Such mismanagement is nothing new to the council, which similarly had to find millions when the county’s trading standards department went bust in an embarrassing financial muddle.

Now officials in Sheffield are putting a brave face on the fact that several million pounds is missing from the market accounts - which means other services have to suffer while the shortfall is made up. The idea of bringing in ‘commercial management expertise’ sounds like an expensive way to do a job that plenty in the town hall are already well rewarded for doing in the first place.

Wider picture ought to have been shown

IT is with regret that we hear of officials only now agreeing - and reluctantly - that there is still the possibility of money being invested in the Wisewood and Myers Grove schools after a merger plan was thrown out.

The key argument used to bulldoze that proposal through the wall of public opposition was that there was only one way to bring in the Government investment needed by both schools - and that was a merger.

Now it appears the case was never so clear cut and the proposals were a safe option, based on a model which worked elsewhere. The wider picture should have been explained during the so-called ‘consultation’ process.

Disposable viewing

THE latest research suggests that something like four million televisions and a similar number of video recorders will be dumped in the next few years. It’s all to do, we’re told, with the fact that the nation is about to go digital and that some machines will become obsolete. Nothing at all to do then with the fact that the programmes on offer at the moment are absolute rubbish?