ECCOnoob

Bull. As I have tried to get into your thick skull, there are mid-level service managers on nearly £60k project managers and HR advisors earning nearly £50k. Even pen pushing business support officers earning over £30k. You serious to think a head of a division with responsibility for high level policy, strategy, legality, compliance, overseeing hundreds or thousands of staff and a multi-million pound budget is going to be paid £5k - £10k more than some mid-tier manager employee??? Join the real world.

It's not "a few quid". Taking the example that was discussed earlier, that extra 10% is equivalent to £50,000. Buying back bulk amounts of properties or constantly applying that extra 10% you think is so trivial, could equate to millions. You really haven't a clue.

Nothing absurd about it. Just how much in your world do you think they should be paid then? Within the council there are pen pushers and administrators earning high £20,000s. There are business support officers and analysts and even security guards earning mid-high £30,000s. There are HR advisors and project managers earning almost £50,000. So therefore, is it really that 'outrageous' for an executive of an entire division to be expecting a salary £100k plus? Hardly.

Are you going to magically pull the money out of your backside to cover the cost of that 10% extra? They are working to a budget. They're not plucking some figure out of thin air.

What adult does? that's why there are a verity of apps used plenty by grown adults as well as kids which make fart noises, play games with cartoon birds blowing up and create selfies with silly distorted characterises or animated filters on top. That's why people can get smartphone covers/cases/decoration in anything from barbie pink, to dinosaur green to furry dice or little jewelled trinkets hanging off them. The device is just a tool. Like I said earlier kids shouldn't need a 'special phone' all of the things you mention above are already available. Parents can choose to download and/or block any app they choose. They dont need a bespoke 'intranet' because facility already exists to make internet access child friendly. Nearly all Internet Service Providers have had such facilities for decades and schools do it all the time. What parents need to do is pull their heads out of their backsides and actually take responsibility to understand the tech, set it up properly and continually monitor it before they give it to their child. I can guarantee having two tier types of mobile phones will not solve the issue. Kids are not stupid. If one phone is a mocked as a toy and the other is deem a 'proper phone' its obvious what peer pressure and bullying will follow.

Maybe. But don't forget with any big project like this, there's lots of prep work in the background before any spades start hitting the ground. There's all the costs of consultancy, design, planning, architects, plant, utilities, surveyors, insurances, legal fees, project management, contracting, procurement.... That 200k per house is not simply for materials and labour.

But a lot of this seems to stem from parents demanding legislation and finger pointing towards the actual companies rather than taking self-responsibility for their own failures. Many of the barriers on age restricting access or accessing harmful content or 'accidently' making some ludicrous purchases on mummy's credit card 'without knowledge' of the parents.... Can all get set at the click of a button if the actual parents took responsibility to set the phones up properly, set the parent called controls, put data blocks on, set passwords and took the perfectly sensible step not to have their credit card information stored on a phone being given to their kid! All of those security functions exist and have for at least two decades if mummy and daddy actually bother to read the instructions and did a bit of research before handing a device to their little Britney or Dwayne. A recent BBC article highlighted issues with multiple social media companies (who all have at least a 13 or above age minimum) being blamed for having many kids underage on their services. There were the sorts of usual crying about why are the companies not doing more to protect children and on about how kids signing up were blatantly lying about their age, but nobody seemed to be asking the question about what the hell the parents were doing. Why were the parents not checking their phones or even stopping the apps being download in the first place. As others have said, it's not the children walking to a shop buying these devices. The device is nothing more than a tool. It can be as useful, useless, necessary, unnecessary, perfectly safe or dangerous as the fleshy end user wants to make it.

What has any of that crap got to do with a private developer investing their private money into building something on private land. It is THE STATE who has responsibility for mandatory housing for those in genuine destitution, not private business. Stop turning every thread into one of your anti-capitalist, anti-corporation, anti-neoliberalism rants.

Interesting. Maybe the tide will eventually turn then. However, these corporations dont usually make such investments likely. The £150m is a lot of money but lets say those 390 axed or potentially axed workers were all earning current national minimum wage level (obviously some roles likely to be above this anyway) that would give a full time equivalent bill of over £8.7m in just base wages alone. That's before the additional costs of training, supervision, holidays, sick pay, other benefits. Given the NMW usually has increments every year too, it soon adds up. A decade ago it was at £6.50 for a adult. Its now £11.44. A 75% increase. I guess any cost/benefit will depend on the outlay for ongoing maintenance, repair and life expectancy of the machinery but one wonders if costs of the physical objects over human wages would increase 75% over 10 years...

