ECCOnoob

Well maybe its time to reconsider if you are fit for driving at all then. Section 20 of the driving test has mark up for failures to those who do not maintain appropriate speed. The test specifically has observation and mark down for those who "makes no attempt to achieve maximum speeds for the road when safe to do so" and a driver who "crawls along at slow speeds on clear roads". Such driving behaviour would also likely be marked down under the header of undue hesitancy. You may think you are on some high horse but your deliberate and inapporpraite slow driving is just has hazardous as someone driving at wholly excessive speeds.

Firstly, I thought that law applied to Taxis not regular vehicles. In any event, as such law is not actively enforced the answer is no I dont. However, if the the state decided to start actively prosecuting people for failing to do I would either have to chance may way or be prepared to get caught out and be liable for charges. What is well known and even publicised is that they ARE actively prosecuting people who dont have a television licence. The law is clearly enforceable and therefore people either comply or face the consequnences. I really dont get your point.

I could not give a fig whether the stats are against are women, men, animal or alien. That's what quite rightly happens when you break a law in this country - you get prosecuted. The law says that you need a licence to receive ANY broadcast television. If someone chooses to break that law that is a criminal offence and the culprit is quite rightly liable for prosecution. What exactly is the problem here? Where is this persecution you speak of?

Stop lying. Who is persecuting the poor? If you want to watch broadcast television (which includes paying on screen talent) then you pay the licence. If you dont then you dont. The GOVERNMENT decides what they do with licence revenue and they CHOOSE to give it to the BBC. Since when was a free CHOICE persecution.

No. Not well said. Moronic. The BBC is a broadcasting service not just some government infomation channel. Broadcasters aim to provide content which attracts viewers and listeners. To do that, they need to make programmes which people want to watch starring personalities who people want to see. You do know what the TV licence is for dont you. Its not payment for a subscription service.

Oh you know people on here Cryclone. They cannot get into their heads that the BBC is the broadcaster and part of that invovles creating entertaining and interesting content that viewers and listeners are interested in consuming. That costs money and sometimes they spend extra money going to a location somewhere outside a soundproofed windowless studio. I honestly think some people resent every penny that gets spent irrelevant of rational circumstances JUST because its the BBC.

Of course you would have had food allergies when you were young you just would not have known about it or done anything about it. Back in those days if someone had a gripy belly or excessive wind after consuming dairy products or gluten or wheat nobody would have thought about food intolerance they will have just thought it was a gripey belly and wind and told you to man up. Awareness and acceptance has been the big change over the years as has the increasing provision of alternatives. As time goes on those are only getting better and better and people with such intolerances are starting to be able to eat with other people without the stigma and fuss they used to have. Whilst it is clear that junk food is not healthy at all and people need to be conscious of that, I don't really see any link between junk food itself and food intolerance. Surely if someone is allergic to say wheat or gluten it wouldn't matter whether it was a piece of healthy brown bread or a unhealthy burger bun.

Because that's what the Secretary of State and the government decided would happen. See Communications Act 2003 (sec 364).

Doesnt work like that. Its not a BBC subscription service linked to a set top box. The law requires anyone receiving any live broadcast television on any device to have a licence to receive it.

What happens when Ad revenue is not making enough and the broadcasters start putting their prices up. Where do you think the companies are going to pass on their costs to? What happens when the market shifts and there are massive holes developing in a broadcasters budgets. Its happened before. ITV already has suffered this: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/feb/28/itv-profits-hit-by-steep-fall-in-tv-advertising https://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/219867/itv-sinks-as-first-quarter-ad-revenues-decline-blames-brexit-related-uncertainty-219867.html Channel 4 has had its problems: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/dec/20/channel-4-faces-200m-plus-ad-blackout-over-tv-audience-dispute Netflix is hemorrhaging money: https://www.ft.com/content/f441beae-837f-11e9-9935-ad75bb96c849 Not great for a public broadcast service that apparently people rely on and depend so much in their lives because they have little else for company right?

Those five highlighted words say all I need to hear. I don't think I'll be giving that statement much weight. Just another talking head jumping on the bandwagon and portraying all our dear old pensioners as these alleged destitute people who deserve every penny they get in handouts. They don't. Some may well be entitled to a free license. But the majority are not. We all pay our way in this world even when you get old. As for BBC salary hysteria - that's an annual faux "outrage" thing isn't it. Do these people think that's ITV and Netflix stars get paid in brush washers? Do they think that Freeview and all these special access services that the licence fee supports and the commercial broadcasters wouldn't touch with a barge pole is paid for by fairy farts and pixie dust? All too easy to moan and groan until the day comes when it's not there and you really realise what you're missing. Round and round it goes.

