from the PRSA.
“The insensitive closure of the training pool at the Geoff Moulder Leisure Centre.”
“Dissafection by five founder BBI members.
Put like that the BBI certainly has a hill to climb – and the list is not exhaustive … we omitted a few items out of consideration towards individual members of the BBI.
Our writer reckons that there are at least five BBI councillors who are already packing their cases for retirement.
“If the election evidence collected so far is correct, the present cabinet will be deselected, leaving no leadership.
“If this does come about, what will the next four years be like for any BBI candidate who does get elected?
“How will they expect to be treated by a new administration?
“The chances are it will be payback time.
“My advice to all new BBI candidates, is: don’t stand for election under this tainted banner, why should you carry the can for the past?”
The points raised are both pertinent and interesting, and they beg a few questions of their own.
So far, we have yet to see any sort of manifesto from any of the parties we expect to see asking for our vote.
The BBI was a one note samba – what sort of tune will it promise to play in exchange for a return to office?
The Tories are the next most likely group to win a big chunk of seats.
What promises will they be offering on some of the points mentioned above – such as the PRSA, the Moulder pool and the Bargate buses?
Labour, meanwhile, has been holding a series of “roving surgeries” across the borough on most weekends, since the autumn. The party is in the process of finalising its candidates for the election and will announcing them early next month.
And the Lib Dems? Will they bother to seek our votes at all? We’ve asked, but at the moment, we don’t know.
Our best hope is that plenty of people stand as Independent councillors, prepared to put Boston ahead of party, and bring a breath of fresh air blowing through the corridors of Worst Street.

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BBC: not Boston Borough Council but

Barnum and Bailey's Circus

A question that we’ve been asking for months has at last been answered.

It concerns the government granting of £52,631.58 to Boston from a £3 million package shared between 57 towns and cities which the Department of Communities and Local Government felt were blighted by empty shops.

As is commonplace with the BBI, the council spent months talking about what to do, and involved a number of unlikely local organisations in the discussions  – including the Giles Art Academy, Age Concern, Phoenix - the NHS non smoking service – and the BBI’s favourite charity … the South Lincolnshire Community Volunteer Service.
The outcome was a game of three halves.
Short term measures involved buying “bespoke graphics” to decorate the windows of empty shops. Being “bespoke”, they could only be used in the shops they were designed for and not be transferable. Apparently, no one had encountered the self-cling film commonly used in shops everywhere which regularly change their window displays.
The medium term measure involved the creation of the community “Hub” – another BBI goody two-shoes enterprise which added an arts centre and an “anti smoking” shop to the town’s dazzling panoply of shops to complement the widest range of mobile ‘phone and charity shops in the area.
The long term measures involved offering grants towards the cost of business rates for retailers occupying empty shops. The condition for qualification was that the use must be for retail purposes. This requirement was not applied to the empty shops in Strait Bargate, and if it had been it might have produced a more worthwhile outcome. Not surprisingly – given that there was no discernable publicity for phase three as far as we can tell - there were no takers.
With its customary flair, the BBI accepted estimates of £20,000 to bring the shops up to scratch and then discovered that meeting building regulations would bump the costs up by a staggering sixty per-cent – to £32,000. Why the council’s own department which discovered the need for these works did not consider them ahead of the estimating process is anyone’s guess.
On top of all that it was estimated that another £10,000 would be needed to cover the landlords’ management/insurance fee, fit out the shops, pay the BID Levy and cover the utility costs.
Piling on the agony, after vandals smashed a window that cost £2,300 it turned out that this was not covered by the insurance, and the wrong assumption that the SLCVS would get discretionary rate relief cost another £5,750.
So, after months of delay and incompetence, the bottom line is that after initial financial estimates of £12,000 for the short term, £30,000 for the medium term, and £10,000 for the long term – the true breakdown of funding is: short term – nil at for now, but up to £5,000 allocated for large scale maps produced by Boston BID (better take a ball of string with you); medium term spending ended up as a ridiculous £47,000, and the long term figure was nil.
On the subject of shops opening and closing, do you remember the smoothie bar in Dolphin Lane? It opened without planning permission for change of use from retail purposes, and had a retrospective application refused by Boston Borough Council – which was then overruled after an expensive planning enquiry.
We noted a few weeks ago that the milk bar had vanished, and has now been replaced by a shop displaying jewellery in the front window, and some sort of banking facility at the rear of the shop.
According to the borough’s list of planning applications, it appears that the request for change of use in this respect was only registered on 3rd March, and has not yet been decided.
Is history repeating itself?

