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No job for the likes of Simone
Working in a care home for the elderly is a very challenging job.
Especially when your charges have dementia and are difficult to deal with in so many ways.
But that means residential homes must be especially careful to employ the right sort of people.
Folk who genuinely care about the generation they are looking after.
Folk who can remain calm and composed in the face of the many infuriating and painful obstacles they encounter on a continual basis.
Sadly, a combination of human nature and poor rates of pay means that by no means all our care homes are staffed exclusively by such saintly stoics.
Our sorry story on page one today of Simone Cox and her disgusting online rant against her elderly charges shows just how badly awry things can go.
Her mean and menacing words on Facebook would send a shiver down the spine of anyone with a relative in care .
We hope it dawns on her soon that she has chosen the wrong occupation.
Putting Sheffield in the vanguard
Britain lags well behind the rest of Europe when it comes to using alternatives to greenhouse gas-producing fossil fuels and yet we have some of the most innovative green energy businesses, many of them based in South Yorkshire.
That is why Sheffield City Council's experiment, using vehicles running on gas produced from waste food, is all the more praiseworthy.
Our local council is not only trying to save money, practise what it preaches and set an example. It is also using highly innovative local businesses to help it achieve those aims.
We have the technology and the entrepreneurial firms to turn South Yorkshire into a green beacon. What better way is there for the public sector to 'recycle' the rates we pay than by kick starting that process.
The domino effect
The decline of pub sports, as reported on these pages by our award-winning features editor Martin Smith, is a depressing facet of modern life in Britain.
Not only are we losing our pubs one by one at a frightening rate, the ones that stay open and remain profitable seem to depend too much on intrusive music, 24-hour drinking and the alcopop culture.
The once-common sight of a quiet pub corner with a game of doms on the go is now a rarity. The darts are in a downward spiral too.
The rallying call to save these traditional pastimes must be heeded.
Otherwise they will go the way of bar billiards, bull-hooks and skittles.
It's enough to leave you crying in your beer.
Got a view? Leave a comment below.
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Weather for Sheffield
Saturday 26 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 23 C
Wind Speed: 18 mph
Wind direction: North east
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 10 C to 22 C
Wind Speed: 15 mph
Wind direction: East
