Bourne Diary - April 2012

Saturday 7^th April 2012

Bourne in bloom - a reminder that volunteers are needed

Rubbish continues to deface our towns and cities and local authorities do little or nothing to prevent its spread. Instead, the collection of detritus generated by the consumer society is left to volunteers to clear up and even they are startled by what they find.

A litter picking event was held recently by the Rotary Club of Bourne St Peter in readiness for the annual best kept town competition when an enormous amount of rubbish was collected. A party of 18 Rotarians and volunteers armed with litter pickers provided by the town council spent two hours on a Saturday morning scouring the area in the Manning Road end of town and along the dyke which runs towards Kingsway and each filled a plastic bag with the usual waste paper, a mass of discarded tin cans and takeaway cartons, sweet wrappers, the odd shoe and even of piece of a rubber tyre.

The result has been surprising because Mrs Nelly Jacobs, clerk to Bourne Town Council, told The Local newspaper (March 30th): "Collecting all those bags is a huge achievement. Where does it all come from?"

But not all volunteers are given such encouragement. In a letter to the newspaper, Ian McGlynn of Maple Gardens complained that every road leaving Bourne is a disgrace, particularly the A15 from Market Deeping, while the A1 between Stamford and Grantham looks as though it has never been cleared. He went on: "I attempted to clear litter on the A15 and was advised by the council that this was a dangerous practice. Come on then, South Kesteven District Council. You have taxed the green [garden waste] bins, now do something about the litter on our roads."

His admonition has come at a bad time, when local authorities are cutting back on services to save money and collecting rubbish is less of a priority than ever. The result is that our public places and highways are a constant target for litter louts with roadside verges strewn with paper, bottles and cans, presumably thrown from passing cars and blown into the hedgerows to deface the countryside for months to come. Yet the need to keep our environment clean and tidy remains and because the recent litter picking event was such a success, Rotarians are planning a second one for later in the year. In the meantime, a contributor to the Bourne Forum has come up with a commendable idea.

"The newspapers are full of charity endeavours and the roads and public places are littered with rubbish", writes Margaret Howard. "What a pity the two cannot be combined for the benefit of the community. Instead of sponsored mountain climbing, hiking, biking, walking and running, these young people should consider devoting their energies to cleaning up the environment which would most certainly attract hundreds of sponsors and a few pounds for every bag collected. Local councils are reluctant to do the work even though we pay our council tax so perhaps this is the time for all this excess energy to be channelled in this direction, so benefiting their community and the charity of their choice at a stroke.”

Such a scheme would not be difficult to organise but then, as Ms Howard points out, a chore like litter picking does not have the same glamorous appeal as scaling Mount Kilimanjaro with all expenses paid by donors and so if we want our streets to remain clean, then we will have to continue depending on initiatives by organisations such as the Rotary Club of Bourne St Peter.

More volunteers are most certainly needed if Bourne is to make its mark in this year’s East Midlands in Bloom competition. We won a silver gilt award last year, the fourth in a row and the sixth consecutive success since 2006, making it one of the best results ever although the 162 points out of a possible 200 were eight short of the coveted gold.

This annual event is community based and designed to encourage cleaner, smarter and more attractive town centres in the region. The judges usually give a month’s notice of their arrival and tour the town looking out for floral displays, attractive and colourful gardens and parks and so it is important for everyone to give special attention to those places under their control whether it is merely the lawn and herbaceous borders or a public open space. Pupils from local schools, the scouts and police cadets all help in keeping the streets and public places clear of litter.

The competition, which originated in France and has been running for almost 50 years, leads to cleaner communities and encourages people to work together and take pride in their town. It therefore carries with it an involvement of the people and the chance to make our streets attractive throughout the summer months, not just for the judges but also for the many visitors who arrive here with Bourne either as a destination or merely passing through. The work carried out in successive years is the perfect example of how a small market town should look at this time of the year and we should remember that if people like what they see then they will come again.

“We have seen some big improvements in the floral displays around the town over the years and there is certainly less litter”, said Mrs Jacobs. “But this competition is about more than that. It encourages community pride and an awareness of the environment as well as bringing people together.”

Those who are prepared to help represent a very small percentage of the population yet these few people take on the task that should really be tackled by the many. Anyone who wants to join them to help keep Bourne clean and tidy should contact Mrs Jacobs at the Town Hall and they will be made most welcome.

