Anna B

The local authority would seem to be the people to ask, or perhaps citizen's advice. Is there still a bedroom tax?

Only personal experience, and volutary work. With a large extended family, I have had quite a lot of experience of care homes over the years. Everybody dies of something and only a lucky few die peacefully in their sleep with no history/knowledge of a fatal illness beforehand. If that fatal illness requires hospitalisation then the doctors decide whether the patient is fit / capable of looking after themselves and going home. I've seen a 71 year old man crying with horror and disbelief at not being allowed back into his own home after a broken hip because he was at risk of falling... Hospitals don't have the beds available for convalescence, so they have to go to care homes. It only takes a few weeks in a home for them to become incapable of coming out again. Carehomes cost an average of £1,000 per week. Looking after a seriously ill, old person at home is difficult and exhausting to say the least. Just getting them to the toilet, or to bed can be quite a job in itself, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Bearing in mind sons, daughters, spouses of said old person can themselves be in their 70s or 80s and probably with their own health issues and therefore not capable of lifting / moving a full size adult, (in hospital it takes 4 nurses to legally lift a person up a bed,) sooner or later the elderly person has to go into care, at a cost of £52,000 per year average, the care often leaves a lot to be desired. To get the care paid for by the state is a long, laborious, and difficult process. Families are often called upon to 'sponsor' a relative, in other words pay the fees if they default (ie, run out of money.) The person has to be virtyally destitute to get their care paid for.

More than you think. And it could be you. All it takes is an illness, accident, arthritis, stroke, dementia, and any number of ailments that beset the ancient. Remember people are living longer but not necessarily healthier, just longer for more things to go wrong. Hospitals don't want to know, but often won't let the patient go home, they insist they move on to a carehome. And it always always ends in death - eventually. But Just 3 or 4 years in a carehome is enough to clean most residents (and/or their family) out, both house and savings. A Nursing home costs even more.

Which they are living in, (and still paying council tax etc for) so no extra income coming in. And which will all have to be sold to pay carehome fees. It would be a bit of an embarrassment for the overnment to have thousands of pensioners wandering about homeless.

Yer think...? They may have got an inflation payrise, but that's a small percentage of a small amount so most pensioners still only get about £8,500 a year to live on. Not exactly a fortune is it? Still the lowest pension in Europe.

Probably not, but at least Sun readers know they're reading the equivalent of a grown up's comic.

Sadly, there are plenty of readers of the Daily Mail that still believe every word. They think it's a serious newspaper.

Fine. Keep on missing the chance of bargains for the sake of a few quid. Doesn't matter how long the waiting list gets and who cares about housing the homeless?

Someone ought to tell the council to always set their limits at 10% over the nearest round figure as it's well known that many bidders set their limit and drop out on the rounded numbers. (eg £500,000) as in this case. It's a good tactic that will aquire them more properties in the future.

Also usually known as 'exploitation.' However IMO you are correct in thinking that they benefitted a local area by bringing enough wealth to improve it. Seeking public renown (and immortallity,) slave traders commissioned buildings and public facilities such as parks and open spaces, grand houses, libraries, meeting halls etc. and enough business accumen to assure that we all benefitted to be living in a wealthy rather than a poor country. They sowed the beginnings of the British Empire. Heinous as it may be, we in the West all benefitted to some degree from Slavery. IMO it's rather hypocritical to think otherwise.

I agree. I also want to see measurable results proving value for money.

I would imagine (but don't know) that a smart phone for a 7 year old would be very different from an adult smart phone. What 7 year old wants a small hand held black box that only does grown up things? I imagine it to be more colourful and accident proof than the adult version, perhaps with a simple phone that can be restricted by the parents to only allow family phone calls etc. I also see it having a mixture of fun and educational games, fun facts, a mixture of music and songs, and information / podcasts, suitable to the age group, plus a creative space for drawing, designing, and, well, creating. Schools have something called the Intranet which is a child friendly version of the internet, and any number of age appropriate learning games. 4 year old Tots in reception class start using computers almost from day 1 as a learning activity. I would imagine smart phones could be built to do the same.

It would be a lot quicker and cheaper for the council to bring some of the many (676 thousand + ) vacant houses back into use. Buy them at auction, do them up, and add them to their portfolio of council properties, then collect reasonable rents. It would also spread diversity and stop big council estates becoming ghetoes of working class inhabitants.. Private Landlords do it all the time, building up enormous portfolioes. Why not the council?

Yes, I know councillors have to stand and be elected, and in theory, anyone can become a councillor, but It's the workers who do the jobs and the middle management that organises that, probably on fairly ordinary wages. But they are not the ones I am talking about. The ones I mean are the 'add ons' that we now have, like a police commissioners and a super mayors and Chief Executives. Not only are they paid well over their worth, if they do **** things up they are never held to account, never sacked, simply moved to another similarlarly well paid job, (See Paula Vennels' CV) In local government they have no business expecting to receive the same salaries as private business executives as they are paid from the public purse which has serious constraints. Private business executives on the other hand decide their own pay package and are extremely generous to themselves, but then they would be wouldn't they as they hold themselves in such high esteem... So high that it has bankrupted more than one previously successful company and brought it down... even they can't afford such ridiculous pay outs and bonuses any more, (which longer acurately reflect the success of the company, but are at the whim of the Chief Executives, 'because they're worth it,' says no one but the chief executive.... (see Paula Vennells...) I believe the Mayor and Commissioner has to be voted for by the local electorate, (I could be wrong,) but more to the point, we were never asked if we thought we needed one, or thought it was a good use of our money/taxes, which is the real question so it's rather a moot point As Sheffield rarely has many Conservative Councillors, those doing the appointing will be mainly Liberal and Labour, but it's very different in the corridors of real power in the the South East and the Shires where the Tories hold sway.

IMO a lot of the rot set in when they stopped promoting exceptional workers from the bottom, up the greasy pole, to the top, so that ability was matched by a wealth of experience at all levels. Too many senior executives are graduates with plenty of 'book learning' and qualifications but precious little else. They go straight in at a senior level. Old school coppers for example insist that working from the round up gives them 'a nose' for policing which graduates lack. I think that's probably true of a number of professions. To add to that, they are often recruited from a very few 'top drawer' Universities, so you have the same elite crew doing the rounds of all the top jobs. Before anyone reminds me that these Universities only accept exceptional students, I beg to differ. There are a fair few 'Hooray Henries' and Henriettas in there as well who only got in there because Daddy knows all the right strings to pull.... 7% of the population went to private schools, but fill 70% of all the top jobs. Class discrimination is still very much alive in Great Britain and always has been..