Stale fare at County Council meeting

Time for some news before today’s festive fun – with a look back to Friday’s meeting of Lincolnshire County Council.
A rather stale feast for the pre-Christmas meeting, we felt – about a flat as last year’s trifle … and about as trifling.
There were just two questions put by our local representatives – or one if you discount that put by Boston’s singing conservative councillor for the borough’s North West division, Andrea Jenkyns.
Miss Jenkyns asked the executive councillor for children’s’ services Patricia Bradwell to update members “on the recent annual assessment that’s just been done.”
Small beer for what we reckon was Miss Jenkyns’s maiden speech – but a question that Mrs Bradwell approached with gusto, croaking and stumbling her way for the next four minutes through a sheaf of notes she’d made earlier.
We say we are inclined to discount the question, because it had that eerie feel of the sort of request made to Gordon Brown at Prime Minister’s Questions in the dying days of the last government, when a prearranged question was posed that would allow him to give a “good” answer.
Doubtless Miss Jenkyns will tell her devoted followers more on her blog – but the likes of you and I are denied access to is, as it is open to invited readers only.
Another triumph for spontaneity, openness and transparency!
The second question was from one of our old timers – known as Councillor Major Ramonde Newell at County Hall – where he sits as the Independent member for Boston West rather than a member of the BBI (even though he was elected on that party’s ticket) – and he lectures others on turning coats!
His question is one that has already been asked and answered through the pages of the local press, and concerned the removal of the Fire and Rescue service Swift Water Rescue Boat from Boston to Spalding.
At the end of the day we learned that the removal of a service that most of us had never heard of until Councillor Newell mentioned it will have no detrimental effect on the people of Boston.
At least it was a local and relevant question – unlike the one from Miss Jenkyns.
But enough of this! Like the pantomime villain, it’s behind us.
It’s time to move on now to today’s piece of festive fun – with the winner of a “caption a Botticelli nativity scene with a Boston angles” competition.
Hope you like it.

If you have an idea for a caption of your own, please write and let us know.
Tomorrow sees our very own version of A Christmas Carol. Guess who’s been cast as Scrooge.


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