Boston Eye contributor "Scanner" agrees that traders must be heard

I was, like your correspondent, ready to praise either the Chamber of Commerce or the borough council for providing an ice rink in the town on the run up to Christmas. Lincoln has had a rink for several years, paid for by the Chamber of Commerce and, at last, Boston is following suit - though it seems that here the borough council is footing the bill. Whoever is paying, I have two left feet so will not dare risk life or limb to try it out but I certainly don’t begrudge giving those that can balance on thin blades the chance to do so.
It was, also, a hopeful sign that the powers that be are reawakening as to how important Christmas could be to the town. If they had not withdrawn their support several years ago, by now we could have had a major visitor attraction for the town. In tandem with Lincoln we could have had two really great events to pull in crowds of Christmas shoppers. It is still not too late to catch up – but is the will really there? I have already said the increasingly expensive Party in the Park should be abandoned. If even half, of the near fifty thousand pounds it cost the council last year, was spent on a Christmas Fayre (or whatever we call it), with market trader goodwill and Chamber of Commerce input, we could soon have something that would be of much more value to everybody who lives, works and shops in our town - not just something that inflates the drink sales of the supermarkets and the off licenses.
Including their fiascoes with the Tourism Information Centre, the Haven, the Guildhall, the Continental Market and now the Farmers' Market, it seems that the council is just paying lip-service to their much-stated aim of attracting tourists to the town. With this latest action of, once more, upsetting the market traders, I wonder if they are going to gradually close down our biggest tourist attraction as well?
If you, like me, regularly walk through the coach station on a Wednesday, you will see at least seven or eight visiting coaches most weeks of the year, with even more in the summer months. We obviously, still have product (to use modern slang) that is enjoyed by our visitors and it is one that they feel is worth coming to see. Apparently, some coach companies run regular Wednesday excursions to the town. And, in spite of the way markets generally are contracting, ours is holding its own. Part of this must be due to the tourists that flock in on a Wednesday. They don’t have to come here. I’m sure there are at lot of places that would welcome them with open arms.
Come on councillors! You can’t blame anyone but yourselves for this. You should be thinking of ways of making the market brighter and bigger - not chipping away at the goodwill of the traders and, so, possibly causing its eventual closure – after at least seven hundred years! In future, before you have grand ideas, like running buses in Strait Bargate or putting a huge pimple in the centre of town, please consider the effect any new proposals may have on the market. Also, please put your money where your aims and objectives are and make our market and town a magnet for tourists from throughout the East Midlands. But please, oh please, make sure you take into account the views of the market traders FIRST before you publish any plans.


"SCANNER"