Anna B

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..

I have to disagree. This fallacy about 'attracting the best talent' was started by the executives themselves, to justify the extortionate salaries that they had also awarded to themselves. It has proven to be a false assumption over and over again, as our stock in the world has declined markedly in most areas. Just look at the debacle over the post office for example, and the mess this government has made in so many areas of their remit. We have never been in such a sorry state. They have used their power simply to feather their own nests, and care not one jot about the broader picture and the people they are meant to serve. We also have the arrival of such gems as 'Police Commissioners' and 'Super Mayors' and other very expensive jobs for the boys though nobody seems to know what they do, and have seen no discernable improvement in their field of operations. Every grandiose pen pusher costs tax payers any number of truly useful workers in the public sector such as nurses and police and teachers. I know which I consider to be the more valuable.

Wow Padders, thankyou!

The bottom line is we have a lot of homeless people who quite simply cannot afford to rent or buy anything and end up on the street. Some of these are working hard in low waged jobs and still can't even afford a room in a shared house, such is the increase in rents. Cheap houses are being bought up by property developers and 'improved', 'gentrified' so that higher rents can be obtained. Builders prefer to build high end properties as the profits are greater. Nothing wrong with that in a free market economy, but where does it leave the working poor of which there are many (and growing.) Where are they supposed to live? You're right....It's no longer 'a new story,' and yes, 'it's life.' But does that make it acceptable? Especially as the problem is growing worse exponentially, and will affect more and more people going further up the social scale? The cost of living crisis is very real (more real for some than others) and shows no sign of abating. It's not just about the price of food, everything is out of kilter. Wages are not keeping up with prices and so poverty Increases. Improve wages to keep up with prices and inflation takes off. So whats the answer? This problem hasn't occurred overnight and has been in the pipeline for many years. Neither is it a surprise, many were warning of it years ago and were ignored. Now we are reaping the results of a 'free market economy:' unbridled, uncontrolled capitalism, which is all set to continue indefinitely with more and more victims falling by the wayside. We are all set for a perfect storm unless the politicians and major players get a grip, which they show no sign of doing. We will sink into a third world economy - but of course that's just fine- as long as you're one of the few on the winning side. That's life.....