No. But they do have eyes and will see drunk and wobbly people opening their wallets, purses and pockets with wads of notes when they are paying for a drink or trying to buy some kebab. They will see people at the cashpoint at the start of the night taking out a big chunk of money. Now, if those same muggers see a person doing nothing but carrying around a piece of plastic and paying for everything with that - it's not beyond the realms of reality that they simply won't target them for an attack.

One of the key problems seems to be that there is no such thing as a Sheffield - Manchester service. All our trains to Manchester are part of a longer service route i.e Cleepthorpes to Manchester Airport or Liverpool to Nottingham etc. That means that there are problems with scheduling "reasonable" working times for drivers and on board staff. On the basis of the current journey times, pushing a TPX train service back to 1am departure from Piccadilly would mean a termination time in Cleethorpes of nearly 4am for the driver. Simiarly, using your own example. That 22.30 departure you refer to actually started its journey from Liverpool over a hour earlier and will not terminate until it reaches Nottingham a further 2 hours after that. You can see how many extra staffing hours would be required to offer services through to 12am / 1am departures. I am not saying that's an excuse for not giving the region proper provision, but just trying to give some context why things are the way they are. Its for the same reasons that the last direct service from the Airport to Sheffield is before 10pm with only one service afterwards which involves two changes. IMO it certainly needs changing and some balance. Its perplexing to me why every other train from Sheffield seems one way or another to be terminating at Leeds yet fast and efficient Manchester services are one an hour at best.

I think its fair to say my point has been given a perfect example in this very thread. Media minipulation of a non-story blown out of all proportion to generate headlines, social media gossip and a load of ill-informed knee jerk public reaction. I really wish more people would actually take the time to read between the lines, look at the original facts of the story in full context and most importantly look for what is very deliberately NOT being said in a story. The more of us do this, the more chance of showing up the tabloid horse crap for what it is.

That's why I said "normal conversation" in my earlier post. Annoyance of residents is falling into public disorder territory as would the deliberate and targeted use with the intent to cause offence.

Lots of things can be deemed offensive. That is a very subjective issue. At the moment there is no law against adults using adult words in the normal course of conversation in a public place. If the OP felt that such conversation was getting rowdy to the point of causing him offence he should have said so. We are not a load of Victorian prudes anymore where someone muttering the words "Christ" or "bloody hell" or "fiddlesticks" gets people shrieking horror. Women are quite rightly no longer dismissed as simply being these delicate little things who should be shielded from nasty burly dirty men using horrible words. There were common conversational words used widely in the 70s which are now deemed wholly offensive. There are so called "swear words" which were deemed shocking back in the 70s which are widely used in normal conversation today. Language evolves and widespread censorship based on some outdated principles is a very slippery slope.

To be clear. I am not saying that the receipt of a fine is fiction. I am challenging the narrative and sensationalising of the story produced by the newspapers concerned. For the record what I describe is far from imagination. The world behind the scenes of media organisations is well documented. They are money making machines with 1001 dirty tricks at their disposal. When the story cupboard is empty they report on the sensation caused by other stories to create a new story. When the journalists are having a lazy day they report on some selective jucy data from some FOI request or statistics report to create a bit of generic narrative and something to fill the pages. If they have nobody relevant to interview in a story they will simply default to "public reaction" or so called "experts" to blow some hot air. When the 24 hour rolling news channels is running dry on actual news they chuck out some a piece of human interest fluff or showbiz "gossip" narrative to fill in the gaps. Things like this are common place in newsrooms.

All screams of manufactured dialogue to me. I noticed a complete lack of "...a spokesperson from the council said....." Or "we contacted the funeral directors who gave a statement of......" So what we have is a local rag desperately looking for something to fill their pages with. They threw out some freedom of information requests, desperately trawled through the disclosure and found some emotive subject that they can throw out there and push a few buttons. The famous for 5 minutes crowd pick it up, the obligatory sad face photographs are taken....Add in some "poor old pensioner" angle and a sprinkling of "he was a lovable chap like by everybody" fluff..... Then bingo. The perfect human interest story just right for the tabloids to lap up with a big fat cheque straight into the till of the local rag whose finances have took a battering over the past few years. A bit more social media attention to hype up and everyone's a winner.