But it is not just individual help that is required. Last year’s result reflected well on the volunteers who gave time and effort to make sure that the town was at its best on the day but it appears that more support is badly needed from our traders. The owners of several business premises such as the Nag’s Head, the Angel Hotel and Smiths of Bourne, decorated the front of their premises with hanging baskets last year but disappointingly many did not and this may have affected the final marking by the judges who suggested that if the owners of more business premises contributed, especially in that vital area around the town centre, we might have won the top award.

Perhaps that will bring a change of heart this year. After all, success in a competition such as this benefits everyone who trades here, particularly those with premises that have such a high profile by being situated in the main streets.

Despite the spending cuts, the district council is handing out £80,000 in grants to the owners of business premises in Bourne in the hope of sprucing up the town centre while a further £50,000 is also on offer for Grantham, a scheme that is debatable when home owners are being asked to pay for public services previously financed by the authority.

This raises the question as to how far the council should go in subsidising traders and who exactly in this case will benefit. A map showing the properties that are eligible follows the Conservation Area for Bourne which was designated in July 1977 and there are certainly many shop fronts within it that need attention but whether public money should be used to boost private enterprise is another matter, especially at a time when homeowners are being asked to pay for services that were previously free of charge.

The map also appears to include the old National School in North Street, built in 1829 but used as the Conservative Party headquarters since March 1987, and it would be unthinkable that this building would qualify as the Stamford Mercury appears to suggest (March 9th) especially as SKDC is controlled by this particular political faction.

The scheme will enable owners claim up to 75% of their costs up to a maximum of £20,000 to restore, repair or replace their shop fronts and despite the current financial climate, the council seems anxious to get rid of the money on offer as soon as possible because it is only being offered provided the work is completed by December this year. "We want to give traders a helping hand during this tough economic time and this scheme is as much about simple changes as big ones", said Councillor Frances Cartwright, portfolio holder for economic development.

Which all sounds very worthy but is this really the same council that is charging old age pensioners to have their garden waste bins emptied this year? Schemes such as this may be a good thing in the fat years when money is plentiful and to give hand-outs to shopkeepers at a time of widespread budget cuts does appear to be rather a foolhardy undertaking but then perhaps this is yet another example of one department not knowing what the other is doing.

The magazine County News which is delivered free to homes around Bourne every other month by Lincolnshire County Council has been re-launched. From now on, it will only be published every three months to save money. This is a heartening decision because it demonstrates the fact that the authority is aware of the need to make economies but it does not go far enough.

Bi-monthly or quarterly, this publication is of little use to anyone and should have been axed completely because it is quite obviously a propaganda sheet for councillors and officials and tells us nothing that we do not know or, indeed, need to know but some 337,500 copies of the 24-page publication will still be printed in the new colour magazine style format. “We have to adapt to changing times”, council leader Martin Hill told The Local newspaper (March 30th). “The old style newspaper format, popular as it was, needed a refresh and we felt it was important to give it a longer shelf life.”

This is unlikely to be the case because my straw poll indicates that most copies go straight into the wpb unread, thereby adding to the rubbish generated by those 337,500 homes around Lincolnshire.

Nothing is being said about what has been spent on this publication over the years, the only indication being that the new format is costing “about £240,000 a year less” than in 2010. It was launched in February 2003 and four years later the projected figure was given as £381,380 which had risen to £427,000 when this matter was last raised by the local newspapers in February 2009. The outlay over the past nine years is therefore a sizeable sum, one so large that had it been more wisely invested it would have made a substantial down payment on a new north-south bypass for Bourne but as it is, the entire product on which it was spent has ended up in the rubbish bin, an example of how our money is being wasted when it could have been used for something of real benefit.

This is expenditure of some magnitude but one that is presented as a small outlay because Councillor Hill says in his editorial in the latest edition (Spring 2012) that each copy costs only about 15p to produce and deliver. “Compare that to the price of a second class stamp - 36p - and we hope you'll find County News very good value for money", he writes.

In times of economy, every penny spent by local authorities should be scrutinised closely to ensure that we are getting value for money. The county council is currently so strapped for cash that opening times at the waste recycling centre in Bourne are to be reduced by almost half and at the same time, the people who provide the money through their council tax are having to economise to pay their bills. The authority therefore has a moral duty to cut all unnecessary expenditure, especially on those little luxuries that we can no longer afford and can well do without.

Thought for the week: Beware of little expenses: a small leak will sink a great ship. - Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and a noted polymath, author, politician, scientist, inventor, statesman and diplomat.

Saturday 14^th April 2012

A peaceful afternoon at the Abbey Lawn

The most surprising aspect about the proposed siting of a skateboard park amid the tranquil surroundings of the Abbey Lawn is the fact that the sporting organisations already there have not been consulted by Bourne United Charities which administers the land. The trustees have therefore incurred the wrath of the community as much for their lack of diplomacy as the questionable wisdom of their decision.

