Bourne Diary - August  2007

Saturday 4^th August 2007

Bourne now has 71 listed buildings following last week’s decision by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport to include the Ostler memorial fountain in the town cemetery. This is quite a remarkable number for such a small community although we do not compare with Stamford which has more than 800 but then that is rather a special case and is regarded as the most beautiful stone town in England.

Those who only know this town by parking awhile or shopping in the main streets may wonder where these historic properties which deserve protection are situated and indeed the majority do need to be sought out because their presence is not always apparent and, in my opinion, not always merited. Once you have seen the Abbey Church and the Red Hall, what else do we have?

Yet the Ostler memorial is the second to be listed this year, the other being the Victorian chapel in the cemetery which was included in April after the town council tried to pull it down but fortunately, English Heritage stepped in and decided that it was worthy of protection and recommended that it be given Grade II status.

There were 75 listed buildings in the parish of Bourne when the original survey was carried out by South Kesteven District Council on 21st July 1977. Fifty-one of them were within the Conservation Area but two have been demolished. The other 24 were outside the designated area, in Eastgate, Cawthorpe and Dyke, but four of these have also been pulled down. The inclusion of the cemetery chapel on 4th April 2007 and the Ostler memorial on 27th July 2007, rectifies an earlier omission because both were out of town and therefore overlooked, and their inclusion now brings the total back to 71.

The listing of old buildings is drawn up by the DCMS on the advice of English Heritage which provides various resources for architectural conservation. The system incorporates all pre-1700 buildings that have not been substantially altered and almost all those built between 1700 and 1840 and there are currently 370,000 listed buildings in England, more than 90% of them Grade II, but the number is increasing rapidly. They are divided into categories I, II* and II. Grade I buildings, which are defined as being of "exceptional interest" [only the Abbey Church in Bourne falls into this category], constitute less than 2% of the entries on the list while Grade II* buildings comprise about 4% of the entries.

The word “listing” is a short-hand term used to describe one of a number of legal procedures which help English Heritage protect the best of our architectural heritage. When buildings are so categorised they are placed on statutory lists of buildings of special architectural or historic interest compiled by the DCMS under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990. Inclusion therefore ensures that the architectural and historic interest of the building are carefully considered before any alterations, either outside or inside, are agreed but it is not intended to fossilise a building because its long term interests are often best served by putting it to good use and if this cannot be the one it was designed for, a new purpose may have to be found.

The designation brings with it additional responsibilities for those who administer the buildings because they cannot be altered or demolished without special permission and it is implied that they must keep them in a serviceable condition. The smaller parish authorities, such as Bourne Town Council, usually plead poverty but grants are available from various sources and the more enterprising councillors who have our heritage at heart will always find ways to preserve our historic landmarks.

What the local newspapers are saying: There has been a curious response from the town council over the listing of the Ostler memorial and a headline in The Local suggests that some members not only disagree but also wish to rescind it (August 3rd). One of them, Councillor Mark Horn (Bourne East), is particularly disgruntled because they were not consulted in the listing procedure and he even inferred that English Heritage and those responsible were interfering in their affairs. “If they want to spend money for the council they should take responsibility for what they do”, he said. “We have a democratic procedure people should work to. We are responsible for Bourne.”

This is unfortunate because we look to our councillors to protect our heritage and far from opposing the memorial’s listing, they should now pick up the baton and run with it, finding the necessary funding to bring the monument back to decent order. It is also possible that consultation was quite likely to have been pointless because the council has already demonstrated its attitude to old properties through its attempts to demolish the Victorian cemetery chapel but fortunately wiser counsel prevailed.

The town council has also raised the question of who owns the memorial. “Nobody is 100 per cent sure”, said assistant clerk Fiona Barker. “We will be investigating this.” For the information of the council, the memorial is owned by the people of this town because it was built by the money they raised through public subscription in 1860. It was then in the care of the Vestry Meeting, forerunner of our present council system, but stewardship was assumed by the first Bourne Parish Council which was formed in 1894 and then Bourne Urban District Council which was inaugurated in 1899, subsequently passing to the new Bourne Town Council when it came into being in 1974, and this is where responsibility currently lies.

But Mr Pick’s hopes were not fulfilled because the town council took no action and so the memorial was left to deteriorate with the passing years.

The inscription originally read: “This fountain was erected by public subscription for the use of the poor and in memory of John Lely Ostler Esq, late of Cawthorpe House, 1860” but the letters have become virtually indistinguishable from the rest of the weathered stone.

