Sheffield City Council Shuts Down Popular Drinking Venue

The new city centre PSPO (pronounced pispooo) has had the boundaries carefully drawn to finally bring to an end the long running saga of late night drinking at a city night spot causing disturbance to local residents.

However campaigners believe that the decision to ban drinking from Shalesmoor Roundabout is a blow to the plans in place to continue increasing the levels of hospitality and retail in the area as more new accommodation is built.

Some people are also concerned that the order's anti-loitering provisions are a further effort to try and criminalize the homeless rather than offer them any genuine help. However they have been reminded that taking measures against the weakest and most vulnerable in society is now Labour party policy.

BrewDog – Trolls or clueless about Sheffield?

From their coming soon page about them taking on the former Starbucks on Division Street:

The people of Sheffield have long been screaming out for a BrewDog bar and we have answered the call. We are excited to be joining a thriving community of awesome, eclectic craft beer bars in the steel city, who are all standing up to the mass marketed industrial beers that dominate the rest of the city.

This has got to be either trolling on a massive scale in order to drive eyeballs to that page, like the Daily Mail but fro brewers, in which case I apologise for helping them. Or it is an indication that they know little about the beer scene in Sheffield. Last time the Sheffield and District branch of Camra did a beer survey (this year’s will be on the 13th of July) in a sample of 138 pubs they found Sheffield had 309 Distinct Beers from 140 breweries at an average price per pint of £2.70 hardly a haven for mass “mass marketed industrial beers”. Even if you could only get beers that meet the LocAle criteria Sheffield would still be a mighty fine place to drink beer. But as it is, add in the rest of the real ales and all the keg and bottled beer from all over the world and some hugely knowledgeable publicans and bar staff and this is about the best place I’ve ever been for drinking beer.

In any case this is another blast of blustery bullshit in the phoney war between cask and keg. Just drink the good stuff, ignore the bad stuff and stop trying too hard to win a battle that doesn’t need to exist, you just look silly trying.

EDIT: Having thought a bit more about this, with a turnover over £10 million, a marketing budget north of £200k and $1,000,000 of supermarket sales they are the mass market brewery opening another pub in their chain in Sheffield. We'll welcome them in, but they are definitely not saving us from anything.

34th annual Steel City Beer Festival 2nd - 4th October, Cemetery Park.

The 2008 Steel City Beer Festival, our 34th annual event, comes to you in a marquee in Cemetery Park, with around 100 different beers, Ciders & Perries to try.

The festival site is Cemetery Park on Montague Steet, just off Cemetery Road in Sharrow. It's just a few minutes walk from Ecclesall Road, up the hill behind the Pomona pub. Please see the Festival Website for more information, including details of bus services and mapping.

Opening hours and costs
Day	Times	Normal entry price	CAMRA members price	Entertainment
Thursday 2nd October	17:00 - 23:00	£2	Free	Poke + Special guest TBA
Friday 3rd October	12:00 - 16:55	£2	Free	Quiet Session
	17:00 - 23:00	£3	£2	Treebeard
Saturday 4th October	12:00 - 23:00	£3	Free	Afternoon: Rico's charity pub quiz/Morris Dancers/Meet the LocALE brewers Evening: The Kahunas
STUDENT SPECIAL THURSDAY NIGHT: free entry on production of a valid student ID.
A glass to drink from - £2 sale or return

You will need to buy a souvenir festival glass when you arrive, this is the glass you will drink from for the duration of your visit. In line with the parks trust policy the festival glasses are made from toughened plastic rather than glass. Please note due to this policy we cannot allow guests to bring their own glass.
When you leave the festival you can keep the glass as a souvenir or alternatively return it to the glass stand for a refund.
It is CAMRA policy to offer oversized lined glasses where possible to guarantee full measure - however we have not been able to find a supplier that makes oversized plastic glasses, so our glasses will be pint glasses with a half pint line. If you are drinking halves you therefore have an oversize glass, if you are drinking pints please ask for a top up if you think your head is excessive.

Quality hot and cold snacks will be available from the Outside catering service provided by the Original Farmers Market Shop of Bakewell.

Lack of visibility

As I walked past the Town Hall this morning the only sign of a strike was a lone placard leaning against the wall next to the back door.^[1] I thought about wandering down to the nasty modern building that has many more actual council workers in it to see if there was a better turn out there but decided against. Unison obviously wasn't really making an effort. They missed the prime opportunity to be visible as people arrive at the various bus and tram stops near the Town Hall on their way to offices or streaming past to the station. The chances to put their case to people lost. I don't really support this strike anyway, while yes they are getting low pay rises this year, so are most of the rest of us. The economy is screwed and while I understand that they say that they haven't had decent pay rises in previous years when the country wasn't feeling the pinch, it seems somewhat foolish to hold your biggest strike in years when there isn't any money.

I am much more disappointed that I haven't seen anyone in uniform for the TA's centennial 'Uniform to Work Day' I hope that if I go out for lunch I will get to see people being proud of this very important work they do.

^[1]I think you go in that door if you want to licence your taxi or register a birth, marriage or death. As I have never done any of these things I am not 100% sure.

Time up for Sheffield Airport

Sheffield Airport is to close for good as that BBC news story suggests a bunch of people are trying to save it. Why bother? Here it is compared with Finningley at the same scale, one is a quite a bit bigger than the other. You will also notice that the main runways are aligned in different directions, one is better aligned for the prevailing wind conditions than the other. I'll leave you to guess which one...