The project involves handing over a plot of land at the Abbey Lawn, 42 metres by 32 metres, located behind the main football pitch and already used by the club for warm up sessions on match days but it is proposed that the site be developed as a concrete skateboard park at a cost of between £115,000 and £170,000. The facility will be run by the Dimension Skatepark Committee, an organisation which foundered in 2010 after a similar attempt, whose chairman is schoolboy Zac Pinchin, aged 18, a sixth former at Bourne Academy. The plans are therefore well advanced but why the trustees have not informed the other sporting clubs is a mystery because their debate over the scheme was no secret and had been revealed by this column as early as December 2011.

A lively discussion on the proposal is now underway in the Bourne Forum and the consensus among those who are protesting is that the Abbey Lawn and the clubs that use it will again suffer, a problem that was thought to have been solved with the introduction of increased security precautions in 2009 including the erection of iron railings around the grounds at a cost of £60,000 and the introduction of a dusk to dawn curfew.

Bourne Town Football Club is particularly aggrieved and their secretary, Bob Lambert, has made no bones about what they can expect if the scheme goes ahead. "There will be constant noise from skateboards going on late into the night from hordes of youths who will use the football stands as shelter, picnic area or worse", he said. "Damage will increase on a higher scale than it already is. The trustees have no idea what is going on and not one has bothered to contact the club about this. We have struggled for many years to keep the football club going without any substantial help from the local authorities. It is heart breaking to see the damage caused to our premises and, by chance, more has been done this week with guttering being ripped down. It is a fact that where more youths congregate the risk of hooliganism will increase."

Derek Bontoft, spokesman for the Abbey Lawn Sports Association which represents all sports clubs using the site, added his voice to the protest. "It may not be the skateboarders who are responsible for the vandalism", he said, "but this facility will attract other youngsters who have done the damage in the past. I cannot believe that the trustees who spent so much money on erecting a fence to reduce the problems should now allow this facility in an enclosed area. The proposal seems to have had little thought given to a suitable site and certainly no consultation with any other users of the Abbey Lawn."

A meeting of the ALSA is to be held at the end of this month to discuss the prospective problems that can evolve from the skateboard park. “Speaking on behalf of the football club”, said Bob Lambert, “I would have thought that clubs would have been invited to attend a meeting to discuss this with Bourne United Charities but, alas no. They appear to be a law unto themselves.”

The proposed site is surrounded on three sides by houses in Coggles Causeway, Victoria Place and Abbey Road, and home owners are incensed about the possible noise once skateboarding begins. One tenant, Ron Davison, is so angry that he is starting a petition in an attempt to prevent the project from going ahead, a protest that is now being supported by the football club. "Nothing appears to have been learned from the fiasco at Stamford which resulted in the closure of their skateboard park due to graffiti, drugs and vandalism", he said.

Skateboard parks do not have a good record. The one in the recreation ground at Stamford was shut in 2007 because of serious damage by vandals that rendered it no longer fit for use while a similar situation arose in the park at Prince's Street, Sutton Bridge, where the facility was closed down for repairs because of vandalism (2004). The skateboard park at Wyndham Park, Grantham, has had problems of vandalism, a lack of supervision and a shortage of funds (2006 and 2010) and there have been similar problems for the skate parks at Oundle, Northamptonshire, where all manner of rubbish and empty bottles turned the site in the recreation ground into an eyesore (2004) and at Werrington, Peterborough, where additional police patrols were ordered in an attempt to prevent late night drinking, criminal damage and the spread of graffiti and litter (2011).

The furore the trustees have created with this decision should have been foreseen unless they are completely out of touch with the people of this town. In view of the strength of feeling against the project, it is difficult to see how they can possibly proceed because by ignoring these protests they will be turning their backs on a large section of the community to support the whim of a few teenagers while the project may also be creating a Trojan horse of problems for the Abbey Lawn in the years ahead.

A final decision now rests with the town council for although BUC has agreed to provide the land, they want no further part in the running and administration and so the council will have to take on responsibility for the lease, repair and insurance once the skateboard park is built. This is hardly acceptable for a minority sport, a privilege not extended to the others, especially at a time of strict economies in public spending, because the burden will eventually fall on the council tax on which the authority depends for its income through the annual precept. Our councillors have a duty to the electorate not to spend money unnecessarily, especially in these straightened times, and they will therefore be expected to take a sensible approach when the matter comes up for discussion by the finance committee on May 1st.