Although nothing was done then or since, there is still hope because Mr Pick left his £4 million fortune to be spent for the benefit of the town and perhaps now is the time for some of this money to be invested on a cause that was so dear to his heart with the trust that bears his name making a generous donation to ensure that it is preserved as he would have wished.

The Secretary of State for the Department of Farming and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), Hilary Benn, was talking on the radio a few days ago about the floods in Gloucestershire saying that we were reaping the effects of global warming and the public must pay for the consequences through increased water bills to finance defence work at sensitive installations and elsewhere.

The green card currently being played by central and local government is nothing more than a subterfuge to squeeze more money from us, as a previous Chancellor of the Exchequer, Denis Healy, famously remarked: “Until the pips squeak.” Many will believe the fiction of climate change affecting the environment but those with a knowledge of history and a taste for learning will recognise it for the fraud it so obviously is.

One only has to turn to the 13th century Benedictine monk Matthew Paris and his massive History of England which details weather reports from 1230 onwards to show that extreme weather was a regular occurrence, from unbearably hot summers so dry that cattle died of thirst to hurricanes which knocked down buildings and sank ships in harbour to months of relentless rain and widespread flooding.

Alexander Murray, Emeritus Fellow of University College, Oxford, and a former tutor in mediaeval history, cited some of his writings in The Times on Saturday (July 28th) to illustrate that the weather was just as calamitous 750 years ago. For instance, in 1236, Paris writes: “Between January and mid-March, the rain never stopped. No one could remember anything like it. Serious floods began in the second week of February when high tides meant that rivers could not empty into the sea. Fords became useless, river banks disappeared, fields, bridges, mills, all vanished.”

Later in the same year, in East Anglia, Paris reported: “In the middle of November a combination of onshore wind and high tide continued for an unheard of two and a half days so that the rivers could not empty. Coasts were laid waste, ships torn from their anchorage and lost, houses wrecked, trees torn up. Many people were drowned, not to mention entire herds and flocks of livestock. One tiny village had to bury a hundred bodies in a single day.”

There are many other instances in his writings and history records many more since, right up to recent years while great floods are written into the religions and cultures of most countries around the world, not least Christianity, for who has not heard of Noah and his ark. To single out the recent conflagration, however serious, as a sign of global warming is both ignorant and alarmist and most likely the beginning of a campaign to soften up the public in readiness for more taxes.

Mr Benn’s solution that the public must again provide is worth examination from another aspect, namely the performance of the water companies. Our bills rise regularly by more than double the rate of inflation to ensure that there is sufficient money in the pot to pay salary increases and pension entitlements but what is left over should be spent wisely on these eventualities and to maintain a continuous supply, secure defences and take the necessary steps to protect installations. They should not be allowed to demand more each time a disaster reveals their shortcomings, especially when they are making such high profits and paying generous dividends to shareholders. In this instance, we see them allied to the insurance companies, another lucrative area of investment, where claims are paid only after a prolonged struggle and premiums increased commensurately or cover withdrawn in high risk situations.

Meanwhile, as thousands of families struggled to cope with the trauma of floodwater gushing through their homes, executives at the Environment Agency which has the responsibility for these matters, were pocketing five-figure bonuses given as performance payments for hitting targets on water management, flood defences and pollution levels, the biggest of £24,000 going to Baroness Young, the chief executive and a labour peer, who already gets a salary of £163,000 a year. Yet Professor Dieter Helm, a flood expert at Oxford University, was quoted as saying: “The management of flood defences in recent years has been a sorry tale of budget cuts, failure to act on planning policies and inadequate precautionary measures and at the centre of this lies the Environment Agency”. (Daily Mail, Monday 30th July). Surely this additional money should be spent on the problems in hand rather than oiling the wheels of the gravy train.

It is this profligate spending that requires government to seek additional income and so practically every suggestion from Whitehall carries within it the seeds of a new tax. Unfortunately, the last ten years of Labour rule has created a climate of financial well being and no one is really short of a few pennies except perhaps old people on fixed incomes. Nevertheless, as interest rates slowly begin to rise, thus threatening the security of those with housing ambitions and therefore our entire economy, there are signs that this milch cow may not be quite so subserviently productive in the future.

Thought for the week: A woman aged 108 has been told that she must wait 18 months for a hearing aid. - headline from the Daily Mail, Monday 30th July 2007.