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So little

for so much

Four down – one to go.

The latest of the five Placecheck schemes – the one for Witham East - has compiled its report on how the area it covers can be improved, and now all we have to do is sit back and wait to see what it contains.

Superficially, Placecheck is a good idea.

Boston Borough Council got its mitts on £100,000 to spend in five areas of the town thought to be in need of improvement. Each area received £10,000, with a further £10,000 being swallowed up on staff, admin and running costs.

Sadly, though – as is so often the case since the Boston Bypass Independents took on the reins of the council – the outcome of all this effort and expense is an insipid, nannying, goody two-shoes contribution to the community that fails to offer anything like good value for money.

A recent report told taxpayers that Placecheck has secured a wide range of “environmental” benefits to date – such as redesigned street cleansing routines, regular “local litter picks” and “physical environmental improvements.”

It is claimed that the Placecheck model supports neighbourhoods “and should have a positive impact upon local measures of how well our communities get on with each other and feel engaged in the democratic process.”

It does this by making residents feel safe and part of their community, “being healthy” and “creating a greener and sustainable future.”

What this boils down to – as we said in an earlier blog – is a series of cheap and convenient activities such “payback” projects where felons collect litter, gardening projects for school kids, tarting up local community meeting places, bulb planting projects, sport equipment, and more litter and dog waste bins.

Summarised in this way, it is difficult to see how Placecheck could swallow up so much money for so little result.

Certainly the issue is once that has exercised Better Boston Group Councillor Anne Dorrian, whose specific area of concern related to the Placecheck Project taking up the whole of the Community Development section’s workload, a situation of which council members were not aware. According to recent minutes, Councillor Dorrian felt there was a need to look at the budget and examine the value for money being achieved for the council.

We’ve taken a look as well, and feel that whilst all the money spent iks accounted for - down to the last pound of the £105,312 allocated – the matter of “value” does indeed require more detailed examination.

For instance, the wages bill of a community development assistant comes to £16,201 – a drop in the ocean as a proportion of the total.

But the costs of “Placecheck reports” – which started at a modest £450 a year ago - are now listed at £1,500 a time.

Yet again, a key player in all of this is the South Lincolnshire Community and Voluntary Service, which the BBI appears to have a soft spot for.

It took the decision to let it have one of the two empty shops in Strait Bargate at a peppercorn rent after spending a fortune on “refurbishing” them – and that’s on top of the £100,000 a year it reportedly gives to the SLCVS, which has assets of more than £360,000.

Our previous blog on this subject referred to one Placecheck area where they bought home security equipment – and we mentioned that this was something the police often did for nothing – without the need to pay for it!

And what’s the latest news on the borough council website? East Lincolnshire Community Safety Partnership is giving away support packs to give away to victims of domestic burglary in the Boston borough and East Lindsey areas.

You can write to us at boston.eye@googlemail.com  Your e-mails will be treated in confidence and published anonymously if requested

Week ending 18th March

Our Friday miscellany

of the week's

news and events

There was no shortage of warnings when Strait Bargate opened to traffic in the form of the noisy, polluting Into Town buses. People said that other vehicles would follow the example set by the buses – and that has proved to be the case on more than one occasion. Most recently, a reader reports seeing Loomis Security vehicles on more than one occasion using Strait Bargate as a shortcut between Wide Bargate and the Market Place. Hopefully someone will address this issue as quickly as possibly.
We wondered the other day what sort of benefit had been gained from the £11,100 spent with consultants Vanguard, for a look at Boston's refuse collection service under the expenditure heading “Lean Project Costs.” Well, our readers are ever helpful, and one of them was able to offer an explanation. "The council received some negative comments about the refuse collection service, so what do we do? Of course, we get in a load of consultants! They suggested ringing random addresses within the borough to ask the following questions. Are you happy with the refuse collection in your area? Out of 5, with 5 being the highest how would you rate the service? Then if you gave less than 5 out of 5, the killer question. How do you think we could improve the service so next time you would give a 5. Do you not agree that this was money well spent? I cannot imagine there was any one clever enough within the municipal buildings that could have come up with those questions - so I think it was a bargain."
It’s interesting to see so many people joining the debate over the future of Boston in the letters pages of our local “newspapers.” Universally, they are sending a message that the current political leadership - even in its dog days – should heed. "We don’t like a council that tries to pull the wool over our eyes, or thinks that we aren’t capable of being trusted to hear why decisions which affect us all are being taken." The key thing about local politics is to involve the community – not shut it out. Any party campaigning genuinely to offer more “openness and transparency” should storm its way home – so long it can make people believe what it says!

