Crumbling roads

Doesn’t Amey employ a quality control manager ?

If they do I suggest he pays a visit to examine the condition of the road as well as the poor workmanship that has been carried out.

Is this the tip of the iceberg?

How many more roads are in the same state of repair and who is going to pay?

Amey might have got a contract with SCC to carry out the maintenance of the roads but how many roads will need to be redone?

May I suggest other readers get in touch with The Star and report other roads which are starting to crumble.

S10

Do we need this airport?

I’d love to know how much Doncaster Sheffield Airport paid for its three-day (and counting) propaganda campaign in The Star.

Do readers realise the discreet “in association with...” indicates this is all paid advertising?

I’d also like to know if anyone’s considered the economic need and environmental justification for another major airport so close to Manchester.

Instead of backing a pointless cause The Star could be campaigning for proper transport connections to replace the spluttering Trans Pennine “express” from Sheffield to Manchester.

But I suppose there’s no ad money in that, is there?

Matt Barker

Cost is also a major factor

While loving The Star’s initiative to get more people to use Doncaster Sheffield Airport I have found when looking to book holidays from here that the price always seems to be higher than at Leeds, Manchester or East Midlands.

While a shorter journey to the airport would be great, for most people cost is also a major factor.

If more airlines committed to the airport it would be a win-win situation for the people of South Yorkshire, here’s hoping!

Beverley Johnson

by email

Pub plan is a daft idea

Marstons have been granted permission to build a family pub on the Chaucer school site.

Talk about daft ideas?

Why would they think a new pub would thrive in an area where, just a few hundred yards away, two pubs, Parson Cross Hotel and The Wordsworth Tavern, have both closed down?

Apparently there was one objection to this proposal, on the grounds of excess noise and the attraction of drug dealers.

Well,unfortunately that has been the curse and downfall many a drinking place.

One in particular springs to mind, The Horseshoe on Shiregreen.

It was a lovely pub, ideally situated and with good access via bus routes.

The last landlord to run it had come from running bars in Spain for a good few years and purchased it as his retirement plan.

He placed signs all over the place about drugs being totally forbidden. He caught some low-life either using or dealing and kindly asked them not to as his licence and indeed his livelihood would be at stake. They battered him and trashed his car. So that was it. The police revoked his licence and closed it down. It has now been demolished and a block of flats stand there now.

What I’m getting at is the police mentality is all wrong. They think ‘drug den this’, close it down.

That does not solve the problem, the drug dealers just move on to the next pub.

So if this new pub does get built, I just hope they run it correctly from day one or it will end up being another block of flats.

Ted Fowler

by email

Library document

You can reassure Michael Parker and others who could not access the Central Library cabinet paper that I’ve been in contact with Coun Jack Scott and he will fix it as soon as possible.

In the meantime, you can find the document here: http://democracy.sheffield.gov.uk/documents/s24588/China%20Programme.pdf.

J Robin Hughes

Towngate Road, Worrall, Sheffield, S35

Parking congestion

Reportedly £50 million has been spent on improvements to Sheffield Station and its adjacent areas.

It has been aesthetically very pleasing, especially for those on foot, but the access for cars and taxis has been a pathetic monument to planned disorganisation.

Recent alterations to the access route and parking for taxis took several months to complete, work that should have been finished in a few weeks.

This closed off all access for private cars and restricted them to an inadequately small area for dropping off and collecting rail passengers – compared to most other large city stations the access for cars at the Midland Station was more attuned to a suburban or small town/village station.

All of this was meant to have solved the problems for the taxis, so at least we were meant to be grateful for this.

Now, only a year on from that turmoil the station administrators have seen fit to ban access to private taxi operators, who now regularly block the ridiculously congested drop-off area, causing regular queues and at times jamming all the roads around the station.

All of this at the same time that almost an acre of land remains virtually unused in front of the station, set aside supposedly to enhance the city’s image for visitors.

Just another example of the ineptitude of the city planning department.

Brian Flindall

by email

That’s good

to know

Just read that a shooting at a house on the Southey estate was by a gunman who is believed to have fired at the wrong house.

That is good to know and I’ll sleep better for that knowledge.

Tell me you’ve arrested someone not drivel like this.

What’s the use of that snippet of information?

John Moore

by email

So it’s going

to snow

Oh it’s going to snow.

Really, the way the TV news are going off it’s like its the first time we have ever experienced it.

We know what happens, a little sprinkling, the buses stop, we are advised to not go out unless its urgent and everyone rushes to the shop to panic buy milk and bread.

Jayne Grayson

by email