Saturday 11^th August 2007

This web site is nine years old this week which means that we have been serving Bourne for longer than most members of the town council. Our continued appearance is a small milestone in the larger scheme of things but noteworthy in the world of cyberspace where longevity is rare.

When it was launched in the second week of August 1998, we had only a few pages and it took us many months to be acknowledged by the big search engines, a necessary factor if you wished to be read, but today, Google, a miracle of revelation, lists the site as the Number 1 serving Bourne, Lincolnshire, England, and also gives us hundreds of mentions depending on the subject in which you are interested.

As the months went by, we added new features, all of which have become extremely popular. The Bourne Diary too began shortly afterwards and has been published practically every week since November 1998, the latest issue being number 438 and that is almost one million words, or the size of half a dozen novels, commenting on current affairs in and around the town and various aspects of our heritage and history.

The Diary has become one of the most rewarding features of the entire project and it gives me great pleasure to write it, discussing subjects of public interest that have been mentioned by friends and neighbours or raised in the Forum or the local newspapers. My son Justin suggested that it must be very satisfying to have your own soapbox and indeed it is and although I always strive to be fair and not to give undue offence, my opinions on occasions have not endeared me to some people in the town. But my 50 years as a journalist have taught me that whatever you write will not please everyone and there will always be those who regard differing views as a criticism of themselves whereas an open and inquiring mind is intellectually more stimulating. The Diary may only be a small voice in Bourne but I know from the reactions I get, warm support from some and a cold shoulder from others, that it is being read.

Other features include the Bourne Forum, a lively discussion group that frequently anticipates what the local newspapers will be saying, a list of old friends who want to keep in touch, a family history section in which 250 old Bourne names are being researched, links to other clubs, schools and organisations and a notice board giving a weekly run down of local events that reflect the lively and varied nature of what is going on in this town.

Five years ago, we introduced a new feature using articles written by prominent people and those invited to contribute to date include our MP, Quentin Davies, the member for Grantham and Stamford, who now writes from the Commons on a regular basis, Councillor Linda Neal, Leader of South Kesteven District Council and its former chairman, Councillor John Kirkman, Councillors Judy Smith, Don Fisher and Trevor Holmes, Ivan Fuller, the Town Centre Coordinator, Captain David Kinsey of the Salvation Army, and many others who have played an important role in our affairs. But you do not need to be a household name to contribute and if anyone has something to say about our town, past or present, then they are welcome to share this platform.

The web site is a voluntary project with no commercial support or advertising and is financed entirely by my wife and myself. It is now 50MB in size and contains over 1,000 pages and almost 700 photographs, giving a glimpse of this small Lincolnshire market town from the earliest times to the present day, and it is updated regularly. On the way, we have collected eight awards, notably the Golden Web Award in July 2000 for excellence in web design, content and creativity, and the Médaille d'Or for web site excellence in April 2001. The Oldie magazine also gave us its Web Site of the Month award in August 1999, acknowledging the fact that I am an old age pensioner and have been for some years.

Many young people find the web site of interest because I am often emailed by pupils engaged on school projects or examinations relating to Bourne's social history and I try to assist wherever possible. The information I have already provided, or at least pointed the inquirers in the right direction, must be the stuff of many papers submitted at all of our local schools. We are also consulted by many colleges and universities, in Britain and abroad, who are studying the way of life in England and I receive regular emails requesting information and the use of text and photographs.

The web site is now read around the world and has not only reunited families but has also enabled many people who left these shores for foreign parts to keep in touch with their home town. I have recently begun recording those places where our visitors are located, averaging around 2,000 a week, and it is an enlightening geographical lesson to read them. The United States, including Alaska and Hawaii, Australia, Canada, Lapland, Russia, Thailand, Japan and China, Finland, Argentina and Brazil can all be found among them. Whoever will be reading it when we celebrate our tenth anniversary in 2008 and hopefully, we will still be around?

Although just a small success, we have frequently attracted the attention of IT whizz kids intent on streamlining the web site and adding advertising but we have resisted all such invitations. The latest came only a few days ago from a designer offering bells and whistles that would have ruined not only the appearance of the web site and turned us into a clone of a thousand others but also alienated the many faithful visitors who have been with us since the beginning. Yet he was insistent that his innovations would produce a money-making product and that we could “split the profits”, a phrase that I have heard so many times during my career and would usually involve me doing all the work and he taking half of the proceeds.