Meanwhile, our local “newspapers” continue to underwhelm. A tepid attack in the Boston Standard on The Guardian writer Tom Dyckhoff, who wrote an unflattering piece about Boston, tells us that we may have missed it because “The Guardian only really appeals to people in berets who eat lentils and still use the phrase ‘right on.’” Quality journalism such as this goes a long way to explaining the plunging circulation figures at the Boston Standard. Senior reporter David Seymour tries to demean the London journalist still further by calling him “Tommy” when his preferred diminutive is Tom. Someone with a shred more imagination would have had far more fun with the man’s surname! But what can you expect when Mr Seymour's idea of a news picture  appears to be seen jumping into the air at gunpoint with a letter ‘D’ stuck to his chest?

The Standard is not alone, however. The Boston Target is seeing no benefit from reducing the columns by the irrepressibly dull George Wheatman from a weekly to a monthly frequency. Even with four weeks worth of local news to digest and comment on, George manages to devote all three items on his “Nowhere’s a thought” page to sporting matters. We all know about his love of sport. But if the column is to contain nothing else, then it should either be relocated to the appropriate section of the paper – or dropped entirely.

We note that Boston Borough Council leader Richard Austin has added green credentials to his roll of achievements. He’s pictured in a local paper standing against the wall of his Wyberton home like a man facing a firing squad, having turned the roof into a greenhouse look-alike with a dozen solar panels to generate his own electricity. How unnecessary. All that hot air available going to waste!

Good news for everyone who is fed up to the back teeth with all the party political campaigning by the BBI is the local papers. Friday next week should see the last of the claptrap as we enter a period called “purdah” for the local council election on May 5th. "Purdah" brings a pre-election restriction on publicity under a government code of practice which precludes proactive publicity in all its forms of candidates and other politicians involved directly in the election. That’s the good news. The bad news is that we can probably expect a last hurrah in the letters pages this coming Wednesday. Incidentally, if you’re wondering why the period is so named,  so are we. The dictionary defines the word as “solitude: a state of social isolation; the traditional Hindu or Muslim system of keeping women secluded; and a screen used in India to separate women from men or strangers. Meanwhile if you see some apparently deranged people wandering the streets muttering political slogans, don’t worry. They will just be members of the BBI talking to themselves.

Having said that, there's a sneaky little page in the leaflet accompanying this year's council tax demands, which fell through our letter boxes this week, and which will be around throughout the purdah period. As well as the usual incomprehensible figures, which need the skills of an accountant to interpret, there is a page entitled: "A look back: Our achievements"  (our italics.) The "look back" in question is not over the previous twelve months as one might imagine with a document that is issued annually - but covers a much longer period. And there can be little doubt that the capitalised pronoun "Our" in this case refers not to Boston Borough Council as a whole but to the Bypass Independent Party in particular. How clever to try to wheedle a few votes out of a gullible public with an almost subliminal party political pamphlet. And what’s this slogan "Save The Day 5th May 2011 Local Elections?" Does this appear only on Boston's council tax demand envelopes? What does it mean? Put the date in your diary? Save the day for the BBI? Moreinformation would help. On top of all that, the invitation to "view your account online" gives an  internet address that links only to the council website homepage. Where you go from there is anyone’s guess. Save the day for finding the page!
Despite all the encouraging noises made by the BBI about how Boston is flourishing, we note from the February unemployment figures that the borough has seen an increase of six per-cent over the previous month. The figures are the largest among the thirteen economic zones in Lincolnshire and are equalled in percentage terms only by the Spalding and Holbeach areas. In January, 1,453 people were out of work, while last month the number rose to 1,540. It’s a worrying jump coming as it does after a period of some improvement and stability. We hope that it isn’t a sign of the cuts beginning to bite.

You can write to us at boston.eye@googlemail.com  Your e-mails will be treated in confidence and published anonymously if requested.

Come on Boston - make

your voice heard!

It is seldom if ever that Boston Borough Council misses a chance to pat itself on the back.

