Christmas is coming after all!!

On December 2nd we mourned the fact that Christmas looked like passing Boston by.
But the very next day an unexpected burst of bonhomie broke out in the form of a press release issued by Boston Borough Council, and headed: "CHRISTMAS MARKET TO BRING GOOD CHEER."
It goes on:-
"Boston BID has worked with officers from the Borough Council to deliver this year’s Christmas Market, which will be held on Sunday 13 December between 09.30 am and 4.30 pm.
"On the day there will be a traditional Christmas Market in the Market Place offering a varied selection of Christmas fayre. The Assembly Rooms will also be packed with craft stalls where you can pick up that special Christmas gift. Throughout the day there will be on stage entertainment provided by a variety of local acts and there will be additional attractions for the children including fair ground rides and santa’s grotto.
Steam engines from Boston Steam Rally will present both a static and moveable display of vintage engines, which will provide some real atmosphere in the Market Place.
"At 11am the Market Place will be home to 300 Santas taking part in this years Santa Fun run arranged by Boston United Football Club.
"The Christmas Market opens at 9.30 am and promises to be a great day out for all of the family.
"Councillor Richard Dungworth, portfolio holder for Regeneration, Planning, Sport and Cultural Services, said: 'The Christmas Markets bring something special to Boston, and we would like to extend an invitation to everyone to come along and enjoy the festivities'
"Following on from the traditional Christmas Market and maintaining the Christmas spirit, Boston will host a French Continental Market in the area around the Ingram Memorial between the 17th and19th December. The Market will sell a large selection of French wines and food in addition to clothing and gifts.
"To add to the Christmas atmosphere the Stump has arranged a Christingle Service, which will take place in the Church from 4pm on Saturday 19th December.
"The week, starting with the Christmas Market on the 13th and ending with the French Continental Market and Christingle Service on the 19th promises to provide a truly festive feel for residents and visitors to Boston."
What a relief, but what a shame the announcement has been left until such a late stage. And neither Boston Borough Council or Boston BID still has no mention of the event on it's website
By the time it hits the local papers on Wednesday there will be less than a week to go, and at this busy time of year, we've no doubt that many people may wll have planned to visit somewhere other than Boston.

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 4th December

Our Friday miscellany of the week's news and events
Thin end of wedge ... ? A week ago today one of our readers was somewhat startled to see a police BMW estate car cruising through Strait Bargate with occupants smiling "smugly" out at the afternoon shoppers. Our views on buses using the precinct are well known and shared by many others. We just hope that our less than athletic police don't view the fact that buses can treat shoppers like sheep means that they can follow suit. Let's hope this isn't the thin end of the wedge...
Wasted spaces ... With Christmas around the corner, parking in Boston is at a premium. This has prompted a reader to ask what's happening about the 50 space car park offering a day's parking for just £2 that was promised for the former Regal Centre site back in March. Bulldozers were scheduled to move in by June - but here we are in December ... still waiting. Any ideas?
Let's get it right ... A sharp-eyed reader with more patience that we have has read all through the requirements for the borough's proposed Director of Resources. On page six under Main Duties and Responsibilities, Item 11., the blurb for the £87,500 a year job says "Statutory s151 officer. There is a legal requirement for a professional accounting qualification." Yet on page 12 under the Person Specification, an accounting qualification is listed as merely "desirable." For a job as big as this, we fervently hope that someone has made a mistake.
Why didn't we get this ...?As the county council strives to bus Bostonians to Lincoln and Spalding to do their Christmas shopping, we understand that work is scheduled to start on a project that South Holland District Council expects to attract shoppers and investment. The £6m food centre on a derelict area Red Lion Street in Spalding will include shops for local produce, teaching areas with catering facilities and office space. About 30 jobs will be created by the project which is funded by SHDC, Lincolnshire County Council, the East Midlands Development Agency and .... Boston College. Thanks a bunch.
Missing mugshots ... Have there been some staff reductions at the Boston Standard? We only ask because a couple of familiar faces are missing from the Rogue's Gallery which appears in the paper every week.
Who ya gonna call ...? We join the sceptics who think that claims of ghostly goings-on at the town's Guildhall are just so much stuff and nonsense. If there are any spooks around, we suspect that they will be of former occupants rattling their chains at the sterile modernisation of the once characterful building and the ghastly (rather than ghostly) soundtrack that now ruins a visitor's chance to enjoy a trip around.