What the young web designers fail to understand is that although advertising may be a lucrative source of income, it is not popular and in many cases totally unnecessary. Most people abhor it which is why they use pop up blockers and other programmes to prevent it and also, in another context, why we fast forward a film on the video to escape the commercial breaks and throw away the free newspapers unread. People log on to a web site for the information it provides and if this can be done without the distraction of advertising, usually blatant and very intrusive, then so much the better. This is why the BBC web site is the most popular in the world.

The Bourne web site is simple to read, easy to navigate and all of the links work and in addition we are error free, which cannot be said for many others. That is the way our visitors like it and so we intend to continue with the same tried and tested formula and to hell with the advertising.

Message from abroad: What a fabulous web site you have. It is one of the best I have ever seen. Congratulations. - email from Lorna Robinson Meehan, Amelia Island, Florida, USA, Tuesday 7th August 2007.

Old age reminds us that there are tasks still to be done before the arrival of the Grim Reaper and this week we have received a plea from a lady in Cheshire who wishes to find out if she has relatives still living in Bourne. Dorothy Reynolds (née Sharpe) has been wondering for some time whether there are any other members of the family around who are related to Robert Sharpe, a bell ringer at the Abbey Church for 50 years whose name is recorded on a plaque in the bell tower. "He was my great grandfather", she writes. "His son, James was my grandfather and moved to live in Spalding and his son Arthur, my father, moved to Manchester. I am sure there must have been other relatives in Bourne but I never met any of them. If there are any out there I would love to know before it's too late. I am 83." The Sharpes of Bourne should now unite and contact Dorothy whose email address may be found in our Family History section.

A visitor logged on to the Bourne web site this week from the Offutt Air Force Base in the United States. The base is home of the 55th Wing, known as the Fightin' Fifty-Fifth, and a variety of other units and its diverse missions and global responsibilities put it on the cutting edge of the American Air Force’s role with each branch of the U S military represented among the approximately 12,000 uniformed and federal employees assigned there. Offutt is a beautiful community situated near the Missouri River in the rolling hills of south eastern Nebraska and we are glad to know that even our little market town is attracting their attention.

What the local newspapers are saying: There are many instances in which government at all levels is guilty of misleading the public through surveys and polls because the results may be presented to show a situation in the best possible light. A good example of this appears in the latest issue (No 11 - 2007) of sktoday published by South Kesteven District Council for the benefit of householders throughout its area. The headline over one article says “Thumbs up for the wheelie bins” and then tells us that although they began life as a major national controversy, the people have now given the system a real vote of confidence.

The article says that a recent survey of a random sample of residents revealed that 92% believed that their black bins were big enough and that initial concerns about smell and overflowing rubbish and alternate weekly collections were entirely misplaced. “The vast majority said that the new system was not causing them problems”, added Dawn Temple, the council’s sustainable waste officer.

Closer examination of the figures supplied to me by SKDC however reveals that just three of the 13 questions in the survey actually dealt with bin usage and as only half of the 500 residents eligible returned their forms this means that the 92% quoted represents only 230 people which is a very tiny proportion of the 55,000 households within the council’s area. By all means, local authorities should sing their own praises at every opportunity but on an important matter such as wheelie bins which have caused so much uproar, total honesty would have been a far better approach.

The magazine also carries an item on another thorny issue, the establishment of gypsy sites in the region together with facts and figures about the travelling communities, the article illustrated with a photograph of a Romany cart which was obviously taken at an outdoor museum. This was no doubt used to give the subject a romantic appeal whereas anyone who has ever seen one of these permanent sites elsewhere will know that they are inhabited by quite a different type of vehicle.

Lastly, the magazine includes an item about the Burghley Horse Trials which are due to open near Stamford at the end of the month, “the highest quality sporting event held in South Kesteven this year”, says the article. Not so. The venue is actually in Cambridgeshire, the River Welland marking the county boundary with Lincolnshire. Surely someone among the 750 staff at council headquarters in Grantham should have spotted that.

Thought for the week: On a Saturday night, there are car wheels spinning, couples fighting and screaming at one another and people vomiting. I would like to see more police at night. We are unpoliced in a way that is dangerous. - the Mayor of Bourne, Councillor Jane Kingman Pauley, quoted by The Local newspaper in a front page report about town centre disturbances, Friday 10th August 2007.

