|
Saturday 3rd January 2004
A local farmer gave his neighbours an unwanted Christmas
present by setting up one of those infernal propane gas guns in his field
between Dyke village and houses to the north of Bourne. It was programmed to
fire off explosions at regular intervals and did so all through the festive
season and into the New Year.
The use of these audio bird scarers is well documented on this web site and
although their operation is supposed to be regulated by Codes of Practice drawn
up by the National Farmers Union and circulated by South Kesteven District
Council’s Environmental Health Services, individual farmers appear to flout them
as they wish. Yet not only are these guns utterly useless in the business of
scaring birds away from crops, but they are also one of the most anti-social
devices ever invented and while the pigeons and crows sit back and laugh at the
farmer who puts one in his fields, those people who live within earshot have to
suffer the consequences of his ill-advised actions.
It is also difficult to believe how anyone could start using one at this time of
the year and on land with houses in the vicinity but then in this case, the
farmer himself lives some distance away and out of earshot and so the
inconvenience is not his. But if they do insist on using them, they should at
least abide by the rules and regulations.
The codes specifically ask farmers not to fire gas guns more than four times in
any one hour but this one was popping off with a double shot every few minutes.
They are also advised not to use them on Sundays but this one began firing in
mid-December and continued non-stop over the holiday period. It should also be
surrounded by a baffle of straw bales and positioned down wind to reduce the
noise but those stipulations were also been ignored.
This gas gun could clearly be seen from the kitchen windows of the houses along
Stephenson Way and was also within easy reach of a public footpath used by
walkers, many of them women and children, and so this could also have been a
matter for the Health and Safety Executive if they were so minded to
investigate. A complaint was, however, lodged with SKDC who contacted the owner
and reminded him of his responsibilities. A council official said later: “I have
been in touch with the farmer regarding the gas gun near Stephenson Way and he
has assured me that he will check the settings to ensure that it is operating
within the NFU Codes of Practice.”
That was on December 17th but the promise was not fulfilled. In fact, the
situation became far worse because the firing continued throughout the holiday,
on Sundays, on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year’s Eve and New
Year’s Day, and frequently before sunrise and after sunset, all in breach of the
guidelines. Furthermore, it was later discovered that the farmer was away for
the holiday leaving the gun firing continually without attention even though the
guidelines also recommend a telephone contact with someone in the neighbourhood
in case of complaint. This was also totally ignored. The use and location of
this gas gun were both reminders of the cavalier attitude adopted by some
farmers to the general public. They are willing to sell off their land at high
prices to property developers to build houses yet when the newcomers arrive,
their welfare is the last consideration.
Nevertheless, to this particular farmer, who was no doubt celebrating Christmas
with his family in a far quieter neighbourhood while leaving this noisy
contraption behind, I can assure him that many people back home were thinking of
him over their turkey and plum pudding. They could hardly do otherwise. The
standing of our farmers in the community has never been at a lower ebb than it
is today and actions such as this will do little to retrieve their reputations.
The gas gun was finally removed shortly before midday yesterday and peace
returned to the fen. But what good did it do? There have been no more and no
less birds out there than there were when it was loudly firing away every few
minutes. The only result is that it ruffled a few feathers among the neighbours
by reminding them that not everyone observes the season of peace and goodwill.
A most unsatisfactory aspect of our local democracy, the often random
attendance of councillors at meetings, has been revealed with a decision by
Bourne Town Council to endorse draft guidance plans for the new town centre.
This document was rejected at a previous meeting at which the mayor, Councillor
Trevor Holmes, was outspoken in his criticism of the Town Centre Management
Partnership, the organisation responsible for the new scheme, for their apparent
lack of public consultation. His remarks prompted a flood of letters to The
Local newspaper (December 19th) condemning what he said although a close
examination of the authorship reveals that these may well have been written more
by collusion rather than coincidence which rather defeats the object.
The meeting that rejected the plans (on December 9th) was attended by only seven
of our councillors and even some of them had turned up late and therefore missed
much of the discussion but took their seats in time to vote by a slender
majority. The subsequent publicity surrounding the mayor’s rhetoric, which was
directed towards the TCMP and the town centre plans particularly, enraged many
of those councillors who did not attend and they have since sought to reverse
the decision which has now been done. There was even talk of a vote of no
confidence in our first citizen but fortunately for the image of our town and
the mayoralty, this form of public humiliation was not pursued.
The rights and wrongs of the decision to redesign the town centre are not at
issue here because if this town is to develop, progress is inevitable
irrespective of individual opinion. What is a cause for concern is the poor
attendance at the first meeting called to discuss such an important issue. Those
councillors who were not there may have had valid reasons for staying away but
it is they who stirred up the dust at the subsequent meeting on December 23rd
which reversed the decision and gave the mayor a bloody nose in the process
because he happened to be about his duties, taking the chair and expressing
opinions which on that occasion swayed the meeting and captured the headlines.
There were still only 11 councillors at this meeting and so we are entitled to
ask where were the other four?
Democracy would have been better served had all 15 of our councillors attended
the first meeting, one that was without question a most important occasion for
this town, and voted accordingly, and then this U-turn would never have
occurred. As it is, the absence of so many councillors who should have been
there when they were not, has lowered our esteem in the system of local
government even further and perhaps those who enjoy our franchise might look to
their duties with renewed zeal in the future.
What the local newspapers are saying: Bourne may have escaped car parking
charges. But then again it may not have. South Kesteven District Council is
responsible for this public service and two of its committees have voted by clear
majorities that free parking should remain in the town. But under the new system
of local government, introduced in October 2001, this may not be the end of the
matter because a final decision will rest with the six-strong cabinet that now
takes all policy decisions when it meets on January 12th. Councillor John Kirkman (Bourne East), who has been a strong supporter of the status quo,
highlighted the drawbacks of the new system in an interview with the Stamford
Mercury (December 24th): “This is yet another indication of the difficulties
we can face with the new council system. In the good old days, committees made
recommendations to the council but here we have a situation where at two
meetings, 38 members have voted by a majority to keep the free parking
system in Bourne and yet there is one cabinet member responsible for parking who
can ignore the wishes of the majority and impose charges. I only hope that the
cabinet as a whole will support the recommendations and make no changes but we
cannot depend on it.”
Despite early deadlines over the holiday season, The Local has managed to
produce two lively editions full of news and pictures which reflect all that is
good about reporting in a small town like Bourne. Their letters page also
continues to reflect some of the controversial issues that worry residents and
Mr Graham Crane of Elsea Park is rightly concerned about the future of our
ambulance service (January 2nd). The present headquarters in South Road is
currently marooned amid the housing estate now being built on the old hospital
site and although the developers have given an assurance that it will be safe
there, we cannot depend on this when decisions are taken in the future and a
much needed service may well be re-sited elsewhere. Despite his address, Mr
Crane has lived in Bourne for 29 years and was profoundly grateful when the
ambulance arrived to pick up his daughter who had been involved in a car crash
in icy conditions along King Street, even though it was late arriving because it
was on secondment to Grantham at that time. This sharing of cover with other
stations appears to be a regular occurrence and Mr Crane writes: “I demand to be
assured that this measure of removing our ambulance crews to other towns,
leaving us with no cover, is purely a temporary one because if it is not, I can
see that serious loss of life will result.” He says that a copy of his letter
has gone to the Lincolnshire Ambulance Service in Lincoln and I hope that he
shares the reply with us, if indeed he gets one.
