ECCOnoob

Could't agree more. I was absolutely disgusted when I heard this on the radio this morning. Since when was it the local council's job to be a money lender. There are enough credit unions, debt management companies, citizens advice services and finance companies offering this service. Cant afford to provide proper respite care. Cant afford to fix up the city centre but suddenly pull over £200k out their backside to lend money to those too stupid to manage their own finances. Absolute joke.

Make your mind up!! Biggest bunch of dishonest over paid parasites but you have no doubt of the many honest individuals working in it. Right So you have seemingly had a bad experience with an individual rotten apple who was allegedly dishonest and overpaid. Fine. BUT why are you tarring the whole profession? Parasites and overpaid?? Really, you have no idea. Some of those overpaid parasites are barely getting over minimum wage and that's after 4 years of study and a two year practicing course.

Ok so the CEO does not earn a mega bucks salary because they treat their position as some call to god. However, its not all squeaky clean in the Sally Army. Links to the much criticised Workfare Scheme, abusing free labour, 27 staff on executive level incomes, very generous "allowances" to those good citizen unpaid directors including motor allowances and furnished accommodation. The accounts report that some of those "allowances" remuneration averages between around £10-16k for the 20 directors with another two directors where its approaching £70k a year. It paid nearly 70 million in salaries alone last year. The workfare is very interesting, the Guardian failed to mention it in this glowing article about the CEO being so progressive but no such shyness over the workfare scandal in 2013. Neither was the Daily Record..... http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/19/workfare-godliness-christian-charities http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/i-was-told-unpaid-placement-was-for-work-experience-1480978 As this letter shows, the Sally Army taking advantage of the nice mandatory voluntary work placement... https://johnnyvoid.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/salvation-army-workfare.jpg http://apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/Accounts/Ends79/0000214779_AC_20140331_E_C.pdf Oh and whilst their GB leader is such a shining example of CEOs not being fat cats, their US Sally Army counterpart is taking home the equivalent pay over around £112,000 a year. Nice work if you can get it....

Why would that be? You cannot tar an entire profession on the basis of a few individuals. If you are referring the contents of the OP, then I would take some of it with a pinch of salt. Firstly having dealt with the shambles that is the Court Service daily in my job, I would be very surprised if the Court turn round anything in 24 hours. It can be days or weeks before Orders are despatched post decision. Secondly, unless you have the most blatant court clerk in the world, I just cannot believe that an Official would tell you that the DWP are deliberately lying and using it as a delaying tactic. They might indeed have received it. However, they too would have a backlog as long as your arm. The receipt of something does not necessarily mean it will be ready to be actioned. As an example, we send things to a major court centre. We call up anything up to a month later to be told that they have "received" it but its not been put on the system yet. Another couple of weeks trundle by and we chase again and are told that "...its on the system but in the queue waiting to be PASSED to a Judge" .... on it goes again and we are then told "...its with the Judge but they have not worked on it yet" 2 weeks again and it comes back from the Judge but we get told "...its still awaiting typing and sending out" Eventually some 10, 12, 14 weeks later the document we sent has finally been dealt with and returned. That's nothing difficult or special, just an example of a very simple routine court form which we have to send dozens of a week. Ultimately its one incompetent and understaffed department processing appeals for another incompetent and understaffed department. TRUST is not really the issue here and I would not personally take things as such face value. There are bad apples across the whole of society. Fraudsters, cover ups, paedophiles, liars, cheats, deceivers, adulterers, thieves and these personality/mental or just pure evil traits can apply to a human being whether they are a benefit claimant or His Honour Lord Snooty. Shocking as it is when its exposed, the fact that someone obtains a position of power in their life does suddenly exclude them from having or developing one of the above traits. Its shocking and disgusting no matter who the person exposed is. It needs to be dealt with the same across the board. If little old Barry the quiet friendly caretaker who everyone loved gets exposed as a paedophile, why is that any LESS shocking than when one of hundreds of past and present MPs is exposed as one. Its disgusting and wrong no matter WHO you are. BUT, and the point is, IT does not necessarily mean that you cannot trust all other caretakers. Just because SOME MPs, Judges, media tycoons have been involved in these scandals and cover ups does not mean that you cannot trust all the others. People need to get some perspective on this.

Just what I was thinking myself. Its all well and good people having these extra days off and changes in hours but what will they expect to happen during their time off. Presumably these people still expect shops, bars, restaurants, banks, public facilities to be open. They will still expect the buses and trains to run, the hospitals and schools to be open... That requires staff. Staff who will have no say in "reducing their hours" I find it interesting that all these comments and posts about flexible hours / work life balance / benefits for the individual have not even thought about the actual needs of the business.