Saturday 18^th August 2007

The controversial fence planned to enclose the Abbey Lawn is about to be erected and the first sample section is already in place, thus enabling us to see what it will be like when complete. Thankfully, it will not be so high and garish as was originally imagined and if it keeps out intruders as is intended then perhaps we can learn to live with it.

The metal palisade consists of closely constructed and pointed railings painted green to match the surrounding grass and trees and sufficiently sturdy to keep out all but the most determined. A little more ornamentation to match the historic gates at the main entrance would have been more desirable but the practicalities and cost of construction no doubt outweighed aesthetic considerations added to which the trustees of Bourne United Charities who are ultimately responsible are not renowned for their imagination.

Whether it will serve the purpose for which it is intended remains to be seen. Certainly something must be done because the Abbey Lawn is a regular meeting place for an unruly element in Bourne intent on destroying what we have and it has become a scene of drinking and substance abuse with all that ensues from such behaviour, notably criminal damage which has left officials of the sports clubs who use the ground in a state of despair.

The obvious answer, as with the rowdiness in the town centre at weekends, is increased police activity but we do not live in an ideal world and can no longer expect help from that quarter and so the community must do what it will to counteract the problem and the fence seems to be the only solution. Unfortunately, the opinion of many is that it will have little effect on the current problem because most of the troublesome element enters the Abbey Lawn through the grounds of the Cedars retirement home which is next door or from Coggles Causeway where there are sufficient holes in the hedge for them to gain access and, as one person has suggested to me, the new barrier is likely to be as effective as a chocolate fireguard even though it is costing around £60,000. Certainly, the first breaches that result in vandalism or worse to the sports facilities or buildings would mean that this project has been a total waste of money.

The Town Hall has been the scene of the dispensation of justice in Bourne for almost 200 years but this is to end next April when the courtroom will be closed. The decision has been taken by the Lincolnshire Judicial Issues Group which has ruled that defendants will have to travel to other towns to have their cases heard and although this will involve a great deal of inconvenience for the accused, witnesses and their lawyers, it will mean improved facilities at the remaining courts in South Lincolnshire which will be better used in the future.

The building was opened in 1821 and was soon in frequent use, mainly as a court house and so became known as the Sessions House. But it was also used by other organisations on the approval of individual magistrates but damage was caused on some occasions and so the situation was regularised in 1842 when a system of licensing was introduced with all applications to use the venue being authorised by a majority of the entire bench.

The interior of the Town Hall was altered in 1974-75 and the new layout reduced the size of the main courtroom but it continued as the seat of justice in Bourne and the magistrates' court is held there weekly for summary jurisdiction with a public gallery for anyone who wishes to watch the proceedings. The court room is also used for regular meetings of the town council and there is an adjoining library or committee room where the magistrates adjourn to consider their decisions when necessary.

An assessment of the use of the Town Hall as a courtroom was issued in January 2003 by Lincolnshire Magistrates Courts Committee:
 

In 2001, the court sat for 330 hours compared to an average of 334 hours between 1993 and 1997. Fifty people attended court in September 1997, 79 in June 1998 and between January and March 2002, a total of 224 people attended. There are 23 Justices of the Peace on the Bourne and Stamford benches and four of the five categories of work - adult crime, youth crime, fine enforcement and family - are handled at Bourne. Annual running costs are £1,595. The average cost per sitting in the county is £35.48, at Bourne it is £6.17. While Lincolnshire County Council owns Bourne Town Hall, it is South Kesteven District Council which leases it and in turn allows the Magistrates Courts Committee to make use of the facilities on payment of a peppercorn rent.

The courtroom was refurbished in the spring of 2004 at a cost of £90,000 and during the autumn, the exterior doors, woodwork and ironwork were also given a fresh coat of paint.

The decision to close the courts is not popular because users will have to travel to either Boston, Spalding, Grantham, Lincoln or Skegness. Ron Robertson, chairman of the group, defends it by saying that the workload has fallen because of fixed penalty notices and video links. He added: “We have to look at the courts that are well used and make sure they are better for the users.” But the Mayor of Bourne, Councillor Jane Kingman Pauley, is concerned that too many services are leaving the town despite a surge in demand. “It means that people will have to travel a long way and many do not have transport”, she said. “I feel that because we are a small town, we are not getting a fair deal.”

What the local newspapers are saying: The strength of public feeling at the town council meeting on Tuesday over the proposed gypsy sites left no doubt that they are not wanted in the Bourne area. Over 300 members of the public attended the meeting at the Corn Exchange with not a single supporter of the idea among them and indeed the Stamford Mercury reports that the message to South Kesteven District Council was quite clearly to find somewhere else (June 16th).

