Our Friday miscellany of the week's news and events
That ‘W’ word ... It seems that we were pulling the wrong leg when we took the mickey out of council leader Richard Austin over the naming of our part of the world as “Waterland.” Although he claims authorship of the entire piece in question it appears that just this one specific word was coined by a member of the borough’s communications team. Apparently the inspiration was the novel "Waterland" by Graham Swift. The title referred to its setting in the East Anglian fens. It was filmed with Jeremy Irons a few years ago partly at Shep White's - an area of sea bank and marshland near Fosdyke. Call us mischievous if you like, but we have to wonder whether someone else might also have coined the word “Mayfair” in place of the historically more accurate and traditional “May Fair” as we thought Councillor Austin would surely know the correct version.
Money matters - 1 ... We note that in the last quarter the borough’s Fraud Investigation Team has nailed three wrongdoers - two of whom tried to fiddle around £2,000 between them, and one who had a secret savings account. Whilst we deplore the actions of anyone who breaks the law in this way, we have to ask whether a “team” which averages one success a month ought to be nominated as a service to merge or privatise and therefore save money. Extrapolating the figures, we’re looking at saving the borough less than £10,000 a year at a cost of what? £50,000 at least, we suspect.
Money matters - 2 ... Given the figures on uncollected council tax, we think a team would be better employed on chasing what is now a highly important sum of money. Boston is 12th in the East Midlands Top 40 of councils with almost two million in uncollected taxes. In these straitened times a sum like that could go a long way. Let’s hope someone is taking note.
Self-supporting ... We were right on the money when we predicted another whitewash for Boston Business Improvement District in the local papers. After last week’s Target piece, the follow up in the Standard is by Simon Beardsley of Lincolnshire Chamber of Commerce - ironically the man tasked with collecting criticisms of the BID from members - which we had hoped would have included keeping an open mind. A key point he makes in his piece is that the BID aims to raise £500,000 in as many years “and there is little hope that this will be found elsewhere.” What he neglects to point out is that the bulk of this £500k will be spent on the wages of the BID manager and his three Town Rangers, plus the BID’s office and admin costs. If it didn’t exist, no-one would notice the difference - except in their business bottom line.
Dig this 1 ... “Welcome to paradise” trumpets the headline in the latest Boston borough council bulletin extolling the delights of the newly created Cuckoo Land allotment site. Paradise for those Wyberton electors who now enjoy the site. We wonder how the former tenants of the Broadfield Lane allotments feel about it. New readers may not remember that the council evicted scores of them from a site that had existed in the centre of town for almost a century so that a greedy local charity could flog the plots at a colossal profit to developers. That was three years ago, since when no building application request has been received. One law for the rich and one for the poor here, wethinks.
Dig this 2 ...A reader wryly questions the entertainment value of the open day advertised in the flyer pictured below...

He adds: “It looks like we have found the replacement for party in the park. This should have the crowds flocking in! My only worry is that the two food stalls are being run by the two premises in West Street that have recently been in the press for having unruly behaviour and threats to have their licences removed. Its the wife's birthday that day. Well that's her present sorted- let's go pick a plot!”

On the fiddle ... Like Nero plucking off while Rome burns, we note that the Boston Bypass Independents’ blog is speculating about gaining at least one seat from the Tories after next year’s local elections. We especially like the final line of the piece. “Boston must come first, even before Party.” Amazing! That the BBI has taken so long to realise the fact!

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We’re heading into that fallow time of year when Boston and its council slip into a fugue state - so we thought that we would join in and take some time off. We’re not going away, so please keep in touch. We will be blogging as and when the need arises, so please keep checking in. At the very latest we will be back on Monday 16th August.