Blog row rumbles on ...

The official response to the issues raised by the controversial "Leader's Blog" has been issued.
Acting Chief Executive Chief Executive Richard Harbord said: "There have been some concerns raised and in light of those concerns Boston Borough Council will be putting formal arrangements in place for the editing and publication of the Leader's Blog. Until those arrangements are in place the blog will remain off-line."
For what it is worth, in our view, Councillor Austin was not writing a personal blog.
He produced a party political broadcast by the Boston Bypass Independents, writing as the leader of a group he tells us comprises free spirits, yet whom he seeks to command by inference.
Phrases such as these have the ring of someone who is not writing for himself ...
... most were telling us ...
... We‘ve persuaded them ...
... don’t think we’ve given up on a bypass ...
... The Audit Commission gave us some bad reports ...
Then there is the issue of how this blog was came about.
By all accounts it was the work of the Borough Council's IT department, and an argument has been made that any work done in this connection was part of their normal daily workload.
However, we wonder what the IT boys (and girls) would have said if, for example, the leader of the Tory Group, or the Better Boston Group, or the Independents or (for he is surely his own leader within the council) the BNP, had dropped into that busy back room and asked for a similar service.
The answer, we are sure, would have been .... sorry.... no can do.
But as it was not, there is then the question of the cost of the time used to create this blog.
If an individual lacks the technical skill to create and publish a blog, then the time spent by someone who has no such shortcoming has a price - and at IT rates it is a high one.
Councillor Austin's blog - if it was produced by council staff in council time - has effectively been billed to the ratepayers ... and that is unacceptable.
All other councillors who blog do so independently of the borough website, in their own time, in their own words, and at their own expense.
We think that Councillor Austin is right to blog and to tell the ratepayers his side of the story, but unfortunately, once again, he has let his imperiousness rule the day.
He may be the leader of the council.
He is not the King of Boston ... more and more he is emerging as an Old Pretender - a sort of Bonny King Dicky ... see our photo for an idea of what this may look like ...


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