The mood of the meeting was far from conciliatory and there were noisy and often angry exchanges during a lengthy question and answer session. The town’s M P, Quentin Davies, sent his apologies for not being present amid howls of derision when his note was read out while town councillor Mark Horn (Bourne East) received a distinctly frosty reception. He has already been under attack from many quarters for strong statements in the press accusing some objectors in the town of “a wanton rant of unedifying bigotry” and his support for the sites and remarks to the meeting about the poor conditions travellers face were not well received, some calling for his resignation on the grounds that they had lost confidence in his ability to reflect the views of the community.

The newspaper reports indicate that the mood of the people is quite clear and it is a pity that no one asked the chief executive of SKDC, Duncan Kerr, who was at the meeting, whether it is their task to enforce unpopular government policies or to observe the wishes of the people who pay the council tax and elect the 58 councillors who purportedly run the authority. That after all is at the very heart of the matter.

Our gardens have been in an unpredictable state these past few weeks as a result of the changeable weather and especially because of the heavy rains of June and July which retarded many plants and ruined those flowers we planted with care in pots on the patio but it has produced some surprises.

One of the most attractive gardens around is that owned by Jim and Brenda Jones behind their home in Stephenson Way which is a mass of vegetation needing the tender loving care they give it almost daily with dense borders, a pond, hedges and lawn, a mass of interest for any gardener. But imagine their surprise when they found an interloper raising its head above the rest, at first thought to be a thistle but a check with the reference books identified it as a globe artichoke.

How it got there is a mystery, perhaps blooming from a seed brought in by the birds or even with some other plant or shrub purchased from the garden centre, but there it was standing tall and very stately with a large purple flower above and a puzzling seed box below.

The globe artichoke (Cynara scolymus) is a perennial thistle originating in southern Europe around the Mediterranean. It grows to over three feet tall with arching, deeply lobed, silvery-green leaves and the flowers develop in a large head from an edible bud with numerous triangular scales, the edible part consisting of the fleshy lower portions known as the heart while the centre is called the choke. They were first cultivated in Naples during the 15th century and are reputed to have been introduced to France by Catherine de Medici 100 years later. The Dutch introduced them to England and in 1530 they were growing in Henry VIII's garden at Newhall. Today, they are cultivated mainly in France, Italy, Spain and the United States.

Globe artichokes can be cooked and eaten but they also have medicinal properties for the treatment of gallstones and as a tonic for convalescence, to make a herbal tea and even an alcoholic drink, but as here in Bourne, they are also an attractive plant making a bright floral display in the garden with their bold foliage and large purple flower heads.

The buddleia I planted just a few years back has now reached seven feet high and produced a mass of purple blooms this year but it did not live up to its reputation as a butterfly bush, attracting those beautifully patterned and coloured insects as it has done in the past. The rain may have kept them away but we have noticed a marked decline in the appearance of the red admiral, the peacock and even the common cabbage white, that were so prevalent in years past and so we must assume that the insecticides and pesticides that are sprayed regularly on the agricultural land beyond my garden fence are taking their toll.

When I was a lad, before agro-chemicals became so important to the farming cycle, butterflies were part of my summer and they could be seen everywhere in their thousands although some species have disappeared for good, the gradual increase of intensive farming having reduced their numbers, and it is left to those pockets of land in the urban belt tended by environmentally aware gardeners to entice them back although the task may take many years.

The buddleia has a particular place in our local history because the man who gave his name to the shrub was the Rev Adam Buddle, a distinguished botanist who came from Deeping St James, near Bourne. He was born there in 1665 and studied theology at Cambridge where his interest in botany began and he started on his quest of studying native mosses, grasses and plant species and soon established a reputation for his subject, being consulted by the experts of the time.

Buddle wrote and compiled an entirely new and complete reference work called English Flora in 1708 and although the book was never published, the manuscripts now form part of the Sloane collection at the Natural History Museum in London. Carolus Linnaeus (1701-78), the Swedish naturalist and founder of modern scientific nomenclature for plants and animals, subsequently named the species Buddleia, commonly known today as the butterfly bush because of its attraction for butterflies, in honour of Buddle's work in taxomony, notably Buddleia globosa, the first of many buddleias to follow. Adam Buddle died on 15th April 1715, aged 50, at Gray's Inn, London, where he was a reader, and he is buried at St Andrew's Church, Holborn, London.