Meadowhall just replaced them with Soap & Co, Pretzels, Sky tv, AA, more sky tv, Lyca mobile, RAC, Forces Lottery, Macmillan......

Whose stopping you. Its still a public limited company. You could have chosen to buy the government % if you wanted. You could put a deal forward right now for any amount you wanted. Current share price as of 12:25 on 04/08/2015 is currently 334.98 Crack on lad.

What a prude. Blimey, its the oldest profession in the world. London has a whole area filled with dirty book shops, brothels, "happy" massage and peep shows right in the heart of its West End. Amsterdam's prostitutes are so famous they are a tourist destination. Bit of real gritty life is shown on the telly and seemingly its a disgrace. Bizarre comment.

Very true. BUT this is in a specific area which is top heavy with bars/clubs and an area primarily for leisure/social activity. It is also only on the two nights you mentioned where the worst behaviour is seen and its controlled by a heavy presence of police and specialist door staff. You don't see such behaviour at 2.00pm on a Tuesday afternoon. You don't see West Street filled on a daily basis with drunks, druggies and delinquents. ---------- Post added 02-08-2015 at 18:16 ---------- Take off your rose tinted specs for god sake. Stop pretending that your precious historic trading area is some form of gardens of Babylon. I don't care who you asked the question to. This is a public forum for debate on a particular topic. I have an opinion just as much as anyone else. You are the one talking "codswallop" as you say. You cannot see Castlegate, Castle Market and its surrounding streets for what it was. A dump. A dump littered with some of the worst dregs of the city population. Its coming up 2 years now since Castle Market closed and you're continuing to mourn its loss like some deceased relative. Its gone. Its not coming back. Stop banging on and on and on and on and on making up nonsense about how precious it was to the lives of Sheffielders, how the area was so charming and bustling, how the people were so salt of the earth and real examples of working class "proper" Sheffielders. Life has moved on. Its pathetic.

Without knowing her working hours, contract terms and shift patterns nobody is going to be able to answer it. If she is a night worker for example whose shifts are usually 10.00pm - 6.00am then yes they can do that. She has her day off. She is not due to work on Saturday night as agreed and thus there is no issue. However, if her normal hours or her contract terms define a "working day" 24 period of say midnight to midnight then she might be able to argue that her shift until 6.00 eats in to her agreed holiday period. As others have said. She needs to speak to her Manager. ---------- Post added 02-08-2015 at 17:49 ---------- Yes, what a brilliant idea. Potentially lose a days pay. Not everyone gets paid sick leave. Also, some people might not want to be unnecessarily racking up their sickness days on their personnel record. These can be disclosed to any potential new employers. Yes, ring in sick falsely and potentially expose yourself to disciplinary investigations. I don't think I need to go on.

They were not talking about people who USED the market. They were talking about some of the types of people who frequented the area it was situated in. An area where drunks, drug users, chavs, shoplifters and general delinquents would frequent. The low life types who would loiter around the market in between their trips from the bookies, pubs, cash converters, another pub, magistrates court and dole office. The area was in decay. The areas was becoming more and more distanced from the rest of the prime retail. It was clearly not going to last. It was a dump. Modern day customers were avoiding it in their droves. More sensible people quite rightly made a decision that it had to be closed and moved to where retail will be prime concern. More sensible people quite rightly made the decision that Castle Market was never going to remain a long term retail hub for the future. The whole areas use is being pushed towards office and residential space with much LESS focus on retail. Castle Market (even a shiny renovated version of it) would have been ridiculous in an area surrounded by office with little other shops.

Is it? Is it really? Oh right. I had better mention that to Nabarro, Lloyds Banking Group, ANT Marketing, Carillion, Servlec, White Rose, Hilton, Metco, Celsian, Capita and Parexel who are currently occupying buildings in and around said canal basin . Yes what a ghost town it is. ---------- Post added 29-07-2015 at 00:35 ---------- Who cares? The point is that Sky already have a large operation in Sheffield. We also have multitude of other IT companies here and have for years. BT has a significant presence, including networking/cabling an infrastructure planning. PlusNet was founded here and maintains their Head Office here. We have one of only two Insight Enterprises UK offices, Sumo Digtal, Transaction Network Services, HS Direct, Zoo Digital, Simcyp, Highlander CS, Linbrooke, Fretwell Downing are all here. Plus two very large data centres for HSBC and Manatowoc. Hardly lacking in IT industry are we.