But again, what's that supposed to mean? The one bedroom ones will be cheaper than the two bedrooms with the three bedrooms being the most expensive. If someone wants one but can't quite stretch through a two-bedroom, they have a choice to go for a smaller one bedroom one or find somewhere else. Just like my purse doesn't stretch to a eight-bedroom mansion so I have to make do with my smaller three-bedroom semi. If you are seriously suggesting that a private developer spending their private investment money to build properties on premium land in a city centre should then be somehow forced to sell a portion of it to people who otherwise couldn't afford to get one, I totally disagree. Why should they? They're a business not a charity. Mandatory provision of housing is a state responsibility. If the council wanted to force some clauses upon the developer of this present scheme, they could have done so in the planning application or the terms of permission or granted them some public funding to compensate the cost of it or build it themselves directly from public funds for specific public housing purposes. Other than that, it should be up to private business what they want to build and sell it at what the market will dictate. Don't see Gucci being forced to sell off half of their stock discounted just so 'poor people' can access it? Waitrose don't get compelled by the government to dedicate 4 or 5 aisles of food at poundland prices just to accommodate those who can't afford market rate for their gugs Everyone who buys or rents a house (unless they are extremely privileged or lucky) generally finds it one of the most expensive purchases they ever make. Most people I know including myself have all had to start somewhere and struggle and scrimp and save to get a deposit and afford the mortgage or the rent This is not a new story. It's life. None of that is the fault of private businesses.

I'm afraid it's nothing earth shattering. It's what is being driven by the ever increasing shift in us consumers demanding instant this, instant that, at the click of a button and all at rock bottom prices. Those fleshy parts previously fetching and carrying cost continual wages. They take sick days. They take holidays. They need constant supervision and management and discipline and training which costs even more money. They are subject to National insurance payments and pension payments and demand annual increases.. Doesn't take much for the number crunchers to work out the investment/maintenance cost of the machinery versus the benefits versus cost of X number of human staff and do the maths. If people want to cling on to human touch, they have to be prepared to pay more on the price tag.

To whom? The word is just as subjective as the aesthetics of a building. To a single person on nothing more than welfare benefits probably not affordable. To a graduate couple doing white collar jobs with average salary then probably will be affordable. It's a private development being built on premium land in the middle of the city centre. Its price will be dictated by the market like any other.

If that's true then seems less of a dramatic story. Basically one subsidiary brand converting into a different subsidiarity brand. Wonder if there has been some backroom dealing here "PIPER" the conglomerate that owns the P&P brand just very coincidentally happened to previously own the Turtle Bay brand right next door and also used to be an investor of the current conglomerate who owns the Cosy Club brand. Isn't life convenient sometimes.

But how do you know that your 'experience' of the city would be any worse now than it was 14 years ago if you admit you haven't been there. For instance, you are banging on about "bad parking" but nearly all of the car parking I have mentioned in my post is exactly the same as it was 14 years ago so what's changed? With exception of a couple of national casualties that were on the brink of or have entirely collapsed, most of the department stores are still there just as they were 14 years ago. Other units have be replaced by different types of shopping more suited to the current consumer trends so what's changed? They were still vagrants and beggars around 14 years ago. So what's changed?

Why do people keep saying this. It doesn't have "bad parking". There's lots of parking all around the city. Around the main shopping area there are three large car parks, two more large car parks either end of Arundel Gate, two more at Victoria Quays/Castlegate, another one just off Bridge Street, another one just off West Street and various street parking areas in between. Of course such parking is subject to restrictions and charges which is no different to any other city in the world. Unlike a mall, a city centre has people attending for different reasons beyond shopping so therefore it has to be controlled. The city centre still does have department stores. At least three of them, maybe even five-six of them depending on how it's defined. Yes, of course it had a lot more in the past, but it's obvious there's been a global decline in the popularity of department stores and significant rise in internet shopping. Several of the names we have lost from the street are not specific to Sheffield and more national chains going into administration. Even John Lewis closed a number of stores in the past couple of years when it made a catastrophic loss. Maybe if you actually stepped foot in the city centre more than once every 14 years, you might notice some of the positives. Why not actually come down, have a look around some of the multi-million pound improvements and developments. See some of the new independent stores or more boutique stores that have opened up, see some of the new food courts and leisure facilities. Some of the new public Square and spaces. As for the "great unwashed", well unfortunately the problem with public streets is they get cluttered up with the public. Some of them are less desirable than others. A factor that happens in cities all over the world. It is not just private land you can just kick people out of. Yes, I agree. There are pockets of vagrants and delinquents - but let's not pretend one just can't move two foot without tripping over some beggar or drunkard. That's nonsense.