Week ending 4th September

Our Friday miscellany of the week's news and events
Who goes where .... earlier this week we touched on attendance at council meetings by members. In passing, we mentioned the case of Fenside's BNP Councillor David Owens, who wants to serve on more committees but is prevented from doing to by what amounts to political bullying by the BBI. That doesn't stop him attending, however, and his record is impressive. It currently stands at: Audit and Governance 5 out of 7, Overview and Scrutiny 5 out of 6, Policy Development 2 out of 3, Standards Committee 2 out of 3, Joint Committees 3 out of 5, full council attendance 10 out of 11, and BTAC 3 out of 4. Isn't it time that the BBI lightened up a little and recognised that regardless of party political affiliation then man wants to serve the town and his constituents.
Headline of the week ... goes to the Boston Standard for "shoplifter told to change ways." Presumably sticking a bottle of stolen vodka down your shell suit bottoms is a bit too obvious these days" The Standard's Education Correspondent also gets a bauble for the caption "This trio pick up there results....." in the endless coverage of the GCSE results.
Stitch this ... Boston's Pilgrim Hospital justifies a 20% increase in car parking charges by saying that it's the first in five years. We fail to see how that justifies anything at all. In the past we were told that parking charges helped fund patient services. But last year the hospital blew £400,000 on re-designing the car park, and as far as we can see is now simply being greedy. Expect an outcry over the decision to stop blue badge holders parking for nothing. We don't think that holding a parking badge equates with poverty, and this will doubtless bring in a lot of extra cash - just so long as they retain disabled spaces as close to the hospital as possible to save people with difficulties having to walk unreasonable distances. Just two other things. Firstly the hospital should tell us how it plans to spend the parking money in future. Secondly, if they kept appointments to time, most of us would only pay the minimum fee. If they run late patients should be given a free pass to act as an incentive to run the appointments system more efficiently.
Money money money ... It's now a couple of months since Boston Borough Council decided to ask the company that loaned it a million pounds at eleven per-cent over fifty years. We know there's been a postal strike, but shouldn't the reply have arrived by now? And staying with things past.... We note a mention of the Broadfield Lane allotments in next week's BTAC agenda. You may remember that dozens of allotment holders were evicted because the charity which runs the plots wanted to cash in on developing the site with housing. There was talk of a bidding war between would-be developers ... then silence. So what is going on?
Latest big idea ... is for local library users to pick up a"reading passports" which are stamped after every book they read to make a "memento of their reading experience." For many years now a visit to Boston's badly-lit, strangely smelling library has more closely resembled a trawl through the Dead Sea scrolls than a visit to a modern, well-equipped library. The way to encourage people to read more is to provide them with a good supply of books, not hire DVDs and run an internet cafe that takes up a third of the space. The only we hope we have for the passport scheme is that it will bring to an end the sad habit of readers who deface the books they have read in some way unique to them so as to avoid taking the same book out twice.
Hoist on their own petard ... If the quote from the PCSO which appears in former Lincolnshire County Councillor Andrea Jenkyns's blog is true, then a sacking should follow in double quick time. She says that locals reported a number of people converging on Witham Bank West every night, where they drink alcohol, drop litter and have now taken to using the walls of people's properties and the River Witham as an open air toilet. The resident who told Miss Jenkyns this tale said that when they reported the incident to a local PCSO, the reply was: "Well they have to drink somewhere, they can no longer drink in the streets of the town, and if you drink then you need to also go to the toilet!"

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