greenrat

Hi all would just like to encourage everyone to get out and vote on the 4th June in the European elections. Being dissilusioned with the main parties is not an excuse not to get out and vote. Take a look at what the parties are saying ... http://www.greenparty.org.uk/ http://www.ukip.org/ http://www.sheffieldconservatives.org/ http://www.sheffieldlabourparty.co.uk/ http://sheffieldlibdems.org.uk/ ... and get involved!!

.. please sign the petition to stop using temps and agency staff to avoid having to pay redudancy and other benefits - http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Bantemps/#detail

Why wait till your p*ssed to join in?

and what about those of us who can't afford a car?

Perhaps we should join this group ... http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=2266634908

Because elctrification would be common sense ... something sadly lacking in goivernment thinking. Instead the government are spending billions buying a new generation of Diesel trains and paying private companies to run a service that British Railways ran for a fifth of the price.

In a word ... no - public transport is a vital public service. I agree that it is too expensive but axing it completely would solve nothing.

But how do we go about sacking useless management when noone is prepared to confront the issue?

Perhaps we should give the councillors on Sheffield council a dose of real life by making them live on Jobseekers Allowance for a month whilst living here ... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1402996.stm

What I would propose would be for starters introducing Quality contracts to give SYPTE control of routes & fares, with much stricter penalties for companies who run a poor service. I would also suggest introducing targets to measure how the companies perform on Human Relations.

Just a thought .the Department for Transport (DaFT) contributed £2.5 million towards the cost of the project - how many bus journeys woul this have paid for?

It seems that employers are too often using agency staff (temps) and people on fixed term contracts to avoid having to pay for full time staff with full time wages & benefits. Is it right that employers should be able to use agency staff to avoid recruiting people on full time contracts? Do you have experience of temps being used to avoid recruiting people on full term contracts?

Hi jepoyic, Some useful websites for job hunting: - http://www.jobcentreplus.gov.uk/JCP/index.html http://www.sheffield.gov.uk/whats-new/job-vacancies http://www.mysheffieldjobs.co.uk/ http://www.jobstoday.co.uk/ Also the Centre for full employment will be able to help you with your CV & writing letters : - http://www.cffe.org.uk/looking.php Good luck! Greenrat

The story relates to Connex losing the South Eastern franchise ... what I was trying to illustrate was that the government claims that renationalisation would be too expensive, but if it had the will it could renationalise the buses (and trains) cheaply and easily.

It was! When Mainline was first Privatised it continued to be a good service until Worst Group took over. Inevitably all the bus firms ended up as part of four or five big companies (First, Arriva, Stagecoach etc.). I think people are now starting to realise that Thatcher may have got it wrong and public ownership of vital services such as public transport is actually a good idea.

Any advances on £80,000?

Rip off!! I'll do it for £80,000

Just a thought ... Sheffield councils motto is "Where Everyone Matters" - the council has spent millions of taxpayers money on the Heart of the City project, while thousands of people are waiting a council house, some of whom (like myself) cannot afford to rent privately. Also recently the council appointed a deputy chief executive on £100,000+ a year - enough cash to buy a house. Surely the council should stop spending vast amounts continually rebuilding the city centre and actually do something useful for the people of Sheffield - e.g. build more council housing

Which the government could do easily as they did here .... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/3024804.stm

Just to add my personal experiences of the buses in Sheffield ... when I started work you could get a return from Hillsborough to town on the bus for £1.65 - now the single fare for the same journey is around £2.00 each way with no return fare available. Mainline used to provide a good service at very reasonable prices ... since First took over prices have rocketed and the quality of the service has declined dramatically. Also I find it a bit wrong to have to pay £60 a month for a bus ticket then pay again if I need to go somewhere that the service is run by another operator. The buses need to be taken back into public ownership.

Good point - perhaps nationalisation would be a better option?

Hi - Would like to know what you think of the bus services in Sheffield, based on your own personal experience. Would also like to urge you to report any late runnig / cancelled buses to the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (VOSA) at enquiries@vosa.gov.uk quoting the route number, operator, ... they can fine a bus company for failing to keep to timetables as they have here ... http://www.transportxtra.com/magazines/transit/news/?ID=3010 ... and here ... http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/info/394_First_Fined_50k_For_Bus_Timetable_Failings.html Greenrat

Also on the issue of restructuring in organisations, I myself have been through 4 restructures in the last 18 months at two organisations. This seems to be going on everywhere (even before the start of the recession) and as far as I can see is just a ploy by management to keep workers scared that their jobs aren't secure. I'm sure that I'm not the only one on the forum who is sick of restructures / management incompetence. I'm not speaking as a Socialist, but as someone who knows common sense when they see it. Some of the Conservative Party's ideas are good ones ... scrapping ID cards, not building a new runway at heathrow and not extending the 28 - day detention limit in the anti-terror laws to 42-days.

There does need to be more democracy in this country, for example I believe referendums should be held on important issues such as privatisation of public services, and there should also be consultations on whether to impose a wage limit of £100,000 per year on senior management in organisations that receive public funds. Also there should be no instances where management & admin staff actually outnumber front line workers, as is the case in the NHS (http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/woman/health/article2341948.ece). Managers do in some cases do good jobs but 50% of the time are doing jobs that cost 5 times the amount of frontline workers and are not as vital. Companies in the UK have been responsible for eliminating hundreds of thousands of jobs across the last 10-20 years through restructuring / outsourcing / sending jobs abroad to India, China & other third world countries, often when they have not been making a loss. This needs to end ... now

D'oh! It does appear that I have got the wrong end of the stick on this one ... apologies for the misunderstanding!