Thought for the week: On two occasions in my boyhood I needed stitches in head wounds and so a visit was made to the Butterfield Hospital on each occasion and after a while, the late Dr John (Alistair) Galletly turned up and did the needle work. That of course was in the bad old days when the GP was patient friendly and did not work office hours. - contribution to the Bourne Forum on NHS services in the town from Trevor Pool, aged 81, former resident now living in retirement at Halifax, Yorkshire, Wednesday 15th August 2007.

Saturday 25^th August 2007

The controversial new system of paying to have our rubbish collected, dubbed by the media as pay-as-you-throw, came a step nearer this week with the results of yet another dubious survey, this time by the Local Government Association which suggests that almost two thirds of the people would support it.

As with other surveys carried out by government at all levels, it is worth examining the figures before deciding whether it has any credibility and from the details provided it would seem that it has not. Only 1,028 people took part in the poll and 64% (658) were in favour, not a sufficient sample from a country with a population of 60 million to justify such specific conclusions. The question also appears to have been loaded for instead of merely asking whether they were in favour of pay-as-you-throw, the pollsters put an additional clause into the question indicating that this would mean lower council tax and other charges according to how much recycled rubbish they put out which should not have been the purpose of the exercise.

This survey is obviously part of the softening up process to introduce an additional tax to collect our rubbish by playing the green card because variable waste charges would require new legislation which would most likely be implemented in a Climate Change Bill currently being drawn up by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA).

The association is quick to point out that schemes elsewhere in Europe where households pay by weight, volume or use pre-paid sacks, have led to dramatic reductions in household waste and much higher recycling rates. This us quite true but is mainly due, as in Germany, to the cooperation of supermarkets which accept discarded packaging at in-house depots as a normal service and a far more efficient system of domestic recycling that makes our own silver wheelie bins look prehistoric.

This survey and other rumblings from Whitehall indicate that pay-as-you-throw is on the way, giving the lie to previous statements from South Kesteven District Council and its early initiative to install micro-chips in its wheelie bins and although the authority continually insisted that there were no plans to introduce a system of payment by weight, it does not need a semantic analysis of all press releases on the subject to realise that the truth was being hidden from a hostile public.

There remains then only the question of how much extra will the householder be expected to pay and whether it will mean lower council tax charges for those who recycle more. No matter what the local authorities say it will not because they cannot afford to take in less money than they do already. Budgets are governed by staff salaries, pensions and other entitlements which take precedence and are generally on a knife edge and so a reduction in income from one sector must be made up in another and the possibility of financial rewards for those who are environmentally prudent is merely pie in the sky because it is most unlikely that you will ever pay the council less than you do now.

Pay-as-you-throw is clearly on the way but we will have to accept it as another stealth tax, yet another means of extracting money from the public to keep a burgeoning bureaucracy in business, this time by appealing to the public to pay up with the ridiculous notion of saving the planet.

What the local newspapers are saying: Bourne is likely to remain with just one petrol station for the foreseeable future, according to the Stamford Mercury which reports that South Kesteven District Council is dropping plans to develop a commercial site off the A 15 near Elsea Park (August 24th). The three acres of land had been earmarked for various roadside amenities including a drive through restaurant, hotel, family public house and filling station but negotiations with developers have repeatedly fallen through and officers are recommending that the land be sold without restrictions as to its use.

The land will now probably be sold to the highest bidder and this will inevitably mean housing, as has been forecast by this column ever since the site went on the market in 1999, and so we are tempted to ask what took them so long? Unfortunately, local motorists will be left with just one retail outlet for their petrol, the Tesco/Express filling station in North Road, which in view of the dangers being created by the cramped position and high level of traffic movement around the site is not a satisfactory situation.

The only good thing in favour of residential development for the A15 site is that whoever buys it will be expected to extend the town’s relief road through to the Spalding Road but it is hoped that the local authorities will take sufficient precautions this time to avoid another fiasco similar to that which marred the opening of the south-west relief road in October 2005 after being delayed for eighteen weeks because of wrangling over the small print of the planning gain.
 

Nothing is sacrosanct to vandals intent on destroying our town and the damage wreaked is all the more disheartening when it ruins the work of dedicated volunteers anxious to improve the appearance of the place where they live.