Another interesting letter in The Local comes from Mrs J M Goodacre of
Coggles Causeway who adds his opinion to the debate over the proposed town
centre development that is currently causing so much division among our
councillors. She suggests that this might be a lot of hot air because he writes:
“I don’t think many of us need concern ourselves with any new town centre
development. When I came to Bourne in 1977, the route for the bypass was
earmarked for land between Bourne Wood and the town and 27 years later, we are
still waiting.” Well, I can tell Mrs Goodacre that the bypass project to which she
refers has a much older history because it was first proposed in 1926 (See Diary
15th June 2002) and if the same timescale were applied to the new town centre, it is doubtful if anyone
living in
Bourne today will be around to see it.
Message from home: The Wellhead pool is virtually full again today and,
thanks to the efforts of Ben and the girls during the summer when the level was
down, it looks better than for a long time. I have visited many similar places
in Europe and almost without exception they were cared for in a much better way
by the authorities and were fully utilised as amenities for the local population
and visitors alike. Unlike ours! If you follow the footpath up from the Heritage
Centre towards the pool, you will walk past along a badly kept path alongside
the river where the bank is completely overgrown and strewn with broken
branches. If you persevere, you eventually arrive into an open grassed area
between St Peter's Pool and what I believe were the old watercress beds. The
field side of this area has collapsed trees and other dying vegetation and the
river side is little better. If the area were to be tidied up and the river
cleared and the bank shored up, (it shouldn't cost much other than physical
effort), the whole area could be made into a really nice picnic and barbeque
area. Unfortunately, I don't think it is at all likely. The park is slowly
decaying. In recent years, there hasn't even been any attempt to collect all the
fallen leaves in the autumn and they are left to rot where they fall. As a
consequence, the ground under the trees is now black and most uninviting. Even
with all the sun we had this summer, the grass did not all grow back. Fallen
trees are left to lie where they fall for months or even years. If I weren't so
cynical, I would think that the trustees are deliberately running the park down
so that they have the excuse to sell it for house building in a few more years.
– contribution to the Bourne Forum by John Morfee, Saturday 27th December
2003.
Message from abroad (1): The Christmas lights in Bourne are perfect. –
email from Ester Ronen, Ein Dor, Israel, Saturday 20th December 2003.
Message from abroad (2): It is a delight to see the lights sparkling in
Bourne. They look very nice and festive and all you need is a little of our
snow. Throughout Saturday night we had 12.2 inches and today (Sunday) it has
started to snow again and the forecast is for another 8-10 inches by morning.
The last two years we had almost snowless winters which was rather devastating
to our ski slopes and dog races industry but we are making up for it in a hurry.
Keep up the good work. – email from Winnie Nowak, Anchorage, Alaska,
Monday 22nd December 2003.
Message from abroad (3): I read your Bourne news every week and enjoy
your photographs. It is amazing how things between our two countries can be so
very different in some ways and so alike in others. I am thinking mostly about
the politics and the management of our towns by mayors and councillors. The
golden rule is not dead but it has been altered a bit to "He who has the gold
makes the rules”. Bourne is lucky to have a watchdog like you with your weekly
diary. Whether it does any good or not, at least at the end of the day you can
sit down and say that I tried. – email from Ethel Guertin, Quebec, Canada,
Saturday 20th December 2003.
New Year resolutions: Each New Year brings with it the thought that the
next twelve months ought to be better than the last and that this is the time to
make those decisions that will dramatically improve our lives. Smoke less, take
more exercise, avoid quarrels, be polite to everyone and pat the dog more often.
It was Alexander Pope who observed that "Hope springs eternal in the human
breast" and few of these pledges that we make to ourselves are likely to be kept
but then the whole point of the exercise is in making them for therein we reveal
our weaknesses.
Government promises announced at this time are particularly suspect and are
unlikely to survive the summer. Our own undertakings may have an even shorter
life span but all are interesting nevertheless and others like to read of what
you honestly intend but may be unable to sustain. Your New Year resolutions
therefore are welcome in the Bourne Forum. Please tell us of your hopes and
fears for the coming year, for this town, the country or the world, whether
personal or otherwise.
Thought for the week and for the New Year: Little else is requisite to
carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but
peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice.
– Adam Smith,
Scottish economist (1723-90), who also lectured on logic and moral philosophy.
Saturday 10th January 2004
There are seven species of deer in Britain and two of
them are to be found in Bourne Wood yet few people have ever seen one. They are
shy and elusive creatures and you need to know the paths to tread to find their
secret places and to exercise extreme caution in pursuit of a sighting because
they are wary of man, with just cause.
The species which choose to live here are the fallow deer, probably introduced
to these islands by the Romans from Asia Minor, and the muntjac, which has
Chinese origins and has lived in the wild since escaping from Woburn Park in
Bedfordshire around 1890 and has now spread to many other counties, including
our own. All deer are shy animals and during the day, they keep to isolated
spots but those who regularly walk the woods will see them occasionally and they
are a delight to encounter.
It is therefore with some dismay that I learn of a plan by the government to
cull our deer for meat because it is claimed that rapidly increasing numbers are
threatening our ancient woodlands, wild flowers and animal habitats. As a
result, Ben Bradshaw, the Nature Conservation Minister, claims that we are being
overrun by deer and that the present population, which is put at a staggering
and unbelievable 15 million, is already higher than at any time since the Ice
Age and is set to double within ten years. Those walkers who make regular
excursions in Bourne Wood in the hope of seeing one of the elusive creatures
will find these figures hard to believe but then they are government statistics.
The minister is therefore appealing to households to eat more venison and is
finalising an annual deer cull that will kill off between 25 to 35 per cent of
the animals to keep down numbers and achieve a balance of nature. Their success
in breeding in such large numbers is attributed to warmer winters and the
availability of root and wheat crops in winter, thanks to autumn sowing by
farmers but the downside is that they are also feeding on wild bluebells and
oxlips in our woodland glades where they once blanketed the ground. It is also
suggested that deer have become a road hazard and are responsible for many
traffic accidents, a total of 30,000 a year in which between ten and twenty
people die.
How much of this we can believe is debatable but we should not forget the
cardinal rule that if a government wishes to do something, then their propaganda
machine will be in top gear to turn out every fact and figure and every
argument, however specious, to support their case. My own theory is that the
English countryside has survived with deer for centuries and our woodlands and
wild flowers have suffered only because we chose to cut them down or farmers
have poisoned them with agro-chemicals yet there has been no official
intervention on either of these issues.