In the age of equality is there any reason why men should do this. I open and hold doors for people all the time irrelevant of whether they are male or female. I would give up my seat for those who need it more irrelevant of whether they are male or female. I would walk on the outside path if someone was volnerable irrelevant of whether they are male or female. However, - answer me why in 2019 a young healthy female deserves some sort of enhanced treatment over a young healthy male. Dont you think good manners applies to all sexes.

An interesting point is how are we measuring fame and notoriety. Simply comparing Sheffield with other large European cities is the completely wrong approach. Its obvious that we are not a capital city nor are we even the second city of the UK. Trying to compare with those is completly incorrect. Nor do I agree that fame is determined by simply what makes the newspapers and television. 99% of the time it will be bad news as that's what gets ratings and attracts a story. I am more interested in the fame and awareness of Sheffield through arts, trade organisations and comparison in the commercial world. Sheffield universities are certainly attractive and there must be some fame as they are widely populated by international students. Sheffield has had significant amounts of foreign investment linked to such students as can be seen in the new developments. The investment from McLaren and Boeing in the AMR parks has been widely publicised certainly in the trade press as has the recent redevelopment of kelham Island and the digital quarter. The Guardian has undertaken features on Sheffield and there is significant amounts of film and television production still done here with several filmmakers and producers based in the cultural industries area. The Arctic monkeys put Sheffield on the map recently and our legacy music scene is still brought up several times over in features and articles. Our theatre complex is still the largest outside London and makes many productions in house which is a rarity in the regions. We may not have the yuppie "prestige" of Leeds and Manchester but we are still matching them for investment from big companies and central government who have large offices based here. Going back to what I said earlier, whilst we may not hit the headlines as much as other cities that does not mean that we are not known. Certainly from my travelling around to other locations and even abroad people are aware of Sheffield and what it can offer. The recent flypast had not only gave national news coverage reporting and presenting from here but international too. It was quite strange seeing CNN and NBC live from a Sheffield park. Tramlines always attracts some good publicity as does the annual snooker which clearly dominates the BBC schedules each year. Let's be completely honest, with the exception of London, does any major city get a disproportionate amount of positive reporting on the news or is it always just when somebody is killed or there is a disaster?

Good. Taking freebies (brought is as an voter bribe by a former government) away from people who clearly dont have any need for it is a perfectly sensible business decision. As for the rest of your waffle.... blah blah I hate the BBC blah blah. PS: Have you sorted out your TV licence enforcer harrassment case yet? Hows progress?

Yes it is. But that is not the debate here. The debate is Choogling's ludicrous suggestion that the piddly bit of redevelopment in Barnsley centre somehow puts "Sheffield to shame" despite the fact that Sheffield has undergone massive redevelopments which are significantly larger and more superior to what Barnsley offers. A fact that Choogling seems to repeatedly ignore.

Puts Sheffield to Shame? Seriously. You must be deluded. Have you failed to noice the multi-million pound leisure development which opened several years ahead of Barnsley's. Have you not seen the complete redevelopment of the Moor with new shops and further lesiure attactions opening in a couple of months time. Have you totally ignored the multi-million pound commercial buildings which are about to open. The refresh of Castle House and its new hipster central purpose. YES - Barnsley has a new market hall (....as did sheffield several years ago). Yes, Barnsley is getting a new shiny multiplex cinema (Sheffield already has 4 in the centre alone). Yes, Barnsley has a handful of new shop units but lets just wait and see what fills them before you get carried away. I'm not expecting John Lewis or Debenhams to be moving in soon. Face facts. For all you may prefer it, its still a smalll town with small town mentality. Pound shop central and seemingly proud of it.

If they are so brassic that they can't afford a 50p concession bus fare I doubt they are "stimulating the economy" with their spending sprees very much. There are plenty of pensioners these days who are still driving and wouldn't be seen dead on a bus. There are even more pensioners who can easily afford bus fares. Taxpayers funding lifestyle choices again. I have very grave doubts about this article and the so-called independent study. Just like free TV licences, free bus travel for all over a certain age is a very recent development. It was something that these alleged brassic pensioners were quite happily able to pay before. What has changed so dramatically?

I dont think anyone is denying that. I am sorry you are in such position at the moment. However, trying to play the victim and launch some rediculous social justice blabber over what are simple facts of life are not beyond critique either. People with money (or those who choose to pay for it) get better privileges than those who dont. A company offering incentives and benefits to frequent patrons over those occasional and ad hoc ones is simple good business practice. Why try and turn it into something it isnt.