We better stock up

Snow on the way , so better stock up on the essentials, you know like milk and bread.

The news have advised us to not to be out of the house after 6pm, well that’s all well and good but how about if you are at work?

Yeah let’s all down tools early doors so we are not stuck battling through the shed loads of snow that’s likely not to arrive.

Jayne Grayson

by email

We need answers

May I suggest Darren Butt has a drive around S10-S11 and looks at the so-called repairs that have been carried out by his firm Amey.

High Storrs Road, Highcliffe Road, Brookhouse Hill, Knowle Lane, outside Tesco on Fulwood Road, the list is endless.

Many years ago when road repairs were necessary you would see signs at the side of the road saying raised iron work. This means manhole covers and any other metal work that needed raising to enable a proper depth of tarmac could be laid.

What we get now is around two inches in new road surfacing that starts to crumble in less than 12 months.

We need answers from Amey to justify the workmanship.

It is starting to look like the Forth Bridge, you start at one end by time you get to the end it’s time to start again.

Michael Durkin

S10

A disgraceful decision

It is 100 years since the end of World War One. I’d like to remind readers that to mark this, Sheffield Council has voted to axe the Western Road war memorial in 2018 by felling 23 trees and removing another 18 memorial trees on other roads.

Only one of these trees is diseased, (and it’s not the one they say it is). The remaining healthy 40 trees are to be felled for no justifiable reason.

You may have read of council plans to plant 300 new memorial trees in Sheffield parks.

Will people see these and think of the war dead or see them for what they really are; a feeble attempt by Sheffield Council to appease the people of Sheffield for their decision to fell trees which were planted in 1919 to honour young men who had gone to the school on Western Road but who tragically didn’t return from the war to their family and friends.

The council have continually rejected expert arboricultural advice and misinformed the public about engineering solutions which could retain these trees.

I can’t think of a worse thing a council could do in this commemorative year.

If they go ahead, they will disgrace Sheffield.

Martin Pickles

Crookesmoor Road, Sheffield

Pavements: slips and trips

Regarding “Sheffield pensioner breaks hip after slipping on ‘death trap’ pavement outside his bungalow”.

Unfortunately the council and/or Amey has difficulty differentiating between ‘trips’ and ‘slips’. The two are quite different.

The new pavements may remove trip hazards, but they’ve introduced an unacceptably high risk of slipping, even for able-bodied, fit people wearing sensible footwear, as poor Mr Turner has discovered to his cost.

The one-year mortality rate after a hip fracture is between 14% and 58%, (see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3597289/), so it’s reasonably to expect that people in Sheffield will die unnecessarily as a direct result of slipping on the new pavements.

Instead of responding to complaints with patronising information about how to walk in winter, perhaps the council should be reviewing with the footway specifications are truly fit for purpose.

Rebecca Hammond

by email

Left in the dark

Why have we been left in the dark?

I live on the Hollythorpe estate at Norton Lees. For several weeks, all the street lights on our road have not been working.

As it is the dark winter nights at the moment, you cannot see where you are walking. It is perfect for trips and stumbles.

It is also uncomfortable for anyone walking on their own, particularly women or anyone with limited mobility.

After a week or so I rang the council to explain that every light was out. No doubt neighbours had also voiced their concerns. I received the standard “leave it with me.”

I telephoned again a week later to chase it up. I was told to ring Northern Power Grid and was given a reference number.

Inexplicably I was informed that the job was within their deadline and guess what, there was still over a week to go to repair the lights. This means that by the time the lights are working again, we will have been in the dark for approximately a month, perhaps even longer.

I understand that the council is in a difficult financial situation, and that repairs have to be prioritised. I expected to be waiting for a short while for the lights to be repaired, but not for this length of time. We could have managed with one or two out, but not the entire road.

So come on Sheffield Council, please start to look at how long these repairs take, in the interests of everyone’s welfare.

K Hockney

by email

They know best

So! Corbyn, Mcdonnell, Starmer etc., have fell for ‘egg under the cap’ by thinking it is a good idea to treat their true majority Labour core voters, not Momentum £3 a throw members, as idiots by wanting the exact opposite to the majority of real Labour voters in demanding a custom union with the EU ‘mafia’ bully boys.

Or do they think with some Tory ‘traitor’ MP’s help they may just bring down the government?

Maybe this could be Corbyn’s and Labours Momentum Marxist party’s downfall also because the majority of voters have voted to LEAVE the EU. Of course they couldn’t care less what the majority think, they know best as ever, for themselves! “He who lives longest will see the most”.

Terry Palmer

South Lea Avenue, Hoyland, Barnsley, S74