Grass verges

Some grass verges are so churned up even weeds won’t grow, it’s just mud that gets on pavements when the vehicle is trying to drive off.

The worst offenders are the Sheffield city council workers.

People who park on grass verges should be fined.

Mrs P Pearce

Do the right thing

The Green group budget amendment for 2017/18 included this: “Cut political spin from the Town Hall and will cut the posts of Group Policy Officers”. These three officers are paid by the council but do research and press work for the Labour and Lib Dem groups. That amendment was rejected by the majority vote of Labour councillors.

Since the pre-dawn raid on Rustlings Road in November 2016 we have seen the Labour spin doctors go into overdrive. “Trees are only replaced as a last resort” is trotted out again and again despite clear evidence to the contrary. We see more and more attempts to defame and deride tree campaigners with many unsubstantiated and untruthful claims. In October, a judge rejected the council’s attempt to send Coun Alison Teal to jail. The court found she had not broken the injunction and the council were wrong. A Freedom of Information request has since uncovered emails showing that council officers conspired to spin the case dismissal as “on a technicality.”

Greens will put a similar proposal to be voted on at the Sheffield City Council budget meeting on March 7. The cost of three Group Policy Officers in 2018/19 is £112,000. For comparison, the cutting of 3 ½ full-time equivalent library staff saved £98,000 in this financial year.

The last 15 months has seen a dysfunctional and dictatorial council increasingly use spin doctors to try and cover up their failings. One truth outlined by the Labour-run council is that council budgets are under pressure as never before. Council taxpayers facing a 5.99 per cent increase in bills cannot continue to fund political spin while vital services are cut. Councillors must do the right thing on March 7.

Eamonn Ward

Sheffield Green Party

Thanks for hard work

On March 20 our library service will be hosting the first National Community Managed Libraries Conference at Sheffield’s Central Library, celebrating the practice of volunteer-run libraries and sharing best practice when it comes to communities who have taken over libraries from paid, professional staff.

Hosting this event in Sheffield just goes to show that our Labour council aren’t actually that far apart ideologically from the Tory government as they would have us think. It is an insult to the professional library staff at the Central Library and elsewhere in Sheffield, (not to mention the library users), to hold a conference celebrating the break-up and amateurisation of Sheffield’s library service in our Central Library of all places. I do wish our council would celebrate and publicise the wonderful work our professional library staff do with the same vigour that it celebrates volunteer libraries. Thanks to Sheffield’s library staff past and present for all your hard work.

Martin Vaughan

S10

Still waiting

Looks like B Heaton has been hit on a nerve if his non-factual reply, yet again, to his claim of numerous factual reasons to stay in the EU and his love of Tory Anna Soubry is anything to go by. (Letters, February 19).

Please Heaton, give us one of your really GOOD reasons for reneging on the democratic decision of almost 17.5 million voters to leave the EU.

In your initial letter you suggested you had numerous reasons. Your second letter not one, just diatribe.

We are still waiting, no more waffle, I’m pleading now, just one good fact please. Even a Soubry fact is better than none.

Terry Palmer

South Lea Avenue, Hoyland, Barnsley, S74

One last try

In my first response to B Heaton I wrote that he had claimed that the EU Referendum was due in part to the desire of the Conservative Party to protect their friends from EU inspired tax legislation.

This was of course a précis of what you had written but as you did not suggest in your second letter that I had either misunderstood or wilfully misrepresented you then presumably you accepted my summary as accurately stating your position and replied accordingly. In light of this I repeat my request for evidence to support what you wrote.

You have made the obligatory claim of censorship which you couple with the equally obligatory failure to provide any details of when, where and by whom.

You brought in Anna Soubry but nothing she has said supports you on the question of Tories helping their mates out on tax so it seems fairly irrelevant. The fact that as a keen Remainer she has attacked colleagues who support Brexit adds nothing to your argument.

Likewise, your mention of the attack by one newspaper on three High Court judges. Whatever you think of this again it does not address the question you were asked in relation to the claim you made. Sorry to say that again but I think it can stand repetition.

Your evidence seems to consist of pointing out that some people are more right wing than others coupled with ‘well it’s just the sort of thing they’d do isn’t it’. I really had hoped for better.

To digress, I would like to assure fellow readers that Mr Palmer and I have no intention of coming together to form a South Yorkshire Axis of Evil and no this is not because we cannot agree who is to be Dick Dastardly and who Muttley. Nominations are not being sought.

Stephen Crowther

Greystones

Equal pay for women

Women are striving for parity with men for equal pay, some would say about time too.

But does this mean that when out on the town together the woman will pick up the tab and any other costs that men paid as a matter of course?

It makes you think.

EB Warris

by email