SheffieldSean

Gary Keown, if I recall, was BBC Radio Sheffield's editor. I see he has been promoted to Look North and has suffered some kind of amnesia on the journey up the M1. When the BBC launched its local websites back in 2001/2002 I noticed that Sheffield was lumped in with South Yorkshire (http://***.bbc.co.uk/southyorkshire) but cities such as Leeds and Manchester had dedicated sites alongside their respective county-based websites (http://***.bbc.co.uk/leeds & http://***.bbc.co.uk/westyorkshire). When I queried this, I was told that South Yorkshire is a big region and it would be unfair to exclude it solely to concentrate on Sheffield alone; a typically dismissive and patronising BBC response and one that misses the point that Sheffield is big enough to justify its own standalone website. I wouldn't hold your breath Lidz; I've long felt that Sheffield is a stealth city and I can't see that changing anytime soon.

I think you've got your logic in a muddle there, eighty4. Naturally Manchester, which is already far more successful than Sheffield and has better buildings, isn't going to compare their new projects with what is being built here. Sheffield, however, is so far behind in the game that we naturally look to our near neighbours and examine what they're doing. Its rather pointless trying to emulate cities further afield when we can't even keep up with what is happening next door. We're meant to be competing with them, not downtown Auckland.

Hawley releases Coles Corner this Monday 5th September on Mute; let's hope it sells in the numbers it deserves and Hawley converts the massive critical acclaim he's received into sales.

You really would have thought I'd have noticed that wouldn't you?

Centre, even.

From the RSPB website: It's summer, why have the birds suddenly vanished from my garden? "This is a question we are regularly asked in the summer. Unless you are finding dead birds, then there is really nothing to worry about. In late summer, birds are nearing the end of a period of hectic activity: the breeding season. Many of them will go through a period of moult to renew worn or juvenile plumage. While they are losing their flight feathers, they are vulnerable, so conceal themselves from predators. They seldom sing, and no longer need to defend territory, so seem to disappear. Late summer and early autumn is also a time of plenty for birds. The natural food supply is abundant. Birds will move from their breeding areas into farmland, orchards or woodland for instance, to feed on grain, berries and weed seed. They can be absent from gardens until we get the first autumn frosts so late summer is a good time to clean feeders and bird tables, ready for the birds' return."

Absolutely; once Park Hill is renovated they will be worth a small fortune. It's the largest listed building in Europe, based on the stark architecture of Le Corbusier. Next to the tram route and with excellent access to the city, railway and the motorway; they'll be something special once they're gutted and are given the full makeover.

Queen release a live DVD of their summer performance at the Arena in October. That should sell a fair few around the world as well.

I've often said Sheffield is a stealth city as far as the media is concerned. Only a few days ago I watched a programme on BBC Two about a couple who lived in Nottingham, but worked in the Sheffield region. They were both accountants and wanted to move to South Yorkshire. After a largely pointless introduction where we were shown Nottingham's city centre and told about the billions of pounds that have been spent developing it, we were then shown rural South Yorkshire and were told by the presenter that the 'exciting city of Leeds was only forty miles away.' At no stage was Sheffield mentioned at all. It's as if Sheffield doesn't exist. I wonder why Sheffield is so often ignored, or only used in the context of social deprevation (c.f. the recent post on this board of a fascinating, but ultimately negative, focus on the city by Radio 4)? The reasons are, I suggest, myriad; the city was left behind at the start of the 1990s and is only just beginning to catch up, the population of Sheffield don't seem to have, or care for, the kind of 'look at me' attitude of the citizens of Manchester (we don't have a Tony Wilson figure who spends all their time talking up their home city for example) and as a result we're constantly overlooked. We've produced many fine actors and musicians but any musical scenes we've produced, such as the electronica boom of the late Seventies are normally too esoteric for the media to get a handle on. The Madchester scene of the early 1990s coincided with a boom in drug culture and the fusing of music and football. Sheffield missed the boat completely. The great danger is that these things become set in stone. The media are sometimes lazy and often under great pressure to produce copy under tight deadlines. So, if a BBC hack needs to knock out a story on urban cool to fill a gap in a broadcast they're not going to go out on a limb and try a city that they only know from Pulp's sardonic lyrics of urban decay or a film about a bunch of unemployed steel workers so desperate they almost have to prostitute themselves. It's a viscious circle and one that will be hard to break. Sheffield City Council need to employ a PR agency to start planting some good stories in the press about our city, but don't hold your breath waiting for it.

Thank you for the link to what is a fascinating, and at times extremely saddening, programme.