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

A sledgehammer to crack a nut

Yesterday we remarked about what a dismal Christmas was on the cards in Boston.
But just in case you're still thinking of celebrating, the powers that be have plans for you.
Using the claim that Christmas shopping will be "safer than ever," Boston's Neighbourhood Policing Team, Boston Borough Council and local businesses are launching a "safer shopping" campaign over the Christmas period.
Whilst the laudable aim is to prevent opportunistic crimes such as theft, vehicle crime, burglaries and shop lifting it will mean increased high visibility patrols around the town centre at weekends and on late-night shopping nights.
And if PCs, PCSO's Special Constables and Town Rangers weren't enough Lincolnshire's Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership is providing "street wardens" to provide high visibility patrols and Boston 's Neighbourhood Policing Team is holding four crime prevention sessions on the run up to Christmas.
One of the constant complaints of the sledgehammer to crack a nut approach to crime prevention it that it increases the fear of crime to a point where it is greater that the threat of the real thing.
Then there is the issuing of "alcohol strips" to officers patrolling the town.
The idea of this seems to be to stigmatise Boston's young people by assuming that all teenagers toting a drink can are using it to conceal alcohol, but that they won't get away with it because the alcohol strip will find them out.
"We know that there are young people who use soft drinks containers to disguise the true identity of an alcoholic drink," said Boston Police's licensing officer.
"If the drink is vodka-based, such as the alcopop products, it is very difficult to prove the contents. Any drink in a coloured container isn't easy to identify unless it has a strong smell, such as wine, beer or cider. The alcohol strip will confirm the contents in just two minutes."
The iron fist in the iron glove approach means that underage youngsters found consuming alcohol will have their details taken and their parents contacted and a police officer making a personal visit to their parents.
When we were boys and girls, a nip or two at Christmastime was a rite of passage.
Now it seems to be the first step on the road to a criminal record when more often than not, no serious offence has been committed.
Of course we don't want to see the streets of Boston teeming with pickpockets and footpads. Nor do we wish to see the town's streets reeling with drunken youngsters - or adults for that matter.
But there is no real evidence that this has ever happened in the past, and to swamp the town with police, and treat every shopper as a potential thief seem to us to be over-egging the Christmas pudding.
This sort of policing is just too much.
Bostonians in general are decent, law abiding people - whatever their age - and should be treated as such.
Oh. One final question.
Where do the police go and what do they do for the other eleven and a half months of the year?

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

Yo Ho ... Oh No!

The other day, someone asked us what was going on in Boston at Christmas.
To be honest, we were stuck for an answer, and decided to take a look around and see what we could find out.
Our starter for ten was the assumption that there would be no Continental Christmas Market this year, because it was driven away last year by unacceptable proposals to locate it out of the way of the sainted Into Town bus service - which effectively meant locating it somewhere where no-one would want to visit it.
We seemed to recall that Boston BID was seeking support for a Christmas Market earlier in the year.
We remember because there was criticism in the local papers back in August that as is so often the case the event was going to ignore the existence of West Street.
Now, though, the event seems to have disappeared from the BID calendar altogether - at least there is nothing about it on the organisation's website, and earlier references to the lack of enthusiasm for the idea seem to have vanished.
A search of Lincolnshire County Council's website finds the combination of the words Christmas and Boston conspicuous by their absence.
Boston Borough Council's website has no reference to any sort of Christmas Market plans, and it's what's on pages also suggest a bleak midwinter on the market cards.
A look at the Boston Standard's What's on internet feature finds it mired in the past rather than looking ahead to the festive season (click on the picture below to enlarge.)
The Target's feature, whilst up to date, has nothing of a Christmassy nature at all in December.
So if you want to celebrate Christmas this year, we suggest you board one of the extra buses laid on by Lincolnshire County Council specifically to take Bostonians to Lincoln or Spalding about which they bragged when it was announced back in October “These new Sunday services will provide improved access for shopping, especially during Christmas and the sales ....."
Yo, ho, no ....
Is Boston celebrating this year .... if you know, please let us know.

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

Time to clean up town's bleak image

If we were trying to put together an image of Boston from the jigsaw puzzle of items about it that have appeared in the news in the past few weeks alone, the picture on the box would be very bleak indeed.
Males in and around Boston have the lowest male life expectancy at birth in the county, and whilst females can expect a further five years, it is still the third lowest life expectancy in the county.
Unemployment rose by three per cent in and around Boston last month.
We're the area most at risk from flooding, with the forecast for even worse times ahead - and the County Council plans to withdraw the warning siren service.
Boston is one of only five local authorities where women have no choice between the three options of home birth with a midwife, a local birth centre or an obstetric unit in a hospital.
Anti-social behaviour is on the rise, despite promises to curb it.
United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust, which includes the Pilgrim Hospital, is second on a "roll call of tragedy" published in a national paper with 226 "needless" deaths.
The by-pass which everyone wanted, and which the BBI promised with such confidence, is now at least ten years away, but with the greater liklihood that it will never come to pass.
The town has inflicted itself with a bad image through the unnecessary imposition of designated public places orders which suggest that - without them - we would have a serious public problem with alcohol.
And with Christmas just around the corner, the crowds in Strait Bargate are to be herded like cattle by buses that no-one wants to see in their town centre.
That's just for starters.
What is going wrong with Boston?
We need some thinking people to come up with some sensible answers.
The town's image needs a makeover.
We need an image Czar - and not just a couple of tourism press releases.
And soon.

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