Week ending 8th January

Our Friday miscellany of the week's news and events
What a stroke of luck ... Conspiracy theorists among our readers have not been slow to point out that last month's special meeting of the full council, where the Mayor denied an application to call in for discussion the Cabinet's approval to sell land to the County Council to facilitate road "improvements" in Queen Street and Sleaford Road was held behind closed doors. The meeting was conducted under a blanket ban on public and press admission, which means that the press would not have bothered to attend. How serendipitous .... for the BBI!
Cross making ... We read with interest about a bid to get the Olympic torch carried through Lincolnshire in 2012. Apparently Lincolnshire County Council is working with the London 2012 organising committee to get the iconic flame paraded along the route of the Eleanor Crosses – the historic trail which the county says "runs from Lincoln Cathedral to Westminster Abbey, taking in sites at Lincoln, Boston, Grantham and Stamford." Sadly their version fails to tally with reality. The 12 crosses were at Lincoln, Grantham, Stamford, Geddington, Northampton, Stony Stratford, Woburn, Dunstable, St. Albans, Waltham, Westcheap, and Charing. Once again, Boston was left out - even in medieval times!
Painless cuts ... After our piece earlier in the week on Lincolnshire Police plans to redefine to role of PCSOs to that of social workers, we were interested to learn that officials are now warning that "nothing is sacred" as they try to make multi-million pound savings to meet Government demands.The force was told to cut £12.4million from its budget by the end of the 2010/11 financial year by wasting less cash and making its service more efficient. It says government plans to cut public spending will mean an "efficiency regime" will become more important for staff and it is taking action to reach the target as quickly as possible. Savings could include both service cutbacks and staff carrying
out existing jobs in less time. Two questions. 1: If it's possible to to do existing jobs quicker when pressed, why couldn't it have been done sooner? 2: Surely the force's Chief Con can now not fail to see that trying to cling on to PCSO's with a reduced, non policing role is a position that is untenable, and which could save the force and the County Council a total of £3 million.
Another police cut ... ? Talking of the police, a reader asks: " Why have the public not been able to contact Kirton police office lately? Could it be that someone has vandalised the police phone?" If anyone has an answer could they please let us know?
Smile, you're on candid webcamera ... Webcams have come into their own in the past week as internet users have been able to check on conditions on the roads and town centres. These cameras provide a look at dozens of towns an villages around the country, but at present, Boston doesn't appear on the list. There's now real reason why now. The technology is cheap and simple to set up. All we need is an enterprising Bostonian to set one up and people from all over the world could view the town from the top of the Stump or the Assembly Rooms roof. For examples, see http://www.bbc.co.uk/england/webcams/
Lies and statistics ... Given the way the figures for people in Boston wanting to improve their fitness have been massaged to make them look good, we would like to tell you that the number of signatories to the Number 10 Downing Street e-petition calling for a by-pass for Boston have increase by around 20% per-cent since last we looked. Backing in August there were 11 signatures. Today there are 13. We expect Gordon to order work to start on the bypass any day now.
Words fail them ... As regular readers will know, we love nothing better than a good pun. But among its handful of stories ( a mere seventeen if you exclude letters and strolls various down Memory Lane) the headline "Icy paths - just grit and bare it" in the week's Boston Standard (below)left us totally baffled. If it's a play on grin and bear it, then "bear" should replace "bare." If it's meant to suggest that we grit and "bare" the footpaths, it's obscure, to say the least. Whatever the answer, the suggestion that we "grit and bare it" sounds like a recipe for the risk of freezing parts of our anatomy to the shovel that we'd rather not contemplate.
Snow news ... Pity anyone whose been trying to find out the state of the local roads by surfing to BBC Radio Lincolnshire's website. It's recently been redesigned, and it's almost impossible to locate anything of importance. All you can find are score of pictures of the staff looking stupid - or as they possibly imagine, glamorous.

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