Dodge these issues at your peril!

We never cease to be amused by the priorities of the great and the good and how they compare with the wishes of the people they claim to represent.
The Community Action Plan - drawn up to give our otherwise rudderless leadership a sense of direction - sets out improving transport as its top priority.
The plan says reducing traffic congestion is overwhelmingly the public’s highest priority – apparently 68% of people said this was what most needed improving. For some reason this was particularly important for older people, whilst younger people were also concerned about availability of public transport and safe cycling facilities.
The public opinion was garnered in general survey carried out in 2006/07 ... so it is now well out of date.
We think that most people - if asked again today would say that they were now far happier about the traffic situation in and around Boston.
Aside from a the odd occasion when things jam up like they used to, it is fair to say that traffic now flows well, proving what many had long said - that the problem was caused by traffic lights and not by traffic. Now the lights are off, the traffic flows ..... quod erat demonstrandum.
As far as safer cycling facilities are concerned, cyclists continue to do what they've always done - use the pavements as cycle tracks regardless of the bylaws and the safety of pedestrians knowing that no-one will bother to stop them doing so.
The next priority is improving the health of the community – encouraging participants to take part in physical activity and eat healthily and providing better facilities to do so.
This apparently is the justification for spending a fortune on the Geoff Moulder Leisure Pool.
We don't dispute the worth of this particular facility - in fact we wish the council would focus on the Moulder site and ditch the PRSA once and for all - but we do doubt that investment in sporting facilities will do anything by way of encouraging a healthy lifestyle among the town's tubbies and the borough's biggest.
Generally, sporting and health centres are treated as fashion items .... to be tried on for a short while and then discarded when the novelty wears off.
And frankly the obese 29% of the borough's residents are highly unlikely to be in any way concerned about leading a healthier lifestyle.
We hate to sound patronising, but you know the sort of people we mean, and therefore you know that what we say is true.
Oddly enough, item three on the list - enhancing the quality of the town by reducing litter and generally smartening the place up is, in our book, the most important.
Whilst no surveys exist to prove the point, Boston has to be the litter capital of this part of Lincolnshire.
The streets are strewn with rubbish, and whilst people use the town as their personal tip, there is no way that they are ever going to consider improving their own lifestyles.
And it would be great if, for once, the reports on how to make the borough a better place made less of the "town centre" and more of the town as a whole ... or should that be hole?
People who live in the town but not in the centre are sick of seeing the amount of filth that litters our streets and gutters and blocks the drains. Not just rubbish, but food, glass and animal waste seem to be everywhere.
We recall with amusement the fanfare that accompanied the gum removal machine last September ... but wonder what has happened to it since - certainly we've not seen it in use since the photocall.
Another thing that could be done to make an immediate impact on the town centre would be to ask some of the big name outlets like Carphone Warehouse and Thorntons to give their shopfront a lick of paint.
A token it might be but it would certainly bring a huge improvement at very little cost - as would smartening up the ever-growing number of vacant shops from that make Boston look like Dodge City.
Small improvements can have a big impact without the need for fancy reports....

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