Wednesday, August 12

Who are these Number 10 bypass campaigners?

Look out, Boston Bypass Independents, there's a challenger in the race to provide the town with a by-pass.
And the voting is on at no lesser an address than number 10 Downing Street.
A petition created by someone called Shane Fletcher is posted on the website, which has hosted such conflicting demands as for Gordon Brown to resign, and for Jeremy Clarkson to replace him.
The top petition at present - the one for Gordon Brown to go - has almost 70,000 signatures - but that doesn't mean that the PM is considering his future. Most e-petitions to number 10 are mainly to give people a chance to get things off their chest rather than to get an outcome if enough votes are cast.
Whilst 70,000 is a lot of e-power, the Boston campaign has some way to go yet ... with just ten other signatures attached after Mr Fletcher's.
In case you may have heard of them, the other signatories are: Femi Owusu, Dwayne Forsell, James Mason, Paul Morgan, and Ishmael Bangura - all of whom are members of something called Sense With Roads - followed by Peter Morgan of the Association of British Drivers, with the balance made up of four individuals named Stephen Ward, Mark Bristow, Kathleen Betts and Storm Dinsey.
They declare: "We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to create a bypass for boston lincs (sic). Submitted by Mr Shane Fletcher – deadline to sign up by: 05 May 2010 – Signatures: 11
"More details from petition creator: traffic congestion is killing this town and the local and county councils seem to be doing very little to help the situation."
We suspect that this motley crew has as much chance of getting Boston a bypass as do Councillor Richard "Papa Dick" Austin and his cronies at Worst Street - although they are bang on the money with their claims that the councils seem to be doing very little to help.
Couple that with the fact that the Boston petition is only one of 4844 at the last count and you can understand our sinking feeling.
The petition currently bottom of Number 10's list -and sharing the least number of votes with one (presumably the petition creator) - calls for a ban on the use of the sisha, better known as the hookah, or water-pipe for smoking, and it is a sorry state of affairs that support for a Boston bypass is not much higher up the list than that.
We wonder who this rag, tag and bobtail bunch is that has started this petition on our behalf.
We know nothing about the individuals, but can tell you that Sense with Roads is "dedicated to making the roads safe and efficient for all those who find a need to use them," while the Association of British drivers calls itself "Britain's foremost campaigning group for drivers aiming to provide an active, responsible voice to lobby for Britain's beleaguered motorists."
Neither organisations' websites have much to say about Boston, and in fact Sense with Roads seems to concentrate its efforts mainly on the south of England.
You can check all the sources out here:
10 Downing Street - http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/bypassboston/
Sense with Roads - http://www.swr-uk.org/
Association of British drivers - http://www.abd.org.uk/
Superficially, it all seems a rather sad, except that with a little thought, organisation and lobbying, the BBI could have come up with this petition, which would if nothing else have been a good publicity coup and probably have drawn a few more by way of signatures.
Another missed opportunity!

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1 comment:

Unknown said...

i believe anyone who has the misfortune of getting stuck in traffic at any given time in through Boston town would sign this petition and its not that the originator had the right idea in this petition but that lack of time and resources to get more signature on the petition itself maybe if the local community took this up then there might be a reason to do something about the issue of traffic congestion.