The proposed bandstand for the Wellhead Gardens has also been discussed by Bourne United Charities, a suggestion by the deputy mayor, Councillor Helen Powell, that has captured public imagination and has resulted in one of the biggest postbags of encouragement to the letters columns of our local newspapers for any single topic in recent years. It has also been suggested as a suitable project to mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and it would be difficult to find anything better, especially as the music in the park concerts by visiting brass bands during the summer attract such large audiences.

But it is unlikely to get the support needed from the trustees who have already expressed reservations, or in the words of the vice-chairman, Dr Carl Pears, who told The Local newspaper (April 6th): "We do not know how relevant the project is for modern Bourne and the fact that it might only be used two or three times a year is a concern. We are bouncing back a few of the concerns we had about the logistics of the project as a long term thing. There are a few loose ends which we hope to be tied up."

These "loose ends" were later detailed in a letter to Councillor Powell. "The provision of a bandstand is a good idea", it said. "However, they have major concerns regarding its siting, ownership, insurance, construction, funding and ongoing maintenance, none of which they would be willing to take responsibility for." They also raised concerns about possible vandalism and misuse of the structure.

There is a slim chance that the scheme may be salvaged because the chairman of the trustees, Trevor Hollinshead, told the newspaper: "The idea has not been dismissed yet. We look forward to Councillor Powell coming back to us, having addressed the issues raised." This appears to be a forlorn hope because it is apparent that the trustees have already chosen to support the skateboard park and reject the bandstand but in view of the public outcry this has generated, second thoughts would appear to be a prudent alternative.

From the archives: More vandalism on the Abbey Lawn preoccupies both of our main local newspapers with accounts of intruders who got in during the night and planted 327 beer bottles neck down along the white lines around the football pitch. They were found on Sunday morning, pictured by The Local on its front page, lined up like soldiers on parade (December 3rd), and although it may have been intended as a joke by youngsters after a night out on the town, club officials did not find it a laughing matter. Chairman Terry Bates, who has been outspoken about continuing acts of criminal damage at the ground in recent years, told the Stamford Mercury: “There comes a time when patience is exhausted. There are many, me included, who would like to take the law into their own hands to stop it.” – extract from the Bourne Diary, Saturday 4th  December 2004.

The mammoth task of copying the parish registers for Bourne into digital format has begun in order that they can be available to anyone researching their family tree. The work is being undertaken by David Tabor, long time voluntary worker for the Abbey Church, who admits that the task will be a long one. He began last year and progress is slow because the documents are hard to read and often illegible and a painstaking attention to detail is required. But by March 2012, the work was well advanced with three of the baptism registers completed comprising some 2,400 entries from 1837-1899. "This has taken me three months", said David, "and I anticipate that at least another 18 months of work lies ahead."

The project is being undertaken with the approval of the vicar and churchwardens who are the local custodians of the registers which are kept under lock and key in the Abbey Church where David has been an active worker for more than half a century. His first appointment was as a boy in 1950 when he joined the team of altar servers but in 1963 he was elected to the parochial church council, becoming secretary the following year. There have been many appointments since, at parochial and diocesan level, including verger, parish clerk and churchwarden, a post which he eventually gave up in 2002.

David lost his wife, Ann, in 2011. They had been married for almost fifty years. Their daughter, Judith, an enthusiastic member of the Lincolnshire Family History Society who has researched the Tabor family back to the 18th century, suggested the transcription of the registers as a suitable project and he has tackled it with enthusiasm. Once complete, it is hoped that the registers will be available on the Internet through the Lincolnshire Family History web site. In view of the increasing interest in tracing ancestors, this is a worthy task and one that will be welcomed by readers of the Bourne web site which currently has more than 400 names listed for research in its Family History section by descendants living around the world.

This has been a major success story for the web site over the past fourteen years because it has put people in touch with relatives they never knew existed and enabled them expand their family trees considerably. Requests for information arrive almost daily and although I cannot always help directly, every inquiry is answered and I try to point them in the direction of someone who may be able to assist and so when complete, the parish registers will provide a wealth of material for them.

Genealogy is now one of the most popular pursuits of Internet users, a facility that allows you check official records that were once inaccessible and enables you contact people researching the same name with the likelihood that you may come from that family. If you wish to join our list, go to the Family History section and take a look at the current entries then email me with your own inquiry and it will be added within 24 hours. It is a thrilling adventure and one that may also produce some unexpected, even unwanted, information because you are just as likely to discover a criminal as a countess among your antecedents, but then that is all part of the excitement.