You ask specifically about asylum seekers. As they are not allowed to work they receive 70% of normal benefit payments: Qualifying couple: £61.11 Lone parent aged 18 or over: £38.96 Single person aged 25 or over: £38.96 Single person aged 18 to 25: £30.84 16 to 18 year old: £33.50 Under 16: £42.27 These figures are from the Refugee Council website.

Over the past few days, since Sheffield City Council's decision to reject plans for the Conran designed 32 storey tower, we've had plenty of discussion about what, if anything, is wrong with Sheffield in 2005. I'd like to move this discussion forwards now and ask you to jump aboard Doc Brown's DeLorean and transport yourself ten years into the future. You're in Sheffield in 2015. What do you see? Has the new retail quarter regenerated the city? What shops are trading there? Has it been built at all? How does the city skyline look? What jobs are people doing? Is Sheffield competing with other cities or has it stagnated or even gone backwards? What do you expect to see?

A contender for Post of The Year methinks! It's funny because it's so bloody true.

Well, quite. But then that would require an ounce of vision wouldn't it? Something that I fear isn't too common amongst our leaders in the Town Hall.

I've flipped and flopped on this building and the regeneration taking place around the city on many occasions. I'm firmly of the opinion that most of the residential developments are dull, unattractive and singularly fail to please the eye. That said, I know that Sheffield needs to be dragged into the end of the last century, let alone this one, pretty bloody quickly. There's too much of a narrow-minded, colloquial attitude to that words that dribble out of many Sheffielders mouths. We don't want to be like Manchester, they say - and perhaps that's fair enough, I chose not to live in Manchester either because I have a perfervid desire not to be shot dead - and they'll invariably point to the quiet, affable nature of Sheffielders. No fancy bars here. We don't need Harvey Nichols thankyou very much. None of that modern muck for us - there's plenty here if only you'll look for it. The trouble is, most people don't look for it - they don't even know its here. Sheffield is a stealth city; it passes under most people's radars. We can't sit quietly in the corner bemoaning the old days forever - indulging in meek solipsism about how great we all know Sheffield is and its everyone else with the problem, not us - or we'll be left behind for good and Sheffield will die slowly. You may argue this has already begun and it's too late now anyway. The fact is that most northern cities are witnessing a decline in their populations, as their best and brightest head to London. If places like Manchester are struggling to maintain population levels, then what hope for Sheffield? This thin sliver of land where the tower was due to be built, from Surrey Street to Howden House must be the most expensive and desirable in the city. Why then, build a large greenhouse - and then proceed to box it in behind a hotel and spoil the views - if it will hinder future development around it. It seems so crass, so utterly short-sighted as to almost be satire. I know there are those who say that Sheffield should build high rises elsewhere. My question is where? Charter Row? That collection of hideous seventies rectangles overlooking a pedestrian underpass? With the Moor and its abject retail propostion of McDonalds, cheese pasties and shops selling everything for a pound nearby? Really? Would you live there? I know I wouldn't. I know that tentative plans are in place to redevelop that area in the years to come, but this tower would have been right in the heart of the city. A truly iconic building (and I'm prepared to accept this may not have been quite it for some people - it looked perfectly attractive to my untrained eyes anyway) right in the very heart of the city, with bars and gallaries right on the doorstep would have been the beginning of the process. Get it right here and developers will begin to recognise Sheffield. Why reject the building on aesthetic reasons if you're quite prepard to throw up those squat low rises over the Peace Gardens and allow all manner of uninspiring residential boxes around the city? One councillor spoke of wanting something similar to Swiss Re, the Sir Norman Foster tower that become known as the Erotic Gherkin. That's rather like sitting behind the wheel of a Mark IV Cortina and expecting it to go from nought to sixty in a second without even turning the ignition on. If this tower had been a success then the next developers will want to go one better - the benchmark would have been raised for the future. Perhaps then we could talk with confidence about high rise clusters, skyscraper alleys and buildings like Swiss Re. For heaven's sake, even Croydon, that byword for all that is naff about South London has more high rise buildings on one street than Sheffield has at all. Sheffield is a city with a bright future stretching out gloriously behind it. What a tragedy. (I'll end with a brief clarification, by no means intended as an apologia. I know that there is more to a city than high rise buildings. I genuinely don't want Sheffield to become a low budget copy of elsewhere. I most certainly don't want the concomitant crime problems that blight Leeds and Manchester. I quite like the old pubs in Sheffield and I don't want the development of the city to be to the detriment of its existing citizens, who are as much a part of the place as a high paid software executive and his Audi TT.)