The latest triumph being trumpeted on its website is to say that the council was one of only 128 out of a total of 433 in the UK to meet a requirement to provide an e-petition facility on their websites.

Yes, really.

We’re sure that you are completely under-whelmed by the news.
The chance to post an e-petition has been available since December 15th.

The idea is that your petition and supporting information can be made available to a potentially much wider audience, and thus get more names in support.

Anyone who wants to support a petition can add their name and address online. Information about the subject is also provided, to put the petition in context and help people to decide whether to sign – and you can also see who else has supported it.
So far the people of Boston have greeted the chance to get on their hobbyhorse with the level of enthusiasm that we have come to expect.
Not a single petition has been posted in the three months since the opportunity was created.
Three test petitions were posted before the site became operative. For some unaccountable reason they still remain on there in the standard dummy Lorem Ipsum text used by the printing and typesetting industry since the 1500s, and which has its roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC.
End of history lesson.
As befits Boston Borough Council, there is a shed-load of rules attached to placing a petition. You have to wait up to five days for it to be approved, and you need at least ten signatures or the council won’t accept it.
It’s a shame that Boston people have been so backward in coming forward and presenting petitions but it seems they are not alone.
No-one in neighbouring South Holland has taken up the opportunity, and as far as we can tell there is no such service available yet in on East Lindsey.
At county council level, Lincolnshire is far pickier. Petitions with 1,750 signatures can be referred to the relevant Overview and Scrutiny Committee, where a chief officer could be called to give evidence, and only those petitions with 3,500 signatures could trigger a debate at the full council.
Pretty safe there, then.
Current petitions at county level number a paltry two – one about heavy lorries, farm vehicles and trailers causing damage to the roads, and the other calling for
wi-fi access to the internet in local libraries.
But that’s immaterial – at least there are some.
There are a host of things that people in Boston could petition about.
Opposing the iron grip of secrecy imposed by the BBI Star Chamber could be a good starter for ten.
Or testing public opinion for a ban on buses driving through Strait Bargate.
Or what about using the e-petition service as a test bed for the debate over whether or not Boston should have an elected mayor?
Let’s hope that local people take a look at the way they think their lives could be improved and start petitioning.

You can write to us at boston.eye@googlemail.com  Your e-mails will be treated in confidence and published anonymously if requested.

In the red .. £650 for this

Why keeping mum

 is self defeating

On Monday’s blog we drew attention to the increasing outlets of information that are forcing councils to be more open and transparent with their taxpayers whether they want to or not.
Councils are now forced to list all expenditure over £500, which is producing some interesting information,
At the lower end of the scale, for instance, who would have though that a Gerda “premises information box” in a poppy red would have set us back to the tune of £654.95.
What is it? Basically, it’s a fireproof box in which information is stored that will help the fire brigade if a blaze breaks out. Surely, something similar must have been available for a much lower price?
Higher up the spending ladder, we wonder what sort of benefit was gained from the £11,100 spent with consultants Vanguard for a look at the refuse collection service under the expenditure heading “Lean Project Costs,”
Another source of information can be found at sites such as “Openly Local,” where visitors can see how taxpayer money is spent. And we have already mentioned “What do they know?” which lists Freedom of Information requests to local authorities together with their responses.
Boston Borough Council’s attitude to confidentiality seems to be that if at all possible, matters should be kept from the public – and even fellow councillors as well.
It seems less that the BBI feels we are not mature enough to understand - merely that the ruling group enjoys secrecy for its own sake.
We recall that some while ago, when Boston Eye reported the job share arrangement with East Lindsey District Council for the services of the borough’s Director of Resources and Section 151 officer, the view from the Chief Executive’s office was surprise that the ELDC report on the issue was not confidential.
The answer – in a nutshell – is that East Lindsey feels that when public money is being spent or saved, the people who foot the bill should know about it.
Shocking, isn’t it?
More recently we had the debacle at the full council meeting at which the decision to discuss Boston’s leisure services was scheduled for discussion in the absence of the press and the public.
The outcome was a press conference a couple of days later at which it was announced that the “bright new future for leisure services” trumpeted a year ago had become little more than a lick of paint in the Moulder Leisure Pool changing rooms.
The borough did its best to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat with an upbeat announcement at the heart of which was the news that a planned £2 million refurbishment had been slashed to £280,000 and that, in the face of serious cash cutbacks, the public should consider itself fortunate to continue to have access to a swimming pool in the town at all.
This is what happens when you try to pull the wool over the eyes of the punters.
If the borough had kept people reasonably informed all along, the news would have been the same – but the headlines might have been more sympathetic and supportive.
We sincerely hope that lessons have been learned – and whilst it is now too late for the BBI to change its ways – that the new incoming party in charge of the council from May 5th will learn from the error of the BBI’s ways.