In the latest outbreak which occurred during Friday night, troughs and baskets of flowers positioned on the iron railings alongside the Bourne Eau in South Street were upturned and dozens of colourful geraniums and soil scattered along the pavement and into the gutter, a sorry sight indeed come daylight. The flowers were installed this year to enhance the street scene as a joint project between the town council and Bourne United Charities at the suggestion of Councillor Shirley Cliffe who was inspired by a visit to Lincoln where she was impressed by a similar feature and The Local which reports the incident (August 24th) quotes her dismay at what has happened.

“We have had letters about how good they looked and it cheered people up to see them”, she said. “It is a pity that the culprits had to lower themselves to do this sort of thing and it is a pity they have not got something better to do.”

Fortunately, help was at hand when the damage was discovered on Saturday morning and members of the Civic Society, whose headquarters are based at the Heritage Centre in Baldock’s Mill nearby, cleared up the mess and replanted the flowers.

The incident and its consequences are a reminder of how much this town depends on volunteers who work tirelessly to improve the environment and make life better those who live here and those responsible for the damage, committed no doubt as an act of drunken bravado while rolling home from the pub late at night, should hide their heads in shame.

Unruly and anti-social behaviour such as that occurring in the town centre recently is not a new phenomenon but the solutions of past times are unlikely to be popular today.

The village of Tongue End was once a target for Sunday afternoon revelry and in the early years of the 19th century was noted for its prize fights and the drunkenness which ensued, rival gangs from surrounding villages such as Baston, Langtoft and Thurlby, bringing in their own contenders, usually in a muck cart covered over with a horse rug to ensure the utmost surprise. The bouts attracted every ruffian in the neighbourhood who frequently created mayhem with the three village pubs which then existed, the Boat Inn, the Chequers and the Carrington Arms, all doing a roaring trade, a situation that continued for many years and as a result, Tongue End soon had a very bad reputation in the locality and a place to be avoided at weekends by those who wanted a peaceful life.

But events took a very different turn with the building of a Methodist Chapel in April 1864 which ended this disorderly conduct and soon, according to Henry Sneath (1860-1931) in his book Methodist Memories (1930), instead of rowdyism and heavy drinking, “the songs of Zion rose to heaven“. Sunday meetings were always crowded and there were frequent temperance and revivalist gatherings. The chapel continued in use until the late 20th century when it was turned into a village hall but this venture collapsed through lack of support and the building has now gone, cleared to make way for a new housing development and Tongue End remains a quiet backwater although currently enjoying a population boom with many small residential developments springing up.

Temperance and religion have long been regarded as the antidote to alcohol fuelled indiscipline but however worthy it is doubtful if this combination would appeal to those causing the current problems in Bourne today whereas a strict policy of law enforcement might well be a more effective solution than abstinence and alleluias.

I imagine that few young people today have ever seen a grasshopper yet in my boyhood, they inhabited the countryside in their thousands. One of my earliest memories is of lying in a buttercup meadow on a hot afternoon in mid-summer covered in them, all hopping backwards and forwards and creating a familiar singing noise as they rasped their wings or legs before jumping off and disappearing back into the long grass.

There are 29 species of grasshoppers, crickets and ground hoppers, in the British Isles, some of them extremely rare, the first being the most numerous, distinguished by their enlarged hind legs for jumping long distances and they can be found from July to September on grassland, heaths and marshes although Gilbert White, the distinguished naturalist, noted in his journals that one year, in 1779, a number of young grasshoppers (“They are very minute”) appeared as early as April 18th at Selborne in Hampshire where he was the curate. They are usually green although there are many variations in colour and indeed in their song patterns, but their frequency is fast becoming part of an England long gone, their numbers decimated by pesticides sprayed annually around the countryside in pursuit of profit.

The meadow grasshopper (Chorthippus parellelus), which is the most frequently seen, is usually about an inch in length and may be any combination of green, brown, pink and red in colour, and its buzzing sound lasts for up to three seconds and getting louder. They could be heard best on the night air, while sitting outside, a melodious, rasping chorus as reminiscent of the season as the song of the lark and the twittering of the swallows. It used to be one of the most frequently heard sounds of summer now replaced by the hum of the lawn mower.

Thought for the week: Reason has liberated us from superstition and given us centuries of progress. We abandon it at our peril. - Professor Richard Dawkins of Oxford University, speaking during his programme The Enemies of Reason broadcast by Channel 4 TV, Monday 20th August 2007.

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