Thought for the week: We've uncovered some embarrassing ancestors in the not too distant past. Some horse thieves and some people killed on Saturday nights. One of my relatives, unfortunately, was even in the newspaper business. - James Earl (Jimmy) Carter (1924-  ), former peanut farmer who became the 39th President of the United States and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

Saturday 21^st April 2012

Bourne Town Football Club - officials fear there may be problems

The youngsters behind the skateboard project planned for the Abbey Lawn have given assurances that it will not create problems for other sporting organisations. They told The Local newspaper (April 13th) that they have no need to worry and if anyone is concerned then: “We are willing to listen.”

Unfortunately, Bourne Town Football Club appears to have been given a fait accompli. Their ground and clubhouse are immediately next door to the proposed development and there are fears that it will attract an unruly element and their premises will suffer. “People already congregate in the grandstand and leave a mess behind”, said secretary Bob Lambert, “and we think the problem will increase.”

Schoolboy Zac Pinchin, aged 18, chairman of the Dimension Park Committee which is running the skateboard project, said that they could see the club’s point of view but added: “I don’t think it would be too much of an issue. If it were, we would be willing to look at the possibility of including a shelter in our plans although people are unlikely to use the skatepark in the wet anyway.”

Few people will consider this to be particularly reassuring and the clamour of complaint over the decision by Bourne United Charities and the serious problems that have been forecast will need to be fully addressed. So far, the chairman of the trustees, Trevor Hollinshead, has told the newspaper: “Wherever [a skateboard park] has been planned in Bourne there has always been an attitude of not in my backyard.”

This may be considered to be presumptuous because everyone has a legal and moral right to complain about any development that is likely to affect their quality of life without being accused of nimbyism, in this case those from Abbey Road, Coggles Causeway and Victoria Place whose homes are within earshot. There were also valid reasons for the rejection of previous sites, notably the old water cress beds off South Street in 2005 by BUC when the land was considered to be too close to the Red Hall on one side and the Wellhead Gardens on the other and also lacked adequate access.

It does appear that the current scheme has been motivated on behalf of a minority sport irrespective of the opinions of the majority organisations that use the Abbey Lawn and have been doing so for many years past yet their views were not sought by the trustees before this development was made public. They were not even invited to the presentation which the lads made to the town council earlier this month (April 3rd) and although rumours about the Abbey Lawn site have been around for some months, there was no official announcement until the local newspapers appeared last Friday and as is well known, rumour often engenders ill feeling.

Ironically, this situation would not have arisen if Bourne United Charities had chosen the more obvious location at the Wellhead Field, a site that would be in nobody’s back garden where the project could have gone ahead with the blessing of the entire town and it is a pity that the trustees did not consider this.

Nevertheless, the offer has been made but there are two obstacles that must be surmounted before this development comes to fruition. The first is planning permission by South Kesteven District Council whose officers will be fully aware of the disastrous record of skateboard parks as a magnet for noise, criminal damage, hooliganism, litter and illegal drinking, and the rights of the individual to make a formal protest. This authority has already refused to lease a site at the Recreation Ground for a skateboard park on health and safety grounds (2009) following problems with a similar project at Stamford and the same criteria should also apply to the Abbey Lawn which will be situated at a similar location.

The second is the need to raise the necessary capital which is estimated at between £115,000 and £170,000, a formidable task that has already caused the skateboard project to stumble in the past and has prevented it from coming to fruition for more than 30 years, the first attempt to drum up interest being made as long ago as 1978. To put this figure in perspective, we need only remember that the current task of establishing the Bourne Community Access Point at the Corn Exchange is costing £263,480 and taking a year to complete.

The one organisation that could afford it is Bourne United Charities, the wealthiest in the town with assets in excess of £15 million and an annual income of £578,884 (2010), but although the trustees have agreed to offer a site, they could not provide the money without serious questions being asked about whether this would be within the scope of their role as an almshouse charity dealing with the relief of need and the provision of social amenities within the parish.

The town’s other philanthropic organisation, the Len Pick Trust, has already been named as a potential donor but that was before the site was offered at the Abbey Lawn. The trust was founded in 2004 to administer £4 million left for the benefit of the town by businessman Len Pick, widely regarded as Bourne Town Football Club’s most loyal and dedicated supporter who eventually became its president. He would therefore have been unlikely to approve a skateboard park at the proposed location and the trustees will be acutely aware of this when considering any application to provide financial aid for a project to which the club is vehemently opposed.

Bourne Town Council is in effect only a parish council with a limited annual spending budget of £150,000 (2012-13) but has in the past pledged £10,000 towards the project although any long term commitment involving an on-going financial liability may also be ruled out because the money would have to come from the council tax through an increased precept, a most unpopular and even unwise move in these days of enforced economies in public spending. It will also be remembered that in 2005, this council proposed to pull down the Victorian chapel in the town cemetery because the cost of repairs was prohibitive for the council tax payer and the Bourne Preservation Trust is now negotiating to take over the building to ensure its future.

