Community spirit

While out today in the bad winds, with blue boxes and bins being blown over with all kinds of bottles, cans, paper and assorted rubbish flying all over, I saw people taking their bins and boxes back up but leaving neighbours’ bins and boxes blowing all over. Now, unless there’s a good excuse would it really hurt to bring the neighbours’ bins up?

Now I’m not blowing my own trumpet but knowing my neighbours work I took both sets of bins and boxes down, making sure they were out of the wind and unlikely to get blown over and as soon as they had been emptied I went out and brought them back up – not a hard task.

Mind you, the refuse collectors don’t help.

The last time the winds were bad I was stood waiting for a bus when a bin wagon came past.

Down the road a blue box was in middle of road and I could clearly see the wagon swerve to miss the bin but clipping it, sending it spinning to the curb and just carrying on, not stopping to see if it had hit anything.

It would have taken 10 to 20 seconds to stop the lorry and move the box.

Dave M

by email

Fashionable myth

There is a motive for writing graffiti: the purpose is to empower the writer over his/her surroundings.

Unfortunately, the consequence is to disempower everyone else in the neighbourhood.

Survey after survey shows that people feel it is a threat to their safety and autonomy.

This could be explained by parents to their children, and who knows, some of them might listen.

However, we must kill off the fashionable myth that it’s a victimless crime. It quite simply isn’t.

Ruth Grimsley

Oak Park, Broomhill, Sheffield, S10

Tripping up or suffocating

Sheffield will soon no longer be a green city.

Hundreds of years worth of beautiful trees will soon disappear from Sheffield.

Sheffield Council are paying Amey to chop down around half of Sheffield’s fantastic trees, just to make the pavements flatter!

The cheapest way to save the pavement is to chop down trees, but most of Europe uses flexible pavement because some things are more important than money.

Sheffield’s mature trees are not only beautiful, they breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen.

They also sustain lots of wildlife.

Trees are also great for defending our city against flooding.

The fact that the council will be spending lots of money on flood defences, yet are chopping down thousands of perfectly healthy trees is ridiculous!

Amey are replacing one healthy mature tree that has been growing for maybe over 100 years, with one possibly unhealthy sapling. That is no good!

Everything will die without trees. If people carry on chopping down trees like this for silly old boring money, then all humans will die. What would you choose? Tripping up or suffocating?

Ivy R Jeffery, aged 7

Millhouses

Is it the same bloke?

It can’t have gone unnoticed by others that every time a serious crime is committed in Sheffield a 30-year-old man is immediately arrested.

I always check the papers a couple of days later to inevitably see that he has been bailed pending further inquiries.

This obvious ploy allows the police to look as if they are on top of things while they look for the real culprit.

Is it the same bloke each time and does he maybe get bunged a few quid for his trouble?

Terry Tiller

Kelham Island

Pork pies are just great

Konrad Kempka’s pork pies are just great. So, if you have not tried one, Terry, don’t comment.

Chapeltown

A good tasty buy

I wonder what has become of the hares you used to find in butchers’ shops. Also gone missing are chicken livers which during WW2 proved to be a good tasty buy with a plate of chips. Hare today, gone tomorrow!

Pete Godfrey – a puzzled OAP

Stocksbridge

Dangerous crossing

The road where the Rock Christian Centre is can be dangerous to cross.

Surely there should be a crossing there to make it easy for elderly people. I’m OK, but somebody short-sighted or disabled will find it too hard to catch the bus at that stop.

W Murphy

Hands off the Cherry Tree

The Co-op plan to replace the Cherry Tree pub on Carterknowle Road with one of their stores.

We at Carterknowle have a veritable Tardis of a farm grocery store with adjacent newsagents backing it up with papers, cards, giftware, standard goods etc.

All locally owned with an excellent cafe.

The farm shop is packed to the gunnels with best quality local foods.

You can get a wide selection of beef/chicken and mushroom pies, thin crusts, thick chunks of meat, beef and ham slices, bacon, chicken etc. from farms in Bakewell and the Moss Valley.

They sell Hendo’s, of course, beers, jam from Sheffield, ice creams, butter and milk from Dungworth.

Fresh daily they sell bread, cakes, oatcakes from Wincobank and Derbyshire, fruit and vegetables and juices, the widest of choice in their seasons, grown locally – often from the allotment.

Of course, the Co-op has the cash and aggressive policy and most of us round here don’t patronise the pub as we should, but many of us back the “Montrose Three.”

Don Alexander

Knab Road, S7

Young trees are better

In a recent letter to your paper, a reader states he is starting a petition to save some trees, due for removal, on Ecclesall Road.

I am not arguing one way or the other, on their removal, only to say that, if the roots are so big that they are damaging the footpath, then they have to come out.

Your correspondent accepts that new trees will be planted, to replace them, but says young trees don’t absorb as much CO2 as older trees.

This isn’t so: the most recent research, checking new trees growing in tropical forests, shows that the young trees do absorb more CO2 than old trees.

Sheffield