Each area of woodland is a microcosm of the forests that once covered this land
but is fast disappearing, the trees felled over the years for profit or to build
ships, mine props or trench shafts, and the deer have retreated as the work has
progressed. Now we have managed woodland, due mainly to the work of the Forestry
Commission, but to suggest that we cannot share what we have left is to deny
these animals their natural habitat. The minister’s figures most probably
support another agenda, the introduction of venison perhaps as a healthy low-fat
meat that is full of protein as an alternative food source to beef for the
public in the wake of the foot and mouth and BSE crises which contaminated the
national cattle herd and lead to a major setback for livestock farming in recent
years. After all, he is also in favour of introducing a wild venison quality
assurance scheme in order that supermarkets will be more likely to stock it.
Deer are part of the rural landscape, along with the fox and badger, the
dormouse and vole, and to reduce herds in this way is to desecrate our
countryside. If there are too many, then the numbers will decline of their own
volition, in their own way and in their own time. Nature has learned to protect
its own and we would do well to leave it alone to look after itself.
Ever wondered what work your son might take up to make him a wealthy man
when he leaves school? If he cannot cash in by becoming a top class footballer
or pop star, he might try merchant banking perhaps or better still, the media
where even those who read their lines on screen from idiot boards, as we used to
call them in my television days, earn six figure sums. But then again, another
very lucrative profession awaits those who are prepared to undergo a little
learning and get their hands dirty into the bargain. I am referring to plumbing
because those who maintain our water and heating supplies have got it made
because there are sufficient customers out there waiting for work to be done to
keep a small army of them in well-paid employment all year round.
The situation has been created because there are not enough of them about and
the latest figures issued by the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB)
shows that the profession needs another 6,000 to make up the current shortfall.
This is surprising, especially in view of the potentially high salaries that can
be earned, a master plumber for instance can collect £70,000 a year as well as
having the satisfaction of being his own boss. Some people are seeing the light
and in March, there were 2,000 applicants for the 36 places on a plumbing course
at the City of Bristol College while at the College of North West London, known
in the trade as the “Cambridge of Plumbing”, 3,000 people applied for 150 places
last year.
All of these are healthy signs for the future but it does not help in the
present situation where plumbers are not exactly thick on the ground and
certainly not in the Bourne area. Next time the radiator drips or the lavatory
cistern overflows, try getting help without calling one of those rip-off
merchants with fancy names and white vans who charge £100 for a callout and
repairs and parts on top of that. The friendly neighbourhood plumber is a fast
disappearing species and if you want something done, you will have a hard task
in finding one and an even more difficult time in pinning him down to come and
do the work and then when the appointed day and time arrives, you will need a
lot of faith in what he promises because there is no assurance that he will turn
up.
The plumbers of the nation hold us in the palms of their hands. We are totally
dependant upon them because their trade is an unknown science to most of us who
regard dripping water, burst pipes and recalcitrant radiators as foreign
territory and well outside the domain of the chap who keeps his home in order
through do-it-yourself. Never tamper with the cisterns is the watchword of the
wary. Always leave it to an expert and that is good advice if indeed you can
find a skilled craftsman to do the job for us. Instead, we have to queue up for
their services and they can take us or leave us.
I have just managed to engage one after six weeks of trying and he called this
week to provide an estimate and then telephoned later in the day to fix an
appointment when the work will be done although I still have to wait for another
four weeks. There are then, exceptions to the general rule, but the prognosis is
that there are still too few of them around to create a competitive market
although there is sufficient work to provide lucrative employment for at least
another half a dozen in the Bourne area alone. Think then in the future, when
advising your son in his forthcoming profession. Pipes and cisterns may not have
that romantic ring and he will never become a national celebrity but they will
keep him in comfort for the rest of his life and he will rightly be regarded as
a treasure in his neighbourhood.
The big green and blue boxes lining the kerbsides of Bourne this week,
piled high with plastic, glass, paper and cardboard, were an indication that the
waste recycling scheme launched by South Kesteven District Council a year ago
has been highly successful. There were misgivings that home owners would not
co-operate and that everything might be consigned to the rubbish bin, as in the
past, rather than face the chore of sorting, filling and putting out the boxes
on the correct dates.
But the sight of them on the pavements along street after street waiting to be
emptied by the container lorries has justified the £250,000 scheme but it has
also highlighted that more work must still be done to make it even more
efficient. In many cases, the boxes are just not big enough for the amount of
recyclable waste generated and more thought must be given to either the size of
the containers available for each house or the frequency of collections must be
speeded up.
Problems were anticipated and it was known that the early months would be a
learning process but extra vehicles have already been added and the council
appears to be well on the way to reaching its target in the future. Bourne
Councillor Linda Neal, who is leader of SKDC, said when the scheme was launched:
"At present only six per cent of domestic waste is recycled but it is possible
to recycle around half of the average household's refuse." The sight of the
boxes awaiting collection this week is a reminder that we may well be on the way
to achieving that figure in the years to come.
What the local newspapers are saying: The unravelling of the tangle over
the closure of the public lavatories in South Street continues with more
official statements although the only one clear point to emerge so far is that
the reason they were shut over a year ago was one of cash and not because they
were becoming a target for vandals and paedophiles, as was originally suggested.
The Stamford Mercury reveals (January 2nd) that tentative plans are being
drawn up by South Kesteven District Council to open them again on condition that
Bourne Town Council pays to run them but this is likely to mean the closure of
the toilets at the bus station. Anyone following the developments in this tale
may be excused for losing the plot and while councillors deliberate, the
townspeople continue to be inconvenienced. To confuse the issue even further,
the newspaper tells us that plans are still in the pipeline for new toilet
blocks on land behind Barclays Bank and at a proposed new town centre area
between North Street, West Street and Burghley Street. Last year, the 58
councillors on South Kesteven District Council drew more than £260,000 in
allowances between them but if this is an example of what they have been doing
with their time, we are perfectly entitled to think that our money might just as
well have been flushed down the loo, that is if you could find one still open.
A crime wave in the town during the Christmas and New Year holiday is given
dramatic front page treatment by The Local (January 9th). Becky Jarman
reports that the litany of wrongdoing included the smashing of windows in seven
shop premises but there have been no arrests and police activity appears to be
confined to the time-consuming task of checking on the footage from closed circuit television cameras
which prompts us to ask why it was not monitored at the time. She
also quotes Sergeant Steve Gallant of Bourne police as saying: “There was
nothing that we wouldn’t have expected for that time of year due to high spirits
and alcohol consumption” in which case, where were the police patrols when they
were needed? Also, the mayhem caused here appears to be a case of criminal damage rather
than high spirits and I wonder if Sergeant Gallant would have chosen the same
phrase had yobs lined up outside his house one night and then proceeded to smash
in his windows. There was more damage over the holiday period which was missed
by the newspaper report including several demolished street signs, in Stanley
Street, Church Walk and several along Stephenson Way, and an attack on the
Heritage Centre at the 19th century Baldock’s Mill in South Street where raiders
broke windows, climbed the roof and ripped off tiles which they threw into the
river, causing damage that the volunteers from the Civic Society who run the
building will have difficulty in paying for.