Raising the necessary capital will therefore be up to the youngsters who want a skateboard park, a task that will test their resolve, determination and enterprise. They cannot merely put their hands out and expect someone else to cough up. Instead, they will find the fund raising an extremely difficult and time consuming task, as others have discovered in their own chosen field of endeavour.

In view of these factors, the possibility of the Abbey Lawn project coming to fruition slowly recedes and it is extremely doubtful if it will materialise this year or even next by which time the teenagers currently involved will have moved on and most probably taken up new interests.

Long queues have started forming at the waste recycling centre in Pinfold Lane following the decision by Lincolnshire County Council to reduce opening times from seven days a week to just Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday from 9 am to 4 pm. Drivers arriving to dump their waste last Friday were faced with a line of cars over 100 yards long which was causing such confusion on site that staff were forced to introduce a one way system although one of them said that even this was chaotic.

One pensioner found that queue so formidable that he turned round and went home but when he came back later in the morning the queue was just as bad. “Being retired, I am one of the lucky ones”, he said, “but I hate to think of the poor souls who have to go to work. Whatever will it be like on Saturday and Sunday.”

The scene was reminiscent of the old days in Bourne when dumping rubbish was a daunting task,  especially for old people, and it eventually brought our local authorities into disrepute. The people fought for 26 years to have a convenient place to dump their excess rubbish while the county council dragged its heels and subjected them to the most degrading ritual on Saturday mornings when trying to get rid of it in the back of a lorry parked in a supermarket car park for a few hours every Saturday morning. There was a sigh of relief throughout the town when the Pinfold Lane centre eventually opened in April 2002, run by the contractors Bullimores, but now it seems that the jubilation is short lived and we are once again at the mercy of the bean counters at county hall anxious to save a pound or two.

The message to them seems to be that the new opening times at the waste recycling centre are inadequate. The public does not like it and nor do the staff. The local authorities are continually harping on about reducing their carbon footprint yet by cutting the hours, the county council has generated long queues of cars all waiting with their engines running and so wasting petrol and polluting the atmosphere while those impatient drivers who go home and then come back are adding to the problem by making two journeys.

To make matters worse, the county council has just approved the opening of a new household waste recycling centre at Baston, five miles down the road from Bourne, and this will be open from 8 am until 6 pm Monday to Friday and 8 am until 4 pm Saturdays and Sundays, despite concerns by villagers that the increased traffic will put lives at risk. David Hinks, a local resident who lives in Main Street, told The Local newspaper (April13th): “Most of those who use it will come from Bourne when their tip is closed during the week.”

It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Lincolnshire County Council employs 12,000 people and has a spending budget of £1,050 million yet it appears to be failing in its duty to implement the simplest of tasks, that of helping us dispose of our rubbish and for the less responsible members of the community that will inevitably lead to fly tipping.

As if this were not enough, new practices were introduced at the Pinfold Lane site this week that, in the words of one user, have made Lincolnshire County Council “a laughing stock”. Visitors are no longer allowed to climb the steps and dump their rubbish in one of the huge skips available for the various materials but instead they must drop it on the floor at the front and await a member of staff who will deposit it for them.

One user emailed to say: “Many of us who live in and around Bourne have used the recycling facility for a good number of years without any problem and, moreover, with a very reasonable degree of efficiency on the part of the site management and staff.  However, it would appear that some pathetic jobsworth on the council has forced the introduction of these new practices which are alienating all sensible users of the facility. Anyone who has to go all through this will either fall about laughing or cringe at the stupidity of the council.”

The subject has certainly been causing some merriment among contributors to the Bourne Forum, many of them expressing disbelief that such preposterous regulations should have official backing. Although no reason has been given for the new system, it appears to be motivated by welfare concerns for those who use the site although one contributor has suggested that it is the staff who will be at risk by the possibility of incurring a back injury through all of that lifting and carrying. Certainly, the officials at county hall could not have given a single thought for the consequences of this stupidity unless it is all part of a cunning plan to close down the site altogether and pile the blame on those ubiquitous and often ridiculous health and safety regulations.

Thought for the week: A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy? - Albert Einstein (1879-1918), German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity and is often regarded as the father of modern physics.