You can write to us at boston.eye@googlemail.com  Your e-mails will be treated in confidence and published anonymously if requested.

Exercise Watermark
blots our copybook

With timing so faultlessly bad that it almost seemed intentionally provocative, Boston Borough Council chose last Friday to tell us that “a 1,000-year flood hit Boston last week leaving chaos and devastation in its wake.
“Up to 2,500 people were left in need of rescue and the Pilgrim Hospital had to be evacuated as gale force eight winds piled up a North Sea surge which burst through the banks of The Haven.”
Meanwhile, half a world away, victims of the Japanese tsunami were being washed away in their tens of thousands in a natural disaster unparalleled since records began.
Even with the reassurance locally that “fortunately the flood, anticipated to occur only once in a thousand years and worse than that which hit the east coast in 1953, was all an exercise to put to the test in as realistic terms as possible, the emergency plans of Boston Borough Council and other organisations” the decision to publish the story on the council website seemed remarkably crass and insensitive.
Regardless of the atrocious timing, and the trumpeting of a faux disaster whilst the real thing was claiming lives in the most horrific way, the episode again underlines Boston’s ambivalence towards the issue of flooding.
The view that appears to be taken by the Borough Council that because this overly theatrical exercise attracted national press and TV coverage “and a ministerial and royal visit” this was a good thing.
One of those events that “puts Boston on the map.”
In fact is does quite the opposite.
It puts Boston in the spotlight as being an area at risk of serious flooding – an area where it is unsafe to relocate to.
An area where is it dangerous to live.
An area where any sensible insurance company will refuse to offer cover.
A “thousand year flood” does not mean that we can breathe easily until 3011.

It could happen tomorrow, and developers thinking of building their shopping centres and housing estates know this perfectly well.

The ceaseless message that has been delivered in recent months is that Boston is a place that is safer now from flood risk than it has ever been.

Who could forget Boston 200 – which was rammed down our collective throats by Council Leader Richard Austin to try to persuade us that flooding in the borough was now little more than a memory.

We have an £8.5 million lock link to act as the tidal flood defence for Boston.
Then there’s the £50 million flood barrier which will improve the odds on flooding in Boston from a two per cent probability of flooding from a tidal surge – a one in 50 chance - in any year to 0.33 percent probability – a one in 300 chance.
It’s only a few days since Boston’s head of planning and strategy denounced claims in The Guardian newspaper that the borough had one of the highest risks of flooding in the country. He said the risk was “very low indeed” and set to improve when the Boston Barrier is competed.
Now, for the sake of a little cheap publicity, Boston is back in poll position on the flood maps – and if we suffer as a result, we only have ourselves to blame.
It just takes one developer to change his mind about locating to Boston because of a perceived flood risk for the borough potentially to lose hundreds of jobs and dozens of new homes.

You can write to us at boston.eye@googlemail.com  Your e-mails will be treated in confidence and published anonymously if requested.

Revealed: Boston’s

very own

(pro rata)

“fat cat!”

