alas_alas

Given that you didn't attend either, your argument is a nonsense. I'm saying I would have gone if it had been cheaper. That's all. It's a good event but it's too expensive. How is that 'ill-informed'?

What a bizarre aggressive rant. If you'd read my post you'd see that I have a lot of pride in Sheffield and the public events it puts on. However, I have a budget. My family and I cannot afford to spend that much on something that encompasses activities we do almost every day.

I really wanted to go, but at £7.50 per adult I thought it's far too expensive for a daytime activity. What are you 'getting' for that? Especially when recent events like Heeley Festival and Sharrow Festival have all been great and completely free to enter (excepting donations). Plus, if you're an outdoorsy type, then the kind of activities drawing you to Cliffhanger are usually free to watch anyway (e.g. just go out to Stanage Edge and watch the climbers there). I'm not knocking it, but I don't think they're going to get many new converts by charging so much for entry.

I'm sure the police saying 'we'll look into it' are doing just that, conducting an investigation, rather than ignoring information being provided by the public. As for these pit bikes, I saw a number of them out in S8 yesterday - lads not wearing helmets tearing about on the streets, completely illegally. What are the police actually doing about them? You can literally hear them a mile off because their exhausts are often unsilenced.

Yes, never rated the beer there, but it always had a decent atmosphere. Despite all the bizarre passive-aggresive signs they had everywhere at one point explaining in far too much detail how much profit they actually made on a pint, it's a shame it's now gone down hill. Can't abide aggro in pubs - what's the point?

I'm glad the Antiques Quarter seems to be taking off now - it's great for the area. Though the quarter is starting to look a bit more coherent, I'd suggest that a lot needs to be done to the area to bring it into the 21st century. Unfortunately, it looks really run down in a very localised district between Heeley Baths and the Broadfield lawn mower shop. Road in terrible repair, rubbish strewn, glass all over the pavements and cycle paths. It's a shame because you've got all your antiques shops and the river there, but the general impression is one of decline. It's too much to ask to expect you to tackle this - perhaps the council can be persuaded to invest a bit and get things looking right. It doesn't help that it's a rat-run zone, with many cars travelling far too fast through the area. I'd like to see speed humps, more shops, more street lighting, renovation of crumbling buildings. In the future it could be a Kelham Island-type development, especially if they could encourage residential building and a few pubs. This is starting to sound like quite an attractive proposition! Best of luck.

Not exactly scientific, that. I'm fairly sure that 'when you were a student' they didn't have bars like the Old House, Bungalows and Bears, The Great Gatsby, even the Bath, the Riverside etc, etc. Bars which are full every night. The Nottingham and Hadfield are/were quite run down, no wonder they shut. Half student oriented, half sports pubs. An outdated model. The new generation have moved on to new places. I'm sure they will embrace the new Brewdog offering.

Au contraire! Students now have more disposable income than ever, with the complete dominance of student loans for finance. So it little matters to them whether a pint costs £2 or £4.50 - it's all going to have to be paid back in the event of gaining a job after graduation. There are more students going out to town now than ever. When I was an undergrad here we would stick to student places because it was cheap and we had to budget carefully. Not so any more. That's a digression on the road to saying that Brew Dog would thrive here, absolutely. I'm surprised there isn't one here already. What seems to be a downside to this diversity, however, is the upward creep of prices, much commented on in relation to the Tap. There are signs that this is not necessarily a wise model for Sheffield pubs and bars in particular though. I hear that the Brew Kitchen franchise is looking a bit shaky - my suspicion only, but I think they expanded too fast, misjudging Sheffielders' willingness to pay over the odds for admittedly decent if not excellent quality food and drink. I for one am certainly getting less likely to pay above £3 for a local brew, unless the quality is guaranteed. Hence my complete boycott of the Dev Cat since it stopped keeping its beer well.

You do realise that Help for Heroes wants nothing to do with the EDL or the far-right? Why would the council support a Help for Heroes event? They are a charity, not a cause or political party. I suggest you drop the propaganda - there's clearly an event being set up for you. And as others have said, if you want to organise a Help for Heroes event in the peace gardens, why don't you approach the council yourself? You might have to write in full legible sentences, however.

Because there seem to be some extremely persistent posters on here committed to stirring up racial tension by starting numerous threads related to immigration, multiculturalism and various social issues. All of them share the same lame content aimed at promoting whatever agenda they have. Fortunately I don't see the same bizarre logic displayed on here applied anywhere else in Sheffield.

If you were actually interested in the evidence I think you'd change your minds: Mikey Smith has finally filed his report of the day. The first video on his page is quite revealing I suppose, especially for those who are claiming that there was 'no trouble' caused by the EDL on Saturday: http://www.sheffieldpolitics.com/news/ The chants at around the 1min 25sec mark cannot be reprinted here, but I'll let you decide how reasonable they are.