A long account of the law breaking during this period was also filed to the
Bourne Forum by Jim Bruce on January 8th. These reports illustrate the mounting
public unrest over serious instances of anti-social behaviour and people feel
increasingly isolated by the apparent lack of police activity in this direction.
The Forum has also received a message this week from someone suggesting that the
contributors are all grumpy old men because recent discussions have been full of
complaints about various aspects of life in the town. This is not a climate of
opinion confined to the Forum as you will see from a very busy letters page in
The Local, a feature that is at the very heart of our community because
it provides a platform for anyone with a grievance against authority. The page
contains seven letters this week, all well argued on topics that surface
regularly and are therefore of continuing concern, including the inadequacy of
our rubbish collections, consultation over the proposed town centre plan, the
future of our ambulance service and the health hazard created by dog dirt in the
streets.
These letters and the contributions to the Forum represent the voice of a people
desperate to be heard because there is so much that they want to change but past
experience will no doubt prove that they are whistling in the wind, that their
concerns will pass unheeded and those who run our affairs and are supposed to
enforce the law will continue in the same old way and ignore those with a passionate
belief that these wrongs should be righted.
Message from abroad: A happy New Year to you and your readers from sunny
Brandon, Manitoba, Canada. It is minus 36 degrees C here this morning and with
the wind chill it feels like minus 50 degrees C. It is a good time for gardeners
like me because with 15 inches of snow in the yard, my garden looks just as good
as everyone else’s. – email from Ted Middleton, Monday 5th January 2004.
From the archives: Up to Saturday night, over 1,100 cartloads of snow had
been removed from the streets of Bourne. - news item from the Stamford
Mercury, Friday 4th January 1907.
Thought for the week: It would be nice if we in Britain got something –
anything – tolerably decent in return for our taxes, but with the increasing
moral and intellectual corruption of our public services that I have seen over
the years, and the unimpeded advance of wilful administrative incompetence into
every nook and cranny of public life, I do not think that there is any prospect
of that. – Dr Theodore Dalrymple writing in The Spectator, Saturday 3rd
January 2004.
Saturday 17th January 2004
The Internet gets a bad press, mainly because of
pornography, chat rooms and predatory paedophiles, although I have been online
for more than five years and have yet to see anything sexually explicit or
criminally culpable because I do not seek it out. If you are into that sort of
thing it is there for the asking in the same way that questionable material can
be found on the top shelves of most newsagents' shops or available on rental
from video stores, even here in Bourne.
The point is that when there is a demand there will be a supply and as the
Internet is still a relatively new phenomenon, it will get sensational treatment
from the media each time a prurient or voyeuristic case surfaces. This tends to
cloud its real value because it has become a medium of infinite intelligence
available to all, a service that has still yet to be more fully recognised,
although the knighthood bestowed in the New Year honours list on Tim
Berners-Lee, the British scientist who invented the world wide web, will go some
way towards redressing the balance.
I have spent my life collecting reference books and my library is now an
extensive one but it cannot begin to compare with the information available at a
mouse click through my computer. Millions of pages are there waiting to be
consulted and the subject matter is unending. In fact, it is doubtful if you
could ever read it all, even if you began now and continued non-stop for the
next 25 years.
The world is at your fingertips and every subject imaginable is dealt with in
detail including geography, topography, history, semantics, royalty, government
at all levels, politics, science, philosophy and hundreds more topics, a
cornucopia of facts, figures and illustrations, with links that lead from one
page to another which means that anyone with a magpie mind can be occupied for
hours on end. Small examples define great works and I was reminded of this on
Sunday when my wife was busy with her weekly task of completing the Sunday
Telegraph general knowledge crossword because the stumbling block was the clue:
“On of the Velikaya River, one of Russia’s oldest cities – five letters.” It
would have taken some time to check for the answer in my reference books but
Google turned it up in ten seconds.
The ancient Russian city of Pskov is situated on the borders of Estonia and
Latvia and is famous for its 300 monuments and churches, many more than a
thousand years old, notably the tremendous Alexander Nevsky statue, the Trinity
Cathedral and the Mirozhskiy monastery containing frescoes dating back to the
12th century. Life in Pskov, its nightclubs, casinos and restaurants, can be
seen through the various pages available and there are pictures that give a
glimpse of what you will see if you ever intended to visit. Such is the appeal
of the Internet, a trip to faraway places without even leaving your own home and
presented in an informative and entertaining style that you would never get on a
package tour without a well-informed guide.
And so a crossword clue opens up a fresh look at a country that we
still find strange and fascinating. Apart from a minimal off-peak local
telephone charge for connection, this visit on a Sunday morning was free and
perhaps there are other inquiring people around the world making similar
discoveries and who knows, Bourne may well be among them because our web site
continues to attract visitors from five continents.
Of all the appeals that have been made to God in my lifetime, none have
been fulfilled. Yet we still turn to him for divine intervention in time of war,
pestilence and death, and to thank him for his goodness and mercy. I was taught
this at school and in the church where I sang in the choir as a boy, yet I have never
understood it because it was never forthcoming. Equally, when praying, I was
always expected to confess myself a miserable sinner and seek forgiveness and
although I am by no means perfect, I certainly do not fall into that category
and felt that I was mouthing meaningless words.
I am therefore perplexed that Lincolnshire police should now try to recruit the
Lord in their attempts to keep death off the roads. The county has a poor record
of road fatalities that reached an all time high last year with 103 people
killed in collisions compared with 93 in 2002. Their message to the motoring
public then is to take extra care and drive safely according to weather
conditions and as an added bonus they have called in the Bishop of Lincoln, the
Right Reverend John Saxbee, to bless the roads and all who drive on them by
night and by day and for good measure, he also prayed for the men and machines
who grit the surfaces in winter when dangerous driving conditions are
anticipated. There
were even services of blessing for police and drivers at gritting depots across
the county, including Thurlby, near Bourne, conducted by the vicar, the Rev
Janet Beadle.
The idea of seeking divine assistance comes from Chief Inspector Paul Elliott
who said: “It will provide reassurance and give road users the warm feeling of
knowing that church leaders and congregations throughout the county care deeply
about this issue.” His initiative has also been praised by fellow officer,
Inspector Dick Holmes, who told the Herald & Post newspaper last week: “We are
resorting to prayer to help because the initiatives we have put in place just do
not work and we cannot see any logical reason why not. We are willing to try
anything possible to make Lincolnshire’s roads safer and this is an extra
special effort by the force. I do not wish to tempt fate but so far, eight days
into the New Year, it seems to be working.”
Road deaths are a tragic waste of life and one of the most traumatic times for
friends and relatives and for the emergency services. The bishop and the police
have our best interests at heart but do we really think that their prayers will
be answered? The believers among us will give this some credence while the
cynical will condemn it as a stunt. Either way, it can do no harm. But I do
wonder what the bishop will have to say if road deaths in Lincolnshire pass the
100 mark this year because we will then be back to the same old question that
has bothered me since boyhood and it should also give him food for thought about
the power of prayer.
