Week ending

Our Friday miscellany

of the week's

news and events

We’re told that Boston BID has backed out of its planned sponsorship of a pop concert planned for Central Park on 11th September which it planned to back with £10,000 worth of members’ levy fees. Meanwhile, as the turmoil goes on, it appears that the BID is set to get its third chairman in just over a year. It also appears that many traders have refused to pay their levy - leaving the BID with a huge amount in arrears. Last Night BBC Look North featured the BID issue, and among the people interviewed was local butcher Terry Dawson, who said he ignored the BID’s initial letter because it looked like junk mail - but then found that his silence had been interpreted as a vote in favour of its formation. And Judith Meadows, a former director of the company, said that whilst the BID made lots of lists it never did much. Look out for more on the BID debate on Monday’s blog.
The campaign for a referendum to see if voters want an elected mayor for Boston appears to have got off to a sluggish start. Five per-cent of the electorate – just 2,400 people – need to back the idea to force the referendum, which critics say is an expense the borough can’t afford. This week’s Boston Standard makes much of the fact that the man behind the campaign – English Democrat Councillor Elliott Fountain – is offering payments to people who collect more than 500 signatures. It’s something that’s also exercised some of our readers. We guess that it depends whether the payment is compensation for time spent going door-to-door with a petition form, or "buying" signatures per se. Perhaps some clarification would help.
Despite the mutterings about the way it is being conducted, the green waste pilot scheme is said to have collected 70 tons of garden refuse in its first week and been a great success. It’s estimated that that more than £45,000 will be saved in disposal fees during the project. However, the beneficiary is not Boston, but Lincolnshire County Council, and it is unclear whether the borough gets anything out of it or not – although estimates show Boston paying nothing at all if the county council foots its costs to the extent of the savings. One slight problem in all of this is what on earth to do with all the compost created. Within our team, we own something like six compost bins, all working flat out, and producing more compost than we can cobble dogs with – magnify that by hundreds of tons, and it surely becomes something of a problem.
Refurbished or not? The latest edition of the Boston Borough Council bulletin devotes quite a lot of space to local-ish hero George Bass, one of the early explorers of Australia. It makes mention of the plaque in the High Street which marks the place where Bass grew up, and which was erected almost 20 years ago. Sadly as the bulletin picture of it shows, the plaque appears in a dreadful condition.We hope that the picture is merely out of date, as project number six of the High Street South Placecheck scheme announced in January last year included the refurbishment of the memorial. But as this is Placecheck, anything is possible.
A novel idea to make Boston a greener place appears on a website called PledgeBank. The idea is that an individual makes a promise that will be carried out if a specified number of others lend support. The one in question is called Trees for Boston, and the pledge reads: "I will plant five trees a year in the town, but only if 20 other local people will support the transfer of the Victorian Cemetery to a local volunteer trust. It is signed by Jonathon Carr-Brackenbury, a “Bostonian concerned resident.” The deadline for signatures is 27th May 2012, and so far only two people have signed up. A footnote to the appeal adds: “The Victorian cemetery is badly mismanaged by the council and needs transferring to a local volunteer trust to be maintained as a Grade 2 listed cemetery park and garden.” It’s a good idea apart from one small snag – by May next year, the cemetery may well have been hived off to the private sector.

click on photo to enlarge

It’s a sad fact that Boston is at the bottom of so many lists that we’ve lost count. But now it seems that our puny status extends even into the corridors of power. A local talking shop called the Conservative Policy Forum for Lincolnshire has four local MPs giving after dinner talks around the county. As you can see, the session with MPs Karl McCartney and Stephen Phillips will set you back a tenner, followed by £8 to hear Nick Boles. But the buffet supper with our very own Mark Simmonds is a mere £6 a head.
It sounds like it won’t be worth taking a doggy bag!
We note that the Boston Standard has dusted off its big idea of three years ago and teamed up with Boston Borough Council to name and shame litter louts who drop their rubbish in our streets – which the council now admits is a “scourge.” Ideas like this are all well and good, and it is claimed that the scheme was very effective when first tried out three years ago. What we don’t understand was why it was dropped. Presumably, the novelty wore off, but had it continued it might well have all but eradicated the borough’s litter problems by now. We hope that this time the campaign will prove to be more than just a publicity stunt for the council and the Standard. And while they’re about it, how about using the cameras to name and shame the dozens of drivers who jump red traffic lights around the town every day – before they kill or maim some hapless pedestrian.
People who live in glass houses … This week’s Boston Standard has a new comment columnist, who - in the absence of anything much to say - decided to highlight the following.

Aside from the fact that these misspellings could have been picked up by the local staff who theoretically have greater local knowledge, the dangers of highlighting such errors became apparent just a few pages later. In the Standard’s regular stroll down memory lane, the following appeared …

Lindus Road? Surely, Lindis!
Next week will see the first 100 days of the Conservative administration at Boston Borough Council. A time for celebration? We’ll be taking a closer look, as you might expect – most probably in Tuesday’s blog. So if anyone would like to write and tell us what a great job they've been doing, then there’s still time. But we won’t hold our breath!
In a paid for advert in this week’s Boston Target, Independent Councillor Carol Taylor extends her thanks to a couple who helped her out with the price of a car park ticket.

Last week she had a letter in the paper praising the police for their quick response after she tried to disperse a group of drinkers in the town centre – some of whom wouldn’t take the hint. Councillor Taylor recently rose to our challenge to compare councillors with characters from the Bash Street Kids – and nominated herself as Toots. But in light of recent events, we somehow feel that Beryl in Peril would seem nearer the mark! One final question – it may look different in our enlargement, but why does the Target apparently use a drawing of a carrot as a means to say thanks?

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