Saturday 28^th April 2012

Unused charity bags - see "Another factor . . . "

Spare the rod and spoil the child was a popular belief in 19th century England, one that had biblical origins because the old adage on discipline is an adaptation of six verses from Proverbs 13 rather than an exact quotation. Nevertheless, the meaning was intended to be that if one does not discipline a child, he or she will never learn obedience and good manners and so corporal punishment such as caning became a common practice at schools in England until outlawed by act of Parliament in 1987.

Until then, teachers frequently disciplined wayward pupils physically, usually with a flexible rattan cane applied either to the hands or, especially in the case of teenage boys, to the seat of the trousers. Slippering was a less formal alternative and in some schools a strap was used instead of the cane.

Literature abounds with vivid descriptions of the practice, particularly in the works of the Victorian novelist Charles Dickens, where caning was taken to barbaric lengths in some institutions, and it is surprising that it continued well into the 20th century.

Our own schools in Bourne were no exception and evidence that this extreme form of discipline was still practiced in recent years comes in a Punishment Book covering a sixty year period that has survived, beginning in 1923 with the Bourne Boys Council School in what was then Star Lane (now the Bourne C of E Primary Academy in Abbey Road) with continuing entries as the senior school moved to separate premises in Queen's Road in 1946, later becoming Bourne County Secondary School and then the Robert Manning College (now Bourne Academy).

The book was compiled during the headships of Harry Goy (1920-46), Leslie Day (1946-68), Howard Bostock (1968-80) and Louis Decamp (1980-84) and gives an insight into the method of discipline enforced when the school was under their control. During the period from April 1923 until the record closed in April 1984, there are over 600 entries, an average of ten punishments a year, with one, two or three strokes of the cane for offences such as unruly behaviour and being abusive to the staff. The usual procedure when a pupil transgressed was that the teacher sent him to the headmaster and he carried out the caning in his study. Some boys did regard it with a sense of bravado but there was also a social stigma to bear within his own circle for anyone who was punished in this way. Each pupil in the Punishment Book is named but I have not identified them to save them from embarrassment over their juvenile misdemeanours.

Offences during 1923 which resulted in caning included continual disobedience or misbehaviour, impudence to a teacher, using bad language, vulgarity, indecent talk, inattention and truancy. In 1925, boys were caned for "absolute cheek" to a teacher, "playing noughts and crosses during geography" and for being "repeatedly untruthful". The following year, a pupil received two strokes of the cane on his seat because he "threw a lighted match through the window into the school and was impudent to his teacher".

Sometimes, one offence led to another and in 1926, a boy "ran home, played truant in the afternoon and wrote indecently on a piece of paper" although he got off lightly with only two strokes of the cane. Others were caught "smoking on school premises during the dinner hour" and in 1929, one lad was given three strokes for "bullying in the playground after being repeatedly warned and was then cheeky when corrected".

In the 1930s, two strokes were given for "writing filthy notes" while other boys were punished for "absolute laziness" (three strokes), for "impudence to people in the street and causing annoyance near public buildings" (three strokes), for "climbing into the lavatories and breaking into the tanks" (four strokes) and in 1938, one boy was singled out for special punishment and was eventually sent to the headmaster for "impudence to a teacher followed by misbehaviour in the woodwork room". He was given four strokes on the seat and the headmaster duly noted: "This boy has been looking for trouble for some considerable time."

The punishments continued through the years, usually for insolence, disobedience and truancy, although today the offences may be regarded as high jinks by teenagers rather than serious wrongdoing although they did break the school rules and it was considered necessary to maintain discipline if the system was to continue working efficiently.

All of the punishments involved boys and so we tend to forget that this was a co-educational school but we are reminded of this by an entry in October 1968 when a pupil was given one stroke of the cane on the seat for "interfering with a girl causing bruising on her" although we are not told exactly what happened.

By 1980, the offences remained largely mischievous and adventurous such as smoking and swearing although one pupil was caned (one stroke) for throwing an egg at a teacher while others were given two strokes for "writing an offensive remark" and "removing a door handle". Two lads who played truant in 1983 also got two strokes each after the headmaster recorded that their excuse was "a cock and bull story".

Punishments were becoming less severe with most pupils receiving only one stroke of the cane each while the majority of the offences were quite trivial. The acceptance of caning therefore appears to have been receding. There was also some concern about pupils being punished for their conduct after they had left the school premises. In 1970, for instance, two boys were caned for assaulting a schoolgirl at Cawthorpe while in the same year, three others were punished for insulting a lady in Queen's Road (one stroke each) and in 1981, a boy was caned for "smoking on a school bus" (two strokes).