The public concern over crime in Bourne during the Christmas and New Year
holiday appears to indicate that most people favour a strong police presence to
avert disturbances and protect property on future occasions. The police have
admitted that they expected trouble and then blamed a series of smashed shop
windows and other cases of criminal damage and mayhem as “high spirits and
alcohol consumption.”
There was a time when the possibility of an outbreak of serious disorder in the
town would have prompted a firm response from the law to prevent it from
happening, such as the occasion in 1878 when the town was staffed by a full time
police force consisting of a superintendent, an inspector, two sergeants and 15
constables yet the population was under 4,000 people. On Guy Fawkes Day the
previous year, there had been rioting in the Market Place when bonfires were lit
and lighted tar barrels rolled through the streets, frightening residents and
damaging shops. Twenty men and youths were arrested as a result and charged with
various offences included assaulting the police, firing guns, discharging
fireworks in a public place and causing a general commotion to the annoyance of
the public.
But the new police officer in charge, Superintendent Willerton Brown, had no
intention of allowing a repeat the following year and vowed to stamp out any
hooliganism before it started. He drafted in reinforcements from other police
stations in the area and his hard line policy paid off, as the Stamford Mercury
reported on Friday 8th November 1878:
The town was quiet on Tuesday (Guy Fawkes’
Day) when sixty policemen were on duty around the Market Place as it was thought
there would be a repetition of the disturbances of previous years but their
services were not required.
Perhaps the police might learn a lesson from this and that a
spell of zero tolerance might not go amiss when the next Christmas and New Year
holiday comes round.
What the local newspapers are saying: It is now becoming apparent that we
will be facing an increase in council tax of around 6% from April which is once
again way above the rate of inflation and yet our council leaders continue to
spend as though there is no tomorrow. The Lincolnshire Free Press
reports (January 13th) that the county council is buying a new Jaguar XJ6 for
use by the chairman, Councillor Peter Bray, even though a top of the range Rover
75 that has been used in the past would have been £25,000 less. This profligacy
with taxpayers' money has earned the council a runner-up mention in the Rotten
Boroughs Awards by Private Eye, the national satirical magazine, but our
councillors are at a loss to see what they have done wrong.
Councillor Ian Croft (Bourne Castle), the council leader, said in a statement
that the decision to have the Jaguar was taken by the Director of Highways and
Planning in consultation with himself and Councillor Bray while many will
consider Councillor
Bray’s reaction a combination of vanity and arrogance of a very high order
because he is reported as saying:
“A lot of chairmen of district councils have got better cars than we had and
that’s what used to annoy me. You have got to uphold the standing of the county
council. It’s such a minimal part of the council tax. I don’t see that it makes
that much difference when the whole of Lincolnshire is paying for it.”
Councillor Bray has also dismissed the unflattering mention by Private Eye as a
joke but there are few council taxpayers who will find it a laughing matter. The
first rule that should be observed by those we elect to run our affairs is to
look after our money and use it wisely and spending it on ostentation, such as
flashy cars to enhance their image, certainly does not fall into that category.
The much-publicised public consultation meeting called by South Kesteven
District Council to find out what the people of Bourne want from them was held
at the Corn Exchange on Wednesday but it turned out to be so much window
dressing. The headline in The Local (January 16th) says it all: “Bourne
identifies anti-social behaviour as top priority” although the council need not
have gone to so much trouble and expense to find that out when it has been the
message of this column and the local newspapers for many years past. Other
topics that have also been ventilated here regularly were also top of the list
including the state of the streets, dog dirt and the provision of affordable
housing. The entire tone of the meeting is reflected in this paragraph from
reporter John Taylor’s account of the proceedings after Duncan Kerr, the
council’s chief executive, was asked from the floor about the closure of the
South Street toilets, shut a year ago on the pretext that they were being
vandalised and used by paedophiles: “The toilets will be re-opened but no one
present seemed able to say exactly when despite the fact that the lights were on
at night and that flushing noises could be heard from within. Mr Kerr said that
new toilets were under consideration as part of the proposed town centre
redevelopment but seemed unable to explain, when pressed further, why new
toilets had to be built when there was a perfectly serviceable convenience
already in existence.”
The £10,000 appeal to raise cash to help the Butterfield Centre over its current
financial crisis has reached almost £6,000 and the Stamford Mercury gives
a breakdown of where this money has come from. The donors are listed under a
Roll of Honour, a list topped by Bourne Round Table with £2,000 and more modest
contributions from a variety of other organisations and people who are anxious
to ensure that the elderly people in the area do not lose this valuable social
and care amenity. The ingenuity for fund raising here is endless, coffee
mornings, raffles, a half-marathon, carol service, concerts, a street collection
and even a sponsored slim by the Baptist minister, the Rev Derek Baines. While
so many people are striving for the common cause, one organisation is missing
from the list and that happens to be the richest in Bourne and one devoted not
only to charity but also to the care and welfare of the elderly. Bourne United
Charities has yet to make a donation although it is sitting on large investments that have accrued from various bequests left to this town in years past.
The trustees have it in their power to make grants to organisations such as the
Butterfield Centre that operate within the parish and yet their silence on this
appeal is deafening. The time has come when they should either dig into their
coffers to help out or explain why they will not because in that event, the
people of Bourne have a right to know why the
trustees do not consider the Butterfield Centre to be a deserving cause.
Shop watch (1): The small shopping trolleys at Sainsburys are now
difficult to find on busy days and a member of staff tells me that the number
has
been reduced by 50 per cent, the theory being that customers using the larger
trolleys will be tempted to buy more to fill them as they roam the aisles.
Shop watch (2): Beware of the “two for one” offers at our supermarkets
and make sure that you are not charged the full price when you go through the
checkout. Last week at Rainbow, we picked up two packets of toilet rolls which
were clearly marked in this way yet the till rang them up at full price and when
we queried it, the supervisor explained that the offer no longer applied. We
left them on the counter and shopped elsewhere. Since then, leaflets with
several pages of similar offers at Rainbow and Budgens have dropped through the
letterbox, ranging from beer and bananas to soup and steak. If you decide to buy
any of them, make sure that you get the bargain prices offered.
Thought for the week: If God did not exist, it would be necessary to
invent him. – Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet), French writer and philosopher
(1694-1778).
Saturday 24th January 2004
Those who make decisions about our environment, particularly local
councillors, appear to have a twinge of conscience about the loss of the
countryside to housing. This is a potent issue in Bourne at the present time as
more and more acres are disappearing under bricks and mortar and streets with
emotive names replace them in our green and pleasant land. Elsea Park is a good example,
although there are others. But here, on a spot which was once known as a
greenfield site, where crops have been grown and animals tended for thousands of
years, 2,000 new homes are now under construction, all linked by new roads that
will need names and the developers are asking local authorities for ideas,
perhaps to persuade them that they are involved with the project in some way and
that in doing so, nature and the countryside we loved will not be forgotten.