Because the far-right get easily confused. Some of them thought they were doing a Churchill 'peace sign', but with straight raised arms that looks a lot like a sieg heil. The video in the Star's report clearly shows a few of them actually doing the Nazi sieg heil: http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/local/edl-protest-controversy-as-wreath-laid-in-sheffield-1-5752282 At 2 mins 36 you see a number of men to the right of the shot doing the sieg heil.

It's particularly telling the way they targetted the University. I suppose this kind of stuff really winds the EDL up: http://youtu.be/iqjYq3zuFfs Oh, and here are them pesky students actually reporting on the events of the day: http://forgetoday.com/news/peaceful-demos-descend-into-chaos-on-west-street/ That article, with videos, is entitled, 'Peaceful demos descend into chaos on West Street'. No trouble yesterday was there?

What do you mean? Why was I busy 'seeing that happen'? Do you know me? Plenty of reports from the day if you look: http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/local/edl-protest-controversy-as-wreath-laid-in-sheffield-1-5752282

No, no trouble at all, just the entire city centre closed off, Nazi salutes at the war memorial, break-away groups of EDL members all over the city, racist chanting, the storming of the university which had to be locked down, the closure of the ring road, and thousands of pounds of police spending. No, no trouble.

In case you're confused about what a 'victory sign' looks like, you might want to check this out: http://www.victoryclubmembers.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/WinstonChurchill.jpg Versus this: http://www.addictinginfo.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/neo-nazis-saluting.jpg

Pseudo-fascists, raising their arms as if it's not a veiled Nazi salute: http://th4.eye.fi/api/rest/services/1.0/th/484732473/03a986a811982da1a8cfee57d3d5356e/640/_IGP8714.JPG Splitting hairs to say that's not a salute of fascism

Do you think this is a good use of public money for policing? Clearly a reasonable and peaceful protest: And yeah, it takes a particular kind of brains to think that raising a Nazi salute topped off with a peace sign is anything other than a Nazi salute. Here they are, filing out in their ranks, raising their arms: It really spelled it out for me reading a tweet about today's events, when the far-right surrounded university buildings later on, along the lines of: nothing to worry about here, they're only routing out the Jews and intellectuals.

No, I haven't just done that - I'm merely pointing out that you completely misrepresented that article to suggest that anti-Muslim attacks are not of any concern. And yes, Alan Lake was sacked from his job in the city, but that certainly does not stop him continuing to finance the EDL and other far-right organisations, a point that you very conveniently avoid. Never suggested anything about a world wide cabal. ---------- Post added 02-06-2013 at 14:46 ---------- Because there was quite obviously a huge protest against the attempt to lay flowers to make political gains at the memorial going on?

If you'd arranged it before, then what group were you representing? There were two organised demos, as far as I can tell from South Yorkshire Police reports - one stationary one representing multi-cultural Sheffield called 'One Sheffield' and one EDL protest from the Walkabout pub. Any other protest or representation involving the war memorial would have been put down by the police as well as demonstrators, as you had given no formal warning of your plans.

If you are in fact being honest - and really, this is a forum, we all post under aliases - as a 'liberal socialist', can you not see how your commemorative activities could have been seen as being extremely badly-timed, then? Nobody's stopping you laying a wreath now, or last week when the council did a wreath-laying that nobody protested.

Oh, what/where is the Grove, jemson? I'll have to search it out next time I'm over in the West. I also recommend the Pivni place. Made a refreshing change from the mock-historical pubs around town. Spent a very enjoyable day and night in there once, in fact.

Selectively quoting from the article and actually understanding the article are two very different things. Now don't go swizzing us. Just because you've got a defender in the national press doesn't make the EDL palatable or justifiable: Even Gilligan has to admit, "Loathsome as the white extreme Right is...No one in Britain has been killed by the EDL" True, but does that justify the EDL's actions? No, not even Gilligan is suggesting that. And he's wrong in his interpretation here: "White racists, unlike their Islamist equivalents, do not control key religious institutions or have a significant presence in British universities." On the contrary, Gilligan, white racists such as Alan Lake, fiancier of the EDL, who are involved in big fianance corporations, are in even more of a position of influence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Lake_%28English_Defence_League%29).

To be honest, I'd prefer to be known as the witch-finder general than defend the image of the far-right. But I suppose that's because I'm nothing of the sort, and have simply taken against the rantings of the EDL on this forum and want to dispute them to show everyone reading this that what you preach is hate-filled nonsense aimed at stirring up tension. Your scapegoating politics don't work.

It's the use of phrases such as 'the UAF side' and 'chatting with 3 Muslims' that arouses suspicion here. There was no 'UAF side', and why do you categorise people as 'Muslims'?