Week ending 24th June

Our Friday miscellany

of the week's

news and events

We hear that the borough’s budget is not being altered by the portfolio holder for finance, Councillor Raymond Singleton-McGuire after all.  Readers will recall that he stood down from the leadership because he thought the finances were in such a mess that they would require his full attention for the next couple of years. Which begs the question, if they do not need any tweaking, does this mean that the BBI had the finances under control and that everything was fine after all?
There clearly is spare cash around the place. An example emerged at the last meeting of BTAC – the Boston Town Area Committee. One agenda item proposed spending £10,000 on a garden area in Central Park. Labour and English Democrat councillors asked for a review on this to see if the allocated money could be better spent elsewhere. “But without joy,” reports one of the attendees, “because every Conservative on the panel thought it was more important to not wait, and spend the money immediately on the plan which a five year old child could have drawn better.”
And still on the subject of spending … A while ago, we criticised the choice of location for a poster making Boston look like a flood danger zone – when everyone else is telling us that the reverse is the case. The poster was sited opposite Aldi on the main A52 through town – which guarantees maximum exposure to visitors forming an opinion of Boston. The poster has now been replaced by another giant billboard featuring Boston’s Anti-Social Behaviour Team and telling those who see it that no one need suffer from anti-social behaviour - which the council announced only yesterday "has a massive impact on people's quality of life."  To us, it's just another poor impression being given to passers-by – dodge the floods and the baddies will get you. We’re not convinced that anti-social behaviour is as bad as the powers that be would have us believe – and we certainly think the borough could have spent what must be several hundred pounds more wisely than on this over-indulgent piece of self-promotion.
Boston’s Pilgrim Hospital is in the news for all the wrong reasons, and it is encouraging to see our MP Mark Simmonds joining the ranks of the critics. But what a shame that he had to dilute his outrage with the usual pap about how hard staff work at the hospital under difficult circumstances. At a time like this pressure needs to be at the maximum to bring about the reforms needed at the Pilgrim. This is not the time to try to please all of the people (i.e. the voters) all of the time.
It seems that Boston Borough Council is on something of a mission at the moment. The mantra is “search. ”  There's a “Search for Boston’s unsung heroes”  ... which turns out to be the offer of a pat on the back for the "unsung environmental heroes” … that is the people who do the council’s job for it. There’s also a “Search for Boston's Olympic torchbearers” – but you’ll need to run fast. The item appeared on the borough’s website just a week before the closing date for nominations and four days from appearing in the local “newspapers” if you’re not using the internet.
Talking of the borough’s website, we hope that isn’t becoming a fan club for the ruling Tory elite. A couple of the most recent entries include a tear-jerking tale of council leader Peter Bedford recalling childhood memories at the opening of a new playground, and the news that Councillors Mary Wright – who is also Mayor - and Carol Taylor are to hold monthly drop-in sessions for their Witham ward residents. We are sure that they are not alone in  doing this to keep their electorate informed and well served  – but try as we might, we can find no reference to surgeries run by other councillors.
Not for the first time, we breathed a sigh of relief that Boston’s former Chief Executive, Mark James, now works on the other side of the country. He was in the news last week after the arrest of a Carmarthenshire blogger who tried to film the proceedings of the council on her cellphone. The council claims there are rules against it, but it appears that they are hard to track down. At least we've been promised TV coverage of our council meetings, so that problem is unlikely to arise here. Is it?
Meanwhile, Boston's  latest attempt to encourage citizen journalism has appeared in the Boston Standard. Having all but eradicated news from the front page, its latest stunt is to invite readers to caption amusing photos. The idea is that they print a picture; you think up a caption and text it to the paper. The hacks will then select the best and print them on the letters page – which in passing will help make up for the fact that so few people write to the Standard these days. There is no mention of any kind of prize, and the stunt costs readers £1 to enter as well as their usual text charge. Are we missing something somewhere, or is this a very silly idea?

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