Bourne Town Council, for instance, has suggested calling them after wild flowers
such as buttercup, meadowsweet, campion, marigold, cornflower, heartsease and
cowslip, all in memory of what was once to be seen hereabouts. Similarly, the
names of the streets on the new estate now going up on the site of Bourne
Hospital just across the road, will probably have a medical connection as a
reminder that this town once had emergency facilities for accident and illness
instead of patients being driven to other towns many miles away for treatment and care.
There are other examples that reflect the use the land once had before it was
swallowed up by the relentless drive for new homes, a market driven more by the
profit motive rather than real demand, and one that will inevitably slump when
the property bubble bursts and recent buyers will end up with the burden of
negative equity. There will be no consolation from the banks, building societies
and other financial institutions because, come what may, they will demand and
get their pound of flesh and what is the point of living on an estate when you
just cannot afford it. It is tempting to say that the people will regret it but
that will not be the case because only those who remember the way it was will
mourn and they will soon be laid in earth. This is what we call progress.
South Kesteven District Council was left in no doubt about the public’s
fear of anti-social behaviour when it staged its consultation meeting at the
Corn Exchange last week (January 14th) and those who attended voted it top of
their list of priorities. The authority would do us all a service by passing on
their findings to the police, just in case they are not aware of our concern.
But the message from the council was quite clear, that things will not get
better unless we pay more money. Their glossy publication, “Route map for the
future”, which was distributed to those who turned up, was particularly
interesting because it highlighted the anxiety of the populace even before the
meeting began. It said: “In our recent customer survey, crime emerged as the
greatest priority for our residents, in particular, anti-social behaviour such
as noise, vandalism or graffiti, that blight many of our communities. By working
with other agencies we intend to take effective action to make our streets both
safer and more pleasant. As there is only limited opportunity for external
funding this would result in an increase in council tax even if savings can be
found from other areas. Depending on the measures deemed necessary, the
additional cost could equate to a rise in council tax of up to £5 per year (10p
a week).”
In other words, if we want what we have been promised in years past and what we
are entitled to in return for our present council tax payments, we must be
prepared for an increase. In fact, all of the items suggested in the document
were accompanied by estimates of what it will cost us to achieve even though
they are already part of the services that should be provided by the district
council. The authority is therefore saying that things will not improve unless
we pay more and it would seem that we are being groomed for yet higher increases
in council tax which is quite likely to rise this year by at least another 6%
and when the demands drop through our letter boxes in April, the council will be
able to say: “Well, we did tell you so.”
There is one factor in all of this that we should not forget, that SKDC, like
all local authorities, has become a job provider first and a supplier of
services second. It was not always so, but that is the way it has evolved with
the passing of the years. Bureaucracies have a tendency to burgeon and in this
case, the annual spending budget amounts to around £50 million, almost 70% of
which goes on salaries for more than 600 staff. This leaves 30 per cent, or 30p
in the £, for public services and as Lincolnshire County Council, who with the
police force, take a large slice of the council tax, is similarly committed to a
high wage bill, a far more startling assumption is that only £307 of the
£1,024 paid last year by home owners in the average band D will go on services,
the rest being spent on keeping people in employment, much of it of a quite
dubious nature as far as it relates to the efficiency of delivering public
services. Few businesses would survive on such a division of income. Perhaps if
the council jettisoned some of those jobs with grand-sounding titles and little
meaning they might find sufficient capital to tackle the anti-social behaviour
that has blighted this town for the past two decades and is growing worse by the
month, much to the alarm of its residents.
The public consultation meeting was a heaven sent opportunity for the
people to have their say on the way our affairs are being run and although
officials of SKDC hailed the event as “a great success” (The Local,
January 16th) the small number that turned up told a very different story
because it was less than 0.5% of our population of around 14,000 but even that
included many local councillors and associated officials who were there to give
moral support and can be discounted because they were not there to speak.
Various reports in our local newspapers gave differing estimates of the
attendance but then, judging the size of an assembly has always been a hazardous
undertaking for a reporter, especially as they are prone to lean this way or
that, according to their own predilections or the dramatic dictates of the story
they are covering, or even the policy of their newspapers, as was seen in the
fluctuating numbers reported to have attended the various protest meetings in
London in recent times, notably the countryside campaign, the protest against
the war in Iraq and, more recently, the council tax march by pensioners over the
weekend.
I am not suggesting for one moment that any of our local reporters might be
swayed in their estimates by political or other considerations and, to be fair,
I think the reason is that they just could not be bothered to count and relied
on guesswork. The Herald & Post said that “around 50 residents flocked
to the meeting”, the Stamford Mercury put the figure at “about 80 people”
while The Local said that “it was attended by around 100 members of the
public” although I also have it from other sources that the Corn Exchange was
“crowded” and again “half empty”. Such is the stuff of eye witness accounts and
in view of these varying statistics, I checked with someone in authority who was
there and I am reliably informed by Councillor Don Fisher, who did a head count
in an idle moment, that there were in fact 65 and, as I have already pointed
out, that included many of the old familiar faces.
What the local papers are also saying: Another subject on the agenda at
the consultation meeting was affordable homes and the subject has been taken up
by the Stamford Mercury who say that first-time buyers are being squeezed
out of the local property market because of the high cost of new houses (January
23rd). Their front page report quotes prices of between £90,000 and £100,00 to
get a foot on to the property ladder in Bourne which is largely prohibitive for
first time buyers. The problem is also highlighted by SKDC whose housing
strategy manager, Mandy Gee, says there are 5,000 names on the waiting list for
council houses and it is growing all the time because younger families cannot
afford to buy. The authority is committed to persuading developers to include
affordable housing in their new estates, mainly at Elsea Park and Hereward
Meadow, and their target is 15% of all new homes built in the area over the next
decade, but this will mean a dedicated effort on their part and a strict control
of planning powers to ensure that the number is achieved and even then, it will
be a mere drop in the ocean of need.
The ill-advised suggestion that councillors should get a pension has finally
been laid to rest by members of South Kesteven District Council who voted by a
large majority against the scheme when they met last week. The original idea was
that the 58 elected members should qualify for pensions based on their
allowances. All receive a basic payment of £3,312 a year although those with
special responsibilities, such as cabinet members, get additional increments and
this can push their take home pay up to more than £10,000 a year with the leader
drawing £15,000 and the deputy leader £12,000. The new proposals under the Local
Government Pension Scheme are that councillors would contribute 6% of their
allowances with the authority providing 16.2% but the scheme was likely to cost
as much as £45,000 a year, depending on how many councillors took up the option,
and this would be the equivalent of an extra £1.05 on the council tax for a Band
D property. The Stamford Mercury reports (January 23rd) that some
councillors thought that a pension might induce more younger people to become
councillors and replace some of the older members who currently dominate the
council chamber but after a lengthy debate, only five members were still in
favour and the mood was summed up by Councillor John Kirkman (Bourne East) who
said: “I do not think that council tax payers should be supporting such a
scheme. There are enough demands on resources already without adding this one.”
