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This Heat Has Me Defeated.


RichardB

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So, History Dude - why are Manchesters Roads so much better than Sheffields? And I'm not sure where your argument about the voting behaviour of certain wards has any relevance as roads all over Sheffield are just as bad.

Sheffield Council in it's budget letters to rate payers often quoted Manchester as getting a better share of Central Government Grant then what they did.

I didn't mention "wards" I said Tory Councils in rural areas. IE outside Sheffield. Tory councils are much more likely to slash the budget of say youth provision to pay for road works then what Labour controlled Sheffield would do.

I have always thought too that bad roads can reduce accidents down, seeing that drivers would slow down on a bumpy road. However most car drivers think that roads are racing circuits and only the speed signs (if they stick to them) can limit the speed they do.

It's funny how frustrated drivers get when they get behind a car doing 40mph in a 50mph zone. It's like the sign means travel at 50mph! When of course it simply means MAX speed. You can hear them cursing the driver in front! And how many times have you been in a car doing 50mph and then markings come up saying "slow down" does the driver slow down. No not untill the last minute they need to.

Watch them tail gating trams going down Norfolk Park. They shouldn't because the tram is allowed to do 30mph in that section and the cars are not allowed to do 30!

In fact Supertrams always do the correct speed. I wonder why car drivers can't?

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A long time since I came across anyone who made so many sweeping generalisations! Either way - state of the roads in Sheffield and WSG are very much linked.

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A long time since I came across anyone who made so many sweeping generalisations! Either way - state of the roads in Sheffield and WSG are very much linked.

Now that is a generalisation ;-) Present some facts if you want to link the WSG with underinvestment in road repairs, such as budget statement that says the Council have deliberately slashed the road budget to cover the costs of it. In fact you probably won't find one. Since the Treasury department of the Sheffield Council simply presents to Councillors what money is available to spend, it's then allocated to what needs to be funded. For instance most of the Councils budget is education, so did that take the money that Roads should have got? I suspect that most of the talk about how much the WSG cost came from Liberal Councillors, who given the same circumstances would have spent even more money on the WSG had they been in office.

Having looked at how the Council sets it's budget, it's never a really fair system on departments who attract "outside" funding. For example if Highways had secured extra cash from say a Government department to deal with potholes, the treasury would be able to adjust the budget for the next year, giving Highways a budget above inflation, but releasing money into the general pot from the Council's own money. Whereas if the Council had given the same funding as last year Highways would have much as say a third extra above the figure it actually would have got. Of course another authority might have not cut back the funding, so they did have more money to spend on the roads!

This happened a lot in the 1980's, housing was good at getting grants, but was cut back, using the above method. Adult Education also got clobbered when the Further Education Funding Council started giving out grants. One training provider I was involved got it's DEED grant cut, when it got a FEFC grant. DEED also didn't say that it was going to take the FEFC grant into account when setting the budget. And the training provider had based it's budget on having both grants.

Personally I would argue that state of Sheffield Roads is really down to vehicle owners, who don't pay for the full cost of driving the vehicles around whenever they like or wherever they like. If they did pay the full cost a 3 mile trip would cost them around £100 I reckon.

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Now that is a generalisation ;-)Present some facts if you want to link the WSG with underinvestment in road repairs, such as budget statement that says the Council have deliberately slashed the road budget to cover the costs of it. In fact you probably won't find one.

On the contrary I already did. No, I can't show you a budget statement, but I know because I was party to some of the discussions . Were you?

Since the Treasury department of the Sheffield Council simply presents to Councillors what money is available to spend, it's then allocated to what needs to be funded. For instance most of the Councils budget is education, so did that take the money that Roads should have got?

No, it went to pay for the loans for the WSG, do try to keep up.

I suspect that most of the talk about how much the WSG cost came from Liberal Councillors, who given the same circumstances would have spent even more money on the WSG had they been in office.

Can you back that up with some evidence, a proposed budget perhaps. Possibly not given that Lib Dem councillors were few and far between at the time. Since then the criticism has come from far and wide (unless the Lib Dem councillors have numerous multiple user names on Sheffield Forum?).

Personally I would argue that state of Sheffield Roads is really down to vehicle owners, who don't pay for the full cost of driving the vehicles around whenever they like or wherever they like. If they did pay the full cost a 3 mile trip would cost them around £100 I reckon.

Now that really is a sweeping generalisation! ;-)

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Personally I would argue that state of Sheffield Roads is really down to vehicle owners, who don't pay for the full cost of driving the vehicles around whenever they like or wherever they like. If they did pay the full cost a 3 mile trip would cost them around £100 I reckon.

No, it's down to lack of 'comparable' maintenance. If your statement above is true then, again, it would be mirrored in every city and town - but it isn't. All of your arguments seem to fall over on exactly the same point. There is no other City in this country that has roads that are as poor, irrespective of which colour the council is. The only difference is that Sheffield has to pay £25m a year until 2024 for the WSG and that is found by cutting back on services inc Road Maintenance. Bayleaf has already explained the complexities above. Therefore there will always be a direct link between WSG and the state of our roads.

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Thank you, so it's 'Wood Cliffe' then, not "Woodclife".

It's also written as Woodcliffe. I think it's one of those cases of 'Yer pays yer money and takes yer choice'!