Despite its best efforts to avoid transparency, the sunlight of openness is finding Boston Borough Council in much the same way that the first rays of dawn turned Count Dracula to ashes.
Last week's battle over the public disclosure of the council's leisure services report, at which the local press and public stood up to be counted, was just such an example. The report was categorised as confidential and printed on pink paper to identify it as such, and when it came to be discussed, the press and public were ordered to leave the council chamber. Such events have become commonplace during the reign of the Boston Bypass Independents.
Now, though, events are combining to pressure the council into telling the people who fund it exactly where their money is going.
The most important of these is the publication of items of council expenditure over £500, which recently became compulsory.
Even then, Boston Borough Council manages to be not quite as open as it might be.
“While we aim to be as transparent as possible, there may be some cases where we need to withhold information that could be regarded as sensitive for commercial or security reasons, or to protect personal privacy,” it says.
There are now also websites such as “Openly Local” - a new project to develop an open and unified way of accessing Local Government information which has so far opened up data from more than 140 local authorities, with more being added every week.
Then there is the “What do they know?” website – which lists freedom of information requests made to local authorities, together with their response.
As a for instance amidst all of this, Boston's list of spending in excess of £500 includes a company called Mrf UK Ltd, which appears on “Openly Local's” website as the council's fourth biggest “customer” - providing “agency staff services.”
Of the costs on this list, Boston Borough Council says: “Our aim is to obtain best value on everything we purchase. This is supported through the operation of fair and open competition by following transparent and auditable procedures in all tendering and contracting activity.”
The Mrf costs caught the eye of Boston accountant Darron Abbott, who noted that services charged by this company totalled £32,259.17 for the period September to November last year.
For that 91 day period the council was billed £600 a day for a total of 47 days' work - plus expenses.
The owner of Mrf UK is Boston's Chief Executive, Richard Harbord, whose contact was recently extended to November.
“My basic maths tells me if we paid him this for a five day week it would cost us £156,000.” says Darron Abbott. “Whilst I appreciate that if he was directly employed it would cost us (the taxpayers) employers' national insurance contribution and a pension contribution, I still think this is a luxury we cannot afford here in Boston.”
Luxury is certainly the right word as far as we are concerned. Fifteen days work a month means fifteen days off - which is as near as part-time as you can get.
In this respect, Mr Harbord joins the council's Head of Resources – who divides his time equally between Boston and East Lindsey District Council.
Two top officers - one full time job.
Surely, Boston deserves something better.
Mr Harbord's projected annual salary of £156,000 puts him alongside the 43% of local authority chief executives paid more than £150,000 last year - trumping the prime minister's salary of £142,500.
Mr Abbott, who plans to stand for Boston Borough Council in the May 5th elections, told Boston Eye: “I really believe the public should be aware of how the council tax is spent. One thing I would like to change if I get elected is the amount of pink paper that is consumed within the municipal buildings. The public should be aware of what the councillors and officers are up to.”
According to the professional networking website Linkedin, - which helps members find past and present colleagues and discover “inside connections” when they are looking for a job or a new business opportunity – Richard Harbord is interested in job inquiries, expertise requests, business deals, reference requests, and “getting back in touch.”
Plenty of time for that with all those idle hours, then?

You can write to us at boston.eye@googlemail.com  Your e-mails will be treated in confidence and published anonymously if requested.