Bourne will not be getting 24-hour ambulance cover for the time being, according
to The Local. Mr Graham Crane of Elsea Park wrote to the newspaper
earlier this year after the Bourne-based ambulance took 35 minutes to arrive at
the scene of an accident involving his daughter and he was told that the vehicle
was on secondment to Grantham at the time. As someone who had lived in the town
for 29 years, Mr Crane was seeking assurances about operational efficiency and he sent a copy of his letter to the Lincolnshire
Ambulance Service headquarters in Lincoln who have now responded. But their
reply, which is reported by The Local (January 23rd), has the strong whiff of
newspeak about it. The statement says that the service has 21 bases in
Lincolnshire to be covered and it would cost £4½ million a year to ensure that a
vehicle was in each one 24 hours a day 365 days a year. “We have financial
limits which have to be worked within. We are implementing the best operational
practice by strategically deploying ambulances. Our detailed demand analyses
show where, historically, incidents are likely to occur. We can deploy vehicles
based on this to cover emergencies more effectively. Rather than having crews at
sites, we now have sufficient total crews right across the board.” The ambulance
service therefore runs according to income and not to demand and in this case,
it also excludes one factor entirely, that an accident is just that and no
amount of analysis can determine where it will happen, which appears to have
been the subject of Mr Crane’s original complaint.
A thrush settled on my back garden fence while we were having breakfast
this week quickly followed by another. This species has not been among the most
frequent visitors to our home in the past few months because according to the
British Trust for Ornithology, their numbers are in decline and so their
appearance was a most agreeable sight.
The pair hopped about for some minutes, one more agitated than the other, and
then I realised that they were mating and would soon be nesting, although
January still has almost a fortnight to run. This is not unusual, although
February is the more frequent time for our garden birds to begin their
courtship, but the mild weather does induce them to mate and nest too soon and a
sudden cold snap could result in the mother, along with her eggs or brood, being
frozen in the nest.
Bird song can also be heard around the town and a few days ago the trees and
bushes along the moat section of the Bourne Eau in the Wellhead Gardens behind
West Street were alive with the confident trilling of a large flock of hedge
sparrows. Spring is still many weeks away, the date for it to begin
being officially listed in our calendars as March 21st, and I do hope that our
birds are not welcoming an awakening year too soon.
This weekend will in fact be a good time to count the wild birds that visit your
garden and at the same time, participate in the 2004 Big Garden Birdwatch. This
is a spot survey that has been held annually by the Royal Society for the
Protection of Birds for the past 25 years in an attempt to keep an eye on our
more common species to see how they are faring in the United Kingdom. Last year,
more than 300,000 people took part and the information provided has become
extremely useful for conservationists in keeping track of the numbers that still
inhabit our islands. Anyone can take part if they have access to a garden or a
park and in doing so you will be helping to build up an important picture of the
current population of our most popular species.
You do not need to be an expert ornithologist, merely someone who can tell the
difference between a starling and a blackbird or a house sparrow from a bluetit,
and it can provide a fun event for all the family. It will take only an hour of
your time on Saturday 24th or Sunday 25th January and your participation might
help make it the biggest Birdwatch yet. If you are interested, then go to our
Bourne Links page and log on to the RSPB web site for more details. Your will
find it under Heritage & Environment.
Thought for the week: The fantasy of man-made global warming is the most
successful exercise in left-wing mystification of our time. - Paul Johnson,
journalist and historian, writing in the Spectator, Saturday 17th January 2004.
Saturday 31st January 2004
Genealogy continues to be one of the most popular
pastimes of people who own a computer because it enables them search the
Internet for references to lost ancestors while compiling their family tree.
This is an absorbing hobby for those interested in their past and I receive
several emails each week from around the world inquiring about this name or that
while the list of entries in our Family History page is now well in excess of
100.
I keep of list of them handy in case I find a mention of them during my
researches and this happened a few weeks back while going through the 19th
century files of the Stamford Mercury where I found this entry in the
section devoted to news from Bourne on Friday 31st March 1854:
Jane Crampton was, on the 21st inst.,
committed to the House of Correction at Folkingham, for trial at the sessions to be held here on Tuesday
next, on a charge of stealing a bottle of wine, a book &c., the property of Mr
John Holmes, veterinary surgeon, of Eastgate, in whose service the accused was
living.
The name is one of those listed in the Family
History section and so I checked the following week’s newspaper to find out what
had happened to Jane Crampton and discovered this entry in the report of the
proceedings for the Kesteven Sessions, held at the Town Hall, Bourne, on 4th
April 1854, before the Right Honourable Sir John Trollope, Bart., (chairman),
Sir Gilbert Heathcote, Bart., William Peacock and William Parker Esq., and the
Revs K Foster and W Hildyard:
Jane Crampton pleaded guilty to stealing a
bottle of wine and other articles, belonging to John Holmes, at Bourne, on the
12th March last. One month’s imprisonment.
The sentence was served at the House of Correction at Folkingham,
the jail used for wrongdoers from the Bourne area, but I wondered what happened
to her after being released. I therefore sent photostats of the newspaper
entries to Tim Crampton whose name appears in the Family History page on this
web site. He lives at Lake Tyers Beach, Victoria, Australia, and has already
amassed an impressive archive about his family dating back to his
great-great-grandfather, William Crampton, who was born at Spalding in 1798 and
was married at the Wesleyan Chapel in Bourne, now the Methodist Chapel in Abbey
Road, on 12th May 1822 to 19-year-old Sarah Allen. Four of their children, two
daughters and two sons, sailed for Australia to begin a new life and as a
result, more than 1,000 members of the Crampton family are scattered throughout
the continent today with branches in West Australia, Victoria and Queensland.
Tim replied almost immediately and the link with his family was soon established
because he identified Jane Crampton as his great-great-aunt. She was born at
Bourne on 20th March 1831 and married James Akred, aged 28, in December 1858,
four years after serving her sentence. They subsequently sailed for Australia
with their newly born son and settled in Queensland where James died at Brisbane on 29th September 1882, aged 62, while she died on 6th August
1897, aged 66, and both were buried in the Dutton Park Cemetery. Unfortunately,
severe flooding in 1974 took its toll on the burial ground and the location of
the graves was lost although those of other members of the family were on higher
ground and their headstones still stand.
This story illustrates one of the advantages of the Internet that enables
researchers in different countries and on other continents, not only to keep in
touch, but also to check and verify their findings immediately. It also helps
create a pool of information for anyone wishing to find out more about their
families with a speed and efficiency never experienced in the past. If you wish
to join the quest for your ancestors, take a look at our Family History
page and if you are engaged on a similar project, then send me an entry based on
those already on site and it will be added immediately.
Coincidentally, a new link has just been added to Lincolnshire County
Council’s Internet web site which will enable genealogists trace residents from
the Bourne area who were sentenced to be deported for criminal acts during the
18th and 19th centuries. Transportation as a punishment began during the reign
of Charles II (1660-85) when pardons were granted to persons under sentence of
death conditionally on their being sent to the colonies for a number of years,
usually seven.
Transportation was however unknown in common law and was not legalised until an
Act of 1719. Convicts were first sent to Botany Bay, Australia, but this ceased
in 1840 and from then on, until 1853, they were sent to Tasmania that already
had several penal settlements, although there were others elsewhere in the
world. The system was gradually abolished between 1853 and 1864, principally
because the colonies objected to receiving the convicts and the punishment was
substituted by penal servitude or imprisonment with or without hard labour.