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No, it's down to lack of 'comparable' maintenance. If your statement above is true then, again, it would be mirrored in every city and town - but it isn't. All of your arguments seem to fall over on exactly the same point. There is no other City in this country that has roads that are as poor, irrespective of which colour the council is. The only difference is that Sheffield has to pay £25m a year until 2024 for the WSG and that is found by cutting back on services inc Road Maintenance. Bayleaf has already explained the complexities above. Therefore there will always be a direct link between WSG and the state of our roads.

Sorry I didn't explain this clearly enough. This was in context of motor transport in general, and it would apply to before the World Student Games happened.

Motorists don't pay the full implications for driving the vehicles about.

To list some of the costs apart from the full costs of roads. Accidents, Death of an estimated for Sheffield of about 1000 kids each year. There own deaths, and passengers, plus pedestrians. Medical costs of treatments of injury and deaths. Medical Costs for staff. Police costs for dealing with accidents. Police costs for not driving correctly. Increased costs of congestion. Pollution. Disposal of car parts. I could go on.....

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Now that really is a sweeping generalisation! ;-)

Silly argument.

Councils use loans all the time. It's the only way they can pay for any major funding project, especially if the government doesn't bail them out. Your argument simply shows that it was the government to blame for not providing enough cash for Sheffield Council to provide the other services.

As I said the Council Treasury simply provide the figures of how much money the Council has to spend, payments to loans would be removed from that figure. What's left in the pot is what the councillors then choose to spend it on. The debate was thus should we cut essential services such as education, housing, or road repairs. And councillors thus voted to cut roads.

But at the end of the day Sheffield got less rate support grant than places such as Manchester, thus needing to make cuts in other services.

Let's not forget that the Council thought that the WSG building projects would have a great benefit as would the games themselves, just like the tory party did with the Olympic Games.

Why is this so difficult for you to grasp?

Councillors have to debate every time which services they want to protect and what should get the chop. If the same thing had happened to a Tory Council they would have chosen to cut say the public libraries rather than roads. The Council had to pay the loan sharks - yes it would have cost them more to get that amount of money than some commercial firm - whilst at the same time suffering from MASSIVE cuts in Government Grants.

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Sorry I didn't explain this clearly enough. This was in context of motor transport in general, and it would apply to before the World Student Games happened.

Motorists don't pay the full implications for driving the vehicles about.

To list some of the costs apart from the full costs of roads. Accidents, Death of an estimated for Sheffield of about 1000 kids each year. There own deaths, and passengers, plus pedestrians. Medical costs of treatments of injury and deaths. Medical Costs for staff. Police costs for dealing with accidents. Police costs for not driving correctly. Increased costs of congestion. Pollution. Disposal of car parts. I could go on.....

1,000 children die from road accidents and traffic related causes in Sheffield every year? Are you sure you're not a Tory statistician, they seem to make them up to suit as they go along too. The only accurate part of your posts is the last bit "I could go on..." You do Dude, oh you do...and on, and on...

Silly argument.

Councils use loans all the time. It's the only way they can pay for any major funding project, especially if the government doesn't bail them out. Your argument simply shows that it was the government to blame for not providing enough cash for Sheffield Council to provide the other services.

As I said the Council Treasury simply provide the figures of how much money the Council has to spend, payments to loans would be removed from that figure. What's left in the pot is what the councillors then choose to spend it on. The debate was thus should we cut essential services such as education, housing, or road repairs. And councillors thus voted to cut roads.

But at the end of the day Sheffield got less rate support grant than places such as Manchester, thus needing to make cuts in other services.

Let's not forget that the Council thought that the WSG building projects would have a great benefit as would the games themselves, just like the tory party did with the Olympic Games.

Why is this so difficult for you to grasp?

Councillors have to debate every time which services they want to protect and what should get the chop. If the same thing had happened to a Tory Council they would have chosen to cut say the public libraries rather than roads. The Council had to pay the loan sharks - yes it would have cost them more to get that amount of money than some commercial firm - whilst at the same time suffering from massive cuts in Government Grants.

And as usual Dude you persist in arguing from your own point of ignorance. The decisions I referred to were not part of the usual budget process, they were emergency measures taken in a crisis, the effects of which have persisted for years, and are still on- going. Councils do indeed use loans. The point about the WSG is that it wasn't part of the budget process, it was a gamble by arrogant politicians who thought they could blackmail the government into stumping up the cash.They mis-calculated completely.Unlike our Chancellor, they did have a plan B, which required Labour to win the next General Election and bail them out. They lost. When Labour were eventually elected in 1997, it had become New Labour, Tory in all but name, and they got the same two-fingered salute from them that Thatcher gave them.

As usual with topics you get involved in, this is going nowhere. It is also inevitably becoming increasingly political, which is something we try to discourage on this forum. I have other more pressing things to do than reply to rambling, ill-informed rubbish such as you persist in posting. I'm out.

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We were supposed to be discussing the very hot weather ...........

Quite right Barbara, thank you for the reminder!

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As usual with topics you get involved in, this is going nowhere. It is also inevitably becoming increasingly political, which is something we try to discourage on this forum. I have other more pressing things to do than reply to rambling, ill-informed rubbish such as you persist in posting. I'm out.

In find that statement highly offensive. In fact you have throughout this debate, which I did instigate, have been determined to belittle me and everything I have said. I have done none of this to any member on this thread even if I did not agree with what they said. It says your admin for this site. But you clearly are not very good at that as it has taken Barbara to point out to you that this subject was getting way of topic. Something you should have done a long time ago!

Perhaps you should consider going out of the door. That kind of attitude to people who wish to join the site is not very good one to have. Many people are ill informed on a lot of issues, what makes you so well informed?

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