The last entry in the book is dated 28th March 1984 when four fourth-year boys were give three strokes each for "out of school interference with a girl", a punishment agreed with the parents. This is the only entry in the book which refers to the involvement of parents and indicates a change in public opinion over school punishment. Caning also appears to have ended on that day.

More than twenty years after the abolition of corporal punishment in state schools, there is still a lively discussion over whether it should be reinstated. A poll of more than 6,000 teachers in the United Kingdom carried out by the Times Educational Supplement in 2008 found that one in five, 22% of them secondary teachers, still advocated the use of caning in extreme cases while government research suggested that a number of British people believe that the removal of corporal punishment in schools has been a contributory factor in what was seen to be a general decline in pupil behaviour. The debate continues.

From the archives: Ethel Gertrude Blundy, aged 9, was buried after dying from concussion of the brain caused by a blow on the head from the hand of the schoolmaster of Irnham on Monday 8th May. – entry in the parish registers for Dowsby, near Bourne, 1899.

A battered open lorry often appears in our street, the driver and his mate on the lookout for scrap metal. We assume this because there are usually a couple of old white appliances in the back together with other assorted items destined for recycling.

In the past, the regular visits by this vehicle have been silent apart from the sound of the engine but more recently it has been equipped with some sort of Tannoy system and as it drove past, one of the occupants in the cab broadcasting their presence by appealing to home owners to bring out their scrap metal for collection. It reminded me of the “any old iron merchants” of old, the Steptoes who toured the streets in my boyhood eighty years ago on the lookout for anything that would make a quick penny.

During the early 1930s, many tradesmen shouted their wares to attract attention and the most melodious of these street cries came from the rag-and-bone man, a didicoy who lived in a painted caravan at the bottom of a disused sand quarry near to the sugar beet factory. He had a cart and a skewbald pony for his rounds and we could hear him coming from a distance, his voice echoing down the street as he called out in his sing-song voice, the words slowly rising and falling in time with his pony's hooves striking the tarmac: "Reg-ay-bune, reg-ay-bune! Reg-ay-bune, reg-ay-bune!"

He would take anything, scrap metal and wood, glass, rubber, paper and cardboard, but best of all he liked old clothes and if the bundles were big enough he would hand over a few pennies for them. Old clothes were a rarity in large families where they were handed down and worn until threadbare rather than being discarded while still serviceable but he often had rich pickings from homes where there had been a death or from childless couples while making their annual spring clean and on these occasions we would rush to the gate and offer to take them to the cart in the hope of getting a share of the money for our efforts.

Like scrap metal, old clothes are still collected from the doorstep but this time they are handed over in plastic bags issued by the various charities although we have been getting more than we need of late because the supply of unwanted garments in running out yet they still keep coming while the scrap metal lorry has done little or no business in our street for several weeks, all a sign, perhaps, that the affluent society is coming to an end.

Another factor in the decline of the charity bag system is the belief that everything you give will not necessarily go to help good causes and that opportunists have moved in to make a quick buck with the result that we are being swamped with them. They seem to arrive every day and so from January, I started to collect and count them and yesterday came up with the staggering figure of ninety-seven bags delivered to my house alone in the past four months.

They have been allegedly sent by those charities that do not have shops but are making collections through commercial firms which deliver the plastic bags emblazoned with the appropriate logo together with instructions that they should be left on the doorstep filled with unwanted items on a particular day when a van tours the district to collect them. But there is now evidence that this system is being abused and research by the British Heart Foundation suggests that many companies keep the donated goods and sell them for huge profits, mostly to overseas markets, making only a token royalty payment to the charity, in some cases as little as 5% of what has actually been realised.

A survey by the foundation reveals that 70% of the charity bags delivered to homes came from commercial companies and in some cases the charities were getting £50 to £100 per tonne collected whereas the goods were selling abroad at anything up to £1,800 a tonne and this has now become a lucrative industry with several firms chasing millions of pounds in profits every year.

The foundation says that the majority of home owners felt “shocked, cheated and disheartened” by the revelations while the steep increase in charity bag collections had led to an estimated loss of donations over a two year period of £4.6 million in their own shops alone.

As the warning spreads, fewer are now filling these bags for collection, preferring to deliver their unwanted items to local shops rather than donate on the doorstep and everyone is asked to check each one and any accompanying leaflets that drop through the letterbox for information about where they come from and how much of the proceeds will actually go to the charity named. As we have been so often warned in the past, every new idea has the potential for someone to misuse it for their own ends.

Thought for the week: Everything we use comes in boxes, cartons, bins, the so called packaging we love so much. The mountain of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use.”  - John Ernst Steinbeck (1902-68), American Pulitzer Prize winning novelist who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.

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