An estimated 2,000 citizens of Lincolnshire were deported between 1788 and 1868
to Australia, Gibraltar and Bermuda, and the new convict archive will enable
visitors search for them by name, destination and the crimes committed.
Memorial flagstones in the Abbey Church at Bourne are to be included in a
new survey being conducted by the Church Monuments Society as part of a project
to record them for posterity. The inscribed slabs, properly known as ledger
stones, are often missed by visitors because they are embedded in the floor of
the church and were used to seal vaults and graves and are usually inscribed
with a name and date.
They were widely used to commemorate the lives and deaths of prominent families
from the 14th century until the Burial Act of 1852 that forbade further
interments inside churches. Many have been walked on and ignored, rendered
illegible, broken or removed in years past, although some can still be found
propped up against walls in the churchyard while others have been utilised for
different purposes. The Church Monuments Society estimates that there are about
210,000 ledger stones left in England and all will be included in the survey to
be completed over the next few years.
There are at least eight in the Abbey Church, five in the nave just in front of
the font, and a further three in the chancel, although there may have been more
in years past and were probably removed during the major restoration work in
1892 when the twin aisles that had been a feature of the church in centuries
past were removed together with the box pews that were much favoured in earlier
times. The floor level was also lowered and the church began to take on the
appearance that we are familiar with today, and it is most likely that a number
of ledger stones were lifted during this work and never replaced.
Several of the ledger stones in the church are largely indecipherable
because the inscriptions have worn away but those that can be read relate to
important families connected to the town in past centuries. The most interesting
is one that can be found in the nave commemorating the death of the Rev William
Dodd who died on 6th August 1756, aged 54. He was Vicar of Bourne from 1727-56
but is best remembered for his son, Dr William Dodd, who became a graduate of
Clare Hall, Cambridge, and then went to live in London where he fell into a
profligate lifestyle and was eventually convicted of forgery to obtain money and
publicly hanged at Tyburn on 27th June 1777.
The Church Monuments Society considers the ledger stones in our churches as
important a genealogical record as parish documents and I will be making the
Bourne contribution to their archive and expect to have photographed them all
and completed their documentation by the end of the year.
What the local newspapers are saying: The Butterfield Centre is having a
bad time of late, what with a burglary last September when £1,000 was stolen
from the safe and then the current cash crisis in which many good people are
trying to raise the £10,000 needed to keep it open. Now The
Local reports (January 30th) that vandals have damaged the minibus used to
transport elderly people who use the centre’s day care facilities and it is now
off the road. Intruders attacked the vehicle early on Sunday
morning when they hurled rocks and other debris at it, smashing a window and
putting it out of action until repairs are completed which will be next week at
the earliest.
Meanwhile, the Stamford Mercury carries a photo-feature of tree planting
by the Rotary Club of Bourne (January 30th). This excellent project is funded
and carried out by members as part of their environmental programme for the town
and more than 70 trees have already been planted along North Road and Queen’s
Road in the past two years, so helping to enhance the street scene. Several of
those trees in North Road are replacements for others which have been vandalised
in recent months, mostly during weekend attacks, some snapped in two and others
uprooted, but the volunteers continue to keep the scheme going for the benefit of
the community. North Road is a well-known location for vandalism at weekends and
in view of the high profile currently being given to the fight against
anti-social behaviour in Bourne, perhaps a little detective work by a determined
police force might help catch the culprits and put an end to further acts of
wanton damage.
The Bourne Forum continues to provide a platform for discussion about a
variety of local, national and international issues and is busy most days. The
contributions are closely monitored to ensure that everyone may have their say
without being vilified or abused for their opinions but most observe the
guidelines and although controversial comments are unlikely to escape without a
reaction, mediation is rare. The range of topics discussed is constantly
changing and these have recently included such diverse subjects as the
indiscriminate use of audio bird scarers by local farmers, Page Three girls in
The Sun newspaper, IVF treatment on the National Health Service, the Women’s
Land Army in Bourne during the Second World War of 1939-45 and the rights and
wrongs of political correctness.
The Forum began on 2nd April 1999 and messages can be found on site for the past
two years while some of the stalwart contributors from those early days remain
with us, still arguing about this and that and putting forward their views
whenever a topic takes their interest. It is a good-humoured place for
discussion and there is very little acrimony and that which does surface from
time to time is treated in a civilised fashion. In fact, I have deleted no more
than a dozen entries and edited even less in the past five years and when this
does occur and anyone is dissatisfied, then they only need to email me and I am
quite prepared to explain the reason why although if they pause for a moment to
think what they have written, the answer is usually obvious.
Our monitoring service not only allows us to keep track of contributors, but
also to check on the number of visitors who log on to read what is being
discussed and over the years, a picture of just how well-used the Forum can be has
emerged. Although there is less activity on Saturdays and Sundays, our busiest
days are Wednesdays and Fridays and I have no explanation as to why this is so.
Perhaps someone out there might be able to enlighten me. In the meantime, please
keep logging on because your messages are not only a yardstick of public
opinion, but are widely read by others who have not yet plucked up the courage
to participate and when they do, I can promise them a warm reception and a
vigorous and interesting debate without being attacked for what they believe in.
From the archives (1): The fenland is now alive with skaters. The Bourne
Eau, the River Glen and the large drains are ice-bound and afford an almost
unlimited field of enjoyment for this favourite winter pastime. – news report
from the Stamford Mercury, Friday 12th January 1894.
From the archives (2): On Thursday week, the ice was strong enough for
skating but this did not become general on the Bourne Eau until Friday. The
dykes in every part were safe and provided a ready means of reaching the river
where the ice was excellent with an odd place here and there that was somewhat
rough. On reaching Tongue End, most of the skaters crossed over to the Counter
Drain where the ice was in better condition for a distance of over six miles to
Pode Hole. On Saturday, there were many skaters on the river and quite a number
proceeded to the Wash at Spalding to witness the championship racing. On Sunday,
there were a large number down the river, the ice being in good condition
despite the thaw. Owing to water being pumped into the Counter Drain, skating
was made impossible and as the day wore on, the ice became worse and
consequently weaker and before the afternoon was over there were several
immersions. The ponds at Grimsthorpe also provided some splendid ice for skaters
and several from Bourne visited the ponds on Saturday. It is several years since
the ice was in such good condition. – news item from the Stamford Mercury,
Friday 1st February 1907.
Thought for the Week: Hutton’s report does a great disservice to the
British people. It fails to set its story in the context of the BBC’s huge
virtues and the Government’s sore vices. We’re faced with the wretched spectacle
of a BBC chairman resigning while Alistair Campbell crows from the summit of his
dunghill. Does this verdict, my lord, serve the real interest of truth?
– Sir
Max Hastings, a former editor and one of Britain’s most distinguished
journalists, writing in the Daily Mail on Thursday 29th January 2004.
Return to Monthly entries
|
