Once it was Boston Borough Council - the BBC
Now its the Big Blue Dragon - the BBD

Hush ... the big blue

dragon is trying to

get some sleep

Ten days ago – just before we set off in our private Gulfsteam G650 for the delights of Mustique and the luminous Middleton family – we expressed disappointment that the Conservatives on Boston Borough Council had done nothing to make their presence felt.

We said at the time: “One might expect to see something by way of action even at this early stage – if nothing else as a way of saying ‘this is us, we’ve arrived, and we mean business.’”
But no. We returned to find the Tories lurking like a big blue dragon somewhere in the caverns of Worst Street, exhaling tendrils of insipid smoke rather than the flames that we expected would begin the work of forging a transformation for Boston.
Our parting comments and today’s mention of tendrils of smoke have a connection, as they both concern the route used by the Into Town bus service, which herds people using what is supposed to be a pedestrianised area aside by use of a penetrating alarm – backed by a blast from the horn should they fail to comply with its demands. The buses then pass by in a rumble of engine noise before gently adding their own specific je ne sais croi  into the air breathed by the shoppers.
Well, actually, we do sais croi.
Diesel engines produce an entertaining cocktail of carbon in the form of soot, nitrogen, water, carbon monoxide, aldehydes, nitrogen and sulphur dioxide, and sulphur dioxide, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons – which are described as potent atmospheric pollutants.
And it goes without saying that breathing diesel fumes as all users of Strait Bargate are forced to do can affect your health.
For a council as obsessively health conscious and “green” as Boston professes to be, this is a strange anomaly. There can be no question that running buses through Strait Bargate is potentially dangerous both in the long and short term, and it therefore follows that any right thinking local council would move heaven and earth to end the use of the precinct as a rat run for a bus route.
Indeed, all parties apart from the BBI* have condemned the decision to run the service through Strait Bargate.
The former leader of the Tory group, Councillor Raymond Singleton-McGuire, was in the vanguard of those critics during a pre-election debate on local radio.
“The option for the buses to go through the town centre itself was not put out to open debate or even to other councillors. It was a decision made in private behind closed doors by the leader Richard Austin, of which we knew nothing, and it was actually implemented. I think it’s disgusting.”
But, autre temps, autre moeurs from autre dirigeants.
About the only thing to have happened in Boston in our absence was for the council’s new leader Peter Bedford, to tell a local newspaper that while talks about the bus service will be held, there will be no change of route in the near future as “the contract still has 18 months to run.”
We may seem a bit simple here – but what has one of these things to do with the other.
The contract and the route are surely not inseparable.
The route could use alternatives to reach its destination – in fact it does, as the use of Strait Bargate can somehow be avoided on occasions such as May Fair.
Using the contract as a reason for maintaining the present route simply sweeps the matter under the carpet for a further 18 months – to roughly the time when the present leader will be considering whether or not to complete his remaining term of office.
Should he choose not to, the issue would then become a problem for his successor.
The reason for not doing something now is unconvincing.
It is also defeatist.
Bostonians do not want the Into Town bus service using Strait Bargate.
We would have hoped that a party elected on a promise of listening to the electorate would have got off to a better start than simply to tell us that whilst there are to be talks, the decision is set in stone.
It has the feel of the County Hall pulling the strings at Worst Street.

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

*BBI. Remember them? A party widely criticised for ignoring the wishes and opinions of both council colleagues and members of the public. Good job we’re rid of them, then.