We were reliant on children of others before 2003. Child benefit is still there. Child tax credits (capped at the first two) is still there. Don't try to make out that CTC is some kind of life essential that the future generation must survive on.

People need to get off the mother's teat of Tax Credits. The rest of the working population are paying for others to receive a totally unnecessary top up just because they choose to have children, choose to work part time, have a so called low income. I have said before, people survived perfect well without them before 2003. A time, by the way, when minimum wage was only £4.50 an hour and the tax personal allowance was only £4615. So, Boo Hoo. People are gonna lose out on tax credits. BUT, what do we have now. A minimum wage for the majority of adult employees which is currently £6.50 and shortly due to go up to £6.70 and then £7.20. AND we have also now had a tax allowance raised to £11,000. That means that your average minimum wage worker in the next 12 months will be earning 60% more than before tax credits existed and have the benefit of a tax threshold increase of 138%. They still think they have a right to a top up??? My heart bleeds for them.

Without seeing the breakdown of how the BBC online toy calculates such a figure, I cannot say. Reading the small print there are a lot of things that it does not fully calculate and many assumptions which may or may not be accurate. Its just an online guess really. Hardly conclusive proof. But in answer to your question, Yes. You are missing something. Why should there be some automatic entitlement for the state to top up your income just because YOU choose to have children. As a full time worker with no dependants and no entitlement to any of these working/child/family tax credits I am now £80.00 a year better off according to the same survey. Am I missing something?

He never said that at all. He was asked if it was going to be cut. Said no. He has not cut it - it still exists and the amounts are exactly the same. He was asked if its amount was going to fall. Said no and it hasn't fallen. The amount is exactly the same. What has happened is that its been (quite rightly) capped to the first two children. Universal Child benefit for EVERY child is still there with no plans of being withdrawn. The tax credits were an additional top up. Why should serial breeders keep getting a handout because THEY CHOOSE to have another child. Other working people with no such entitlement to tax credits are paying for that. What is the "broken" promise?? Labour Mouthpiece Chuka Umunna also seems to be very confused by this every time he is in front of a camera. Maybe he should listen and read a little more.

Listen mush, you know nothing about me. I might have what is deemed a "good income" now, but I have not always. I am one of 4 kids who were raised by parents on a very modest income. My mum did not work for nearly 10 years and when she did it was part time for many years after. Both my mum and dad always managed to put food on the table and clothes on our backs without ever resorting to a government handout. So did millions of others. People managed. I had many years as a junior level employee living in the world before the minimum wage, I had to pay for rent, clothing, transport and food. Guess what, I managed. Not perfect I admit, plenty of times when I would be resorting to beans on toast until payday but I managed. Food costs and the decades of supermarket prices wars have dropped costs over the years. I have said before that there are relative prices, choice of retailer and a selection of products now which would have been thought impossible a generation ago. Pubs sell two course meals at £5, fast food restaurants sell burgers for less than a quid, supermarkets sell grocery essentials and tinned food for pennies. Its not about "im alright jack" its being in the real world and not falling for the woe is me horse crap splashed around the Labour Press. You are not going to convince me that all the thousands of allegedly destitute people queuing up outside these food banks actually need to be there. If someone looked at what their money was spent on deemed more important than food they would educate these spongers into what real "essentials" are. We have a breed of "owt for nowt" people and it needs to be stopped. Those GENUINELY in need are being overshadowed by the greedy, lazy and workshy. This whole food bank culture fuelled by tabloid sob stories is only making it worse.

Don't buy it. Food has never been so cheap, mass produced and in such plentiful supply. Such plentiful supply that shops and us customers waste tonnes of it every day because we "don't like the look of it" or "its been sitting around for a while" or "its gone past its made up sell by date" Food shoppers now have equated prices and a selection of goods that their past generations could only have dreamed of. Don't believe all this skipping meals to feed the kids lark. People who are doing that have got far far bigger issues about their money management. Someone needs to get in there and tackle it. Food "costs" aint one of them. I saw a documentary recently attempting to highlight this very issue about poor done people and their "spiralling" food costs. I saw them the violin music part of the show, trying to straight face report on two morbidly obese yokels waddling round the cash'Ncarry complaining about their food costs and how their mass of internet coupons are such a lifeline otherwise they wouldn't be able to afford to put meals on the table. Yeah, whatever! Just like the whole food bank myth that is being splattered all over the left wing press. Nobody in this country in this decade NEEDS a food handout. People need to look at what proper starvation looks like. What proper poverty looks like. Smells of a nice little cereal promotion to me.