Week ending 11th March

Our Friday miscellany

of the week's

news and events

There are lots of protests in this week’s local “newspapers” about the BBI’s obsession with secrecy and making sure that the general public is kept in the dark about council decisions for as long as possible. Now it appears that this also extends to councillors as well. After the brou-ha-ha surrounding the decision to eject the public from the debate on the collapse of the borough’s leisure service plans, it emerged that whilst it was ok for the Chief Executive to brief the press two days later, members remained under a confidentiality embargo for the duration.
An interesting challenge is waiting in the wings for the forthcoming Boston Borough Council election on May 5th. A reader writes to tell us: - “I am intending to run for Fenside Ward, and possibly under the banner of English Democrats. It is also my intention very soon to get 2,400 of the electorate to sign a petition to create a referendum on having a elected executive mayor, which I plan to run for and hopefully win.” The more the merrier, we say. The English Democrats (motto "Not left, not right, just English") are an English federalist political party, seeking a devolved English Parliament with at least the same powers as the Scottish Parliament. They are not to be confused with the far-right street protest movement the English Defence League. Talking of elected Mayors – what ever happened to the announcement by Bypass Independent Councillor Jim Blaylock that he planned to campaign for a referendum on whether Boston should have an elected mayor rather than seek re-election?
Once again, Boston Borough Council – aka the BBI – is trumpeting the news that there will be no increase in council tax for borough taxpayers this year – of a zero per-cent increase, as they so fond of calling it. It would be a praiseworthy act were it not for the fact that in last year’s emergency budget, Chancellor George Osbourne announced that the Government would work with local authorities to freeze council tax for a year from April. Doing what you’re told isn’t quite the same as coming up with the idea yourself.
The new Mid-Lincolnshire ‘phone book dropped through our doors last week. It calls itself “compact” (translation: very small – and printed in microscopic type) and made of 100% recycled fibres (thinner than tissue paper.) The news that you can be sure that every advertiser in the book is “genuinely looking for new business” means the classified section no longer lists all trades – only those who have paid for space. Boston just scrapes its way on to the Mid Lincolnshire map. Unhelpfully, areas that would be useful to us, such as Spalding and Sleaford are omitted, but areas that involve a three-day camel trek to reach such as Gainsborough and Market Rasen are included. What a totally useless directory!
Talking of maps … we viewed the long awaited 3d map of Boston being produced by the Boston Improvement District with something approaching horror. It more closely resembles a screenshot of Google Earth than anything else. BID manager Niall Armstrong tells us that there are still some parts that need to be filled in “and once this is done adjustment will be made to make sure that the street plan remains visible.” Surely, that’s the idea. Whatever – whilst it offers a grand bird’s eye view of Boston, it is of little use as a map – which is what it was designed for … at  a wholesale price of £1.70 a copy, don’t forget!
Apparently a fortnight is also a long time in politics as well as a week. The Boston Target of February 23rd quoted Deputy Chief Executive Phil Drury denying suggestions that the private management company Leisure Connection was seeking to renegotiate its deal to run the PRSA. Quote from the Target this week: “Members agreed to scrap a proposed deal which would have seen private firm Leisure Connection take over the running of the Geoff Moulder and the PRSA.” All right - it’s not quite the same thing. But …
There was an insightful exchange between the genuinely Independent Councillor Richard Leggot and BBI Leader BBI Richard Austin at last week’s council meeting. It followed a decision to expel the BBI from the so-called Leaders’ Meetings which the ruling party so often fails to attend. Councillor Leggott asked: “Councillor Austin, on behalf of the people of Boston, I ask you, are you not ashamed that it is the attitude displayed by yourself and other representatives of Boston Bypass Party in attendance at the regular group leaders' meetings with the Chief Executive that has led to the necessity for such meetings, in future, to be held without a Bypass Party presence if they are to continue at all? Quick as a flash, Councillor Austin retorted: “I have always been willing to join in the leaders’ meetings, I am quite happy to do so in future. They have not been successful or productive meetings due to the aggressive and continually attacking nature of the opposition leaders. The Chief Executive has told me that he has agreed to a meeting of opposition leaders. This is not the first of these that have been held and they are a perfectly normal part of local government life.” The answer produced a supplementary question from Councillor Leggott. “Councillor Austin in his answer has ably demonstrated some of the reasons why the opposition groups have asked for separate group leaders' meetings. He has not addressed the question which was put - are you not ashamed - he has blamed everybody else and then involved the Chief Executive, or as we opposition groups refer to him now, Councillor Austin’s flak jacket. Following the response from Councillor Austin there is no need for any follow up question to reinforce my point.”
The phrase “keep the home fires” burning took on a whole new meaning this week with the news that the company that runs London's fire engines faces a financial crisis and claims that the problems at AssetCo Fire and Rescue could see them being sold off to raise funds. Why are we bothered? In April 2006 Lincolnshire Fire and Rescue Service signed a 20- year private public partnership support services contract with AssetCo to supply, manage and maintain their vehicles and operational equipment.
If the Boston Standard believes it can stem the inexorable decline in its readership via the cult of personality, we would advise against it. Page 1 of this week’s issue reports the Standard coming to the rescue of the Seabank Marathon, and pictures five members of staff jumping for joy at the news – presumably in the absence of anyone else. Page 2 features a photo of the editor to illustrate her appeal for sponsorship in the Lincoln 10k run. “If every reader donated just £1, I would … raise £10,000” she burbles. Not with a circulation of 8,756, you won’t! Page 9 has a story all about the Standard launching a new directory site, whilst on page 12, the big news is that there is still time to book a free session with the paper’s financial advisor. Page 21 carries a half –page feature on how great the Standard’s website is, whilst the whole of page 23 is dedicated to the list of nominees for this year’s Boston Standard Pride Awards – an event that if memory serves us right successfully filled quite a lot of pages last year and will doubtless do so again in 2011. If the Standard is looking for something really different in this day and age, might we suggest that the inclusion of news would be an excellent starting point. For a moment, we thought that the headline “Dullest February in Boston since 1993” also referred to the Standard – but on closer examination discovered that the story was about the local weather.
Finally, a little known fact emerged this week that ought to be worth an entry in the borough’s Roll of Achievement. History’s greatest gardener – Capability Brown – married a Boston girl … Bridget Wayet.


You can write to us at boston.eye@googlemail.com  Your e-mails will be treated in confidence and published anonymously if requested.