Stumped - cash plea falls on deaf ears ... and church is thousands more out of pocket

Yesterday, we wrote of Boston Stump and the celebrations to mark its 700th anniversary.

But having read the local papers,we doubt that there will be much to celebrate after the borough cabinet (above) turned down an application for a £12,000 grant to enhance its tourism work and promote the anniversary year.

The decision is a doubled blow in that the church decided this year not to apply for a long running grant of £11,000 towards insurance costs for the building, which our cash-strapped and greedy council accepted with alacrity, leaving the church harder up than ever i n this special year.After that, the cabinet had the bare faced cheek to propose more discussions "to see if there was anything else the council could assist them with" - just as if they had already been somehow helpful in the first place.We feel that the church managers should say "thanks but no thanks to an offer" like this which would equate to inviting Typhoid Mary to cook the family dinner.

Given the council's attitude to anything faintly important by way of heritage, we could foresee their involvement leading to the demolition of the church so as to enhance the view of the "iconic" bridge being proposed to link the council's latest white elephant - Merchants Quay.Speaking of that grand development, we were taken to task yesterday by one or two readers after suggesting the name was pulled out of a hat.

But if you Google the name you'll find one - sans apostrophe because no-one is grammatical enough to know whether it should be placed before or after the letter s - in Newcastle,Dundee, Brighton, Cork, Salford, Leeds, Hull, Gloucester, Newry, Dublin and County Wicklow.

What a shame that the developers could even be bothered to think of a unique name

to proffer some specialness to the place.

Why not name it May Fair, to commemorate the historic event that that cabinet plans to kill off after centuries just for the sake of saving a few hundred quid?

Whilst the BBI's clearly thinks of itself as a "progressive" council, we would substitute the adjective "destructive" instead.

Tomorrow, ahead of the public "consultation" on the Into Town bus service begins, we'll be looking at some interesting statistic compiled by one of our contributors.

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