I agree completely. Based on their post - they are already earning just over £14k a year for working below the average working week of others. Its not exactly poverty. Its approximately £240 a week after tax. I really do wonder how on earth some people survived before 2003 and these wonderful top ups that other, dare I say, more hard working people pay for. All this "worse off" talk makes me wonder. Are people really that desperate for the handout or have they simply wiped out from their mind how they seemingly managed perfectly well before it existed.

I have highlighted the key word. I have worked in the City Centre most of my working life and unless you are defining over 30 years as a "short time ago" then you are talking nonsense.

Maybe Sheffielders are more sophisticated. Im sure you must be disappointed but not everyone is so keen to jump on some American style trend.

Cuttsie, drag yourself into 2015. Even if you stupid fantasy came true, how many steel forges and coal mines are surrounded by department stores and hotels. The CITY CENTRE has always been for commercial, administrative, leisure and retail. Even back in your beloved glory days.

What nonsense. The Manpower Services Building has been there for nearly 40 years! Its got pathways and roads all around it. Its not the Berlin Wall for god sake. People have been more than capable of walking around to get onto the Moor. Its presence is nothing to do with the current status of the area. In fact, considering its continuing to be home to a huge number of Civil Servants it could bring massive footfall to the new developments and stores.

There is far far more to all this than is being said. If these people are Court Appointed Bailiffs there has been a long process to get to the turning up at 4.00 tomorrow stage. Loads of pre-action letters (which the OP is seemingly saying were sent to a previous address and never received) Then proceedings would have been issued on the registered address and copy of papers served. If the OP did not respond to those court papers with either and admission or denial (which we assume they didn't if they were sent to a previous address) Then a request for judgement would be made and a copy of such served upon the OP (which are we still assuming they did not receive as it would have been sent to the previous address) Eventually (and in some cases months after an Order in default) a Warrant for Bailiffs would have been submitted. That too is served (on the presumably incorrect previously address) and an initial visit is made to assess goods and attempt to seek a settlement payment. They have to do this. Somehow during this time the Bailiffs have now found about a new address all of a sudden. Still no knowledge of what was happening eh OP? Still no opportunity to try to sort out a payment plan?? hmmmm. Finally, when and only when all other avenues have been exhausted will Bailiffs will come an attend to execute the warrant and seize any recoverable goods. Which according to the OP is what's due to happen tomorrow. Point is there appears to be gaps in this story. How did the correct address be discovered. How did all that paperwork never get picked up by somebody or returned to the Courts. Eventually the Court papers would have been returned surely, marked not that this address, marked undelivered or something.. A sealed Judgment would have spurred someone into action. Bottom line, whatever the real story, don't try and be clever here. This is a court order. Contempt of Court will apply and that could lead to fines of imprisonment. This is allegedly a Court warranted Sheriff attending here. It needs to be taken seriously. Read the advice already provided from proper organisations and do what needs to be done. Burying your head in the sand is not going to solve anything. As for thinking about a loan from ANYWHERE when you are already indebted to the point of Bailiffs is just ludicrous. https://www.nationaldebtline.org/EW/factsheets/Pages/31%20EW%20High%20Court%20enforcement/Default.aspx

Boo hoo. Its the same "flawed" system that kept Labour in power for 13 years. Its the same "flawed" system that created the 2010 coalition government. No complaints then. Strange that. "....Iz it coz I iz Tory init???" Oh by the way, even with Electoral Reform statisitions have concluded that the Conservatives would still have resulted in a majority of seats won and votes cast. You will have another go at it in 5 years. ---------- Post added 13-07-2015 at 11:36 ---------- So that's equal to around just over £14k a year or £242.00 a week for the lowest skilled entry grade workers. Hardly a pittance. When I first joined my law practice not that many years ago our senior secretarial staff and junior paralegals were not on much more than that. Take into account that there is a 10.6k tax free allowance for everyone, and Mr and Mrs minimum wage worker is only having to pay £1400 of their annual income in tax. What I am saying is that a minimum wage earner is having a net monthly salary of just over £1k a month. If they cannot live on that - there is a serious problem. Its clearly going to be going up again in due course so personally I think its about time all these "Living wage" and "£10 an hour" campaigners need to get off their soapbox and come back to the real world.