People in glass houses ... Former Labour Parliamentary candidate Paul Kenny fulminates against the Boston Bypass Independents in the debate over whether or not Boston should have an elected mayor. “Could you seriously recommend any of the BBIP councillors as a potential elected mayor as their record to date is a bunch of clueless amateurs running our council who are not taken seriously at local or national level,” he asks. We wonder how Mr Kenny would rate the mayoral chances of a man who at the past two general elections saw the Labour vote slump by 9.5% in 2005 and 11.1%this year. Worse still, in 1997, Labour’s then candidate polled 19,103 votes - just 650 votes, or 1.4% behind the Conservatives. This year Mr Kenny received just 8,899 votes - a stonking 12,426 behind the Tory incumbent - 28.8% adrift.
Open mouthed ... Meanwhile, the “Mouth of the Haven” - BBI councillor Ramonde Newell - is also in attack mode. This time his target is what he calls “greedy Tories,” - naming the party’s deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft, Treasurer David Rowland and BHS magnate Sir Philip Green, all three of whom he finds guilty of taking extreme steps to protect their billions. As far as we’re concerned the biggest sin committed by Philip Green is his first name, and that of his daughter, Chloe - which makes them P Green and C Green respectively! Attacking the Tories is fine, and doubtless fashionable, but we have to wonder how a former teacher and army office voted at the last general election- unless his strong views forced him to abstain.
Don’t bank on it ... After our piece yesterday on paying council tax directly through the bank*, rather than via the tortuous and laborious route offered by Boston Borough Council's website, we received the following from a reader:- “The council does actually offer the chance to pay council tax by internet banking, they just do not like ratepayers using the system , as someone from the finance department has to go through the bank statements to pick up the payments. This is done often up to a month after the payment has entered the council bank account. The problem then occurs with the fact that the operative enters the date they are carrying out the operation rather than the date actually received. In the meantime the council have sent out reminders and threats of recovery, the rate payer then has to provide copies of bank statements and a letter from the bank stating that the money from was paid in. The council then claim the wrong reference has been used, as there is a space somewhere in the digits, then the next month there was no space where it should have been.
As you can probably guess I speak from experience, Just another case of incompetence and laziness on behalf of the staff at Boston Borough Council.”
Wrong arm of the law ... New figures obtained by the BBC show that at least 2,000 police officers were subject to three or more complaints by members of the public in the last year - and that Lincolnshire came third on the list of 43 forces with the most multiple complaints per officer ... after Northern Ireland and West Mercia. Talk about damned if you do and damned if you don’t. We complain that we never see the police on the streets of Lincolnshire, and when we do they’re roughing us up!
Doesn’t add up ... It seems as though our skills at calculating compound interest weren’t as good as we thought. A reader tells us: “Crudely £62.50 per month compounded over 45 years comes to c£650,000 at a 10% return. Reduce the return to 2.5% (still wishful thinking in the current climate) reduces the sum after 45 years to c£65,000. Judged by the past 45 years and based on earnings, the buying power of these sums should be divided by about 50 to bring them back to today's level. (£650,000 = £13,000 (a second-hand car?) and £65,000 = £1,300 (a holiday for one?) of buying power!” Our answer may have been wrong but the bottom lines isn’t as good as it might appear to have been.
Change of address ... At long last, we tracked down the website for the forthcoming Boston Community Showcase. It seems it was there all the time. The only problem had been that - surprise, surprise - the Boston Standard had got the address wrong!
It must be true ... Talking of which how about these two stories from this week’s locals?
You can write to us at boston.eye@googlemail.com Your e-mails will be treated in confidence and published anonymously if requested.
* It seems there are not good options here. Our piece was written after we discovered that a facility to pay through the bank was unavailable at Britain’s biggest bank - Lloyds/TSB. Our reader has the option at HSBC, the same bank the council use, which is probably why the option exists, but it seems that the council remains steadfastly determined to make the task as difficult and unpleasant as possible.
No comments:
Post a Comment