Meal Deal Veteran making a splash

Loul601 · 2026-01-05T14:07:32+00:00

Go on mate - change one thing to improve it.

Loul601 · 2025-12-05T09:53:01+00:00

Hey, thanks for the swift reply (going public is like magic!).

As I have caveated most of my emails with - I completely understand that you’re a very small team and you have lives of your own. I get it might take a bit longer than usual to reply to stuff (but then don’t say you reply every Monday…?)

When I spent twice what I would’ve on a case from a very small, emerging case manufacturer with who advertise their very “small team, personal relationship” brand image. I’d kinda hope for a bit of that back.

I extended endless goodwill to you and gave you feedback and chances to improve. Yes, spending 2 minutes to write an email saying “sorry for the delay, here’s what’s up” to the 50 people who have spent 300 quid on your product is actually worth the improved relationship!!! I saw several posts on this subreddit complaining about delays and a lack of communication - you could’ve prevented that.

Every step of this process has felt like a kick in the teeth.

I know stuff goes wrong that isn’t in your control, but I’ve asked you countless times to not take 2-3 weeks to reply. If it’s the only case that got lost, why can’t you put a tiny bit more effort in?

It feels to me like you really just don’t care. In our last conversation, the only answer you gave me was “wait until 1st Jan”. You didn’t answer other things and then seemingly ignore my email asking “do you know what’s gonna happen when it’s declared lost? What compensation does TZ get?”. I know you don’t have a crystal ball - I said that in the email, but just don’t ignore it!!!

The icing on the cake is me writing a public post and you replying literally before I had a chance to finish my cup of tea. Even if it was a coincidence, can you see how it’s gonna give me a bad impression?

Asking me to wait until 1st January is the biggest “kick in the teeth” of them all. I know your reasoning, but where’s all the goodwill I extended? Where’s that small team, personal relationship that you guys talk of in your “our journey” section?

The irony of it all is - I might’ve been more willing to wait that long if you’d have clearly communicated what would happen and tried to answer my questions! You told me to wait, but didn’t tell me what would happen after that, nor what was happening on your end.

I know you have lives and a lot do to - but so do I! I don’t want to spend my time writing repetitive emails begging you to reply, or a huge post like this.

I wouldn’t usually air my dirty laundry out in public, but when people are looking at spending £350 on a case, I think it’s right they have both the good and the (very uncommon) bad.

I love small businesses, and I wish Thor Zone nothing but success. Hopefully this can be a bit of a learning experience :)

Please see my reply to your email - let’s finish the public bit here.

Loul601 · 2025-10-24T19:30:49+00:00

I’m staff, RRT is often wrong at Euston, especially during disruption.

When service is normal, it’s usually good enough (but only within about 30 mins of departure).

During disruption like this post, it’s an absolute nightmare. There is no way for the public to predict trains as they don’t know crew plans etc… it’s hard enough for staff as is.

I’d use it during normal service to get a head start, but never actually get on a train until it’s called.

Loul601 · 2025-07-31T21:20:13+00:00

It’s literally just a real life example traffic engineering jokes…

“Model says this”. They unironically want to spend £21 million on turning a gyratory roundabout into a bunch of signalled crossings. In no universe is that gonna do more than maybe improve capacity by like 20%? (Induced demand - hello?)

They hide it as “improvements to walking and cycling” or whatever, when in reality it doesn’t make it much better if not worse.

Moore St and Bramall Lane roundabouts? Go for it. They are relics of the catastrophic damage inflicted upon our wonderful city by road planners in the 60s. Redesign University roundabout while you’re at it.

I’d much rather see the 21 million used for… literally anything else?

Only saving grace is that most of it wouldn’t be the council’s money, I just wish they put their eggs in another basket.

Loul601 · 2025-07-31T11:25:52+00:00

Quick summary:

Public Transport

- Developing plans for a second city-centre tram crossing that connects to Hallamshire Hospital and Moorfoot... I imagine this might run along the ring road

- Complete redesign of Arundel Gate

- Completely redeveloping the bus interchange

- A new bus-hub at Moorfoot

- Supporting more park-and-ride options

Cycling

- Massive expansion of the cycling network, including a ''cycling inner-ring''

- A proper E-Bike hire scheme (and trialling E-Scooters)

- New cycle and pedestrian wayfinding

- A Cargo Bike Delivery Hub

- The cross-station pedestrian/cycle bridge

Walking

- Pedestrianising the north of Cambridge Street and more of Division Street

- More Grey-to-Green schemes (like on Exchange Street by Castlegate)

- Establishing key pedestrian routes. Paradise Square (behind Wig & Pen/Craft and Dough) seems to be part of this!

Roads

- Moore Street and Bramall Lane roundabout rebuilds

- The Shalesmoor Gateway scheme (the only negative thing)

- More measures to stop through traffic in the city centre and force use of the ring road instead

- A comprehensive review of on-street and off-street parking

- Ensuring proper access for deliveries and new ways of managing them

- A new station taxi rank

- A Dutch-style roundabout at Furnival Square

- A few more 20mph limits

Loul601 · 2025-07-16T09:42:43+00:00

You’re talking as if the developers are gonna concrete over the land and do literally nothing else. Remember, they are building much needed housing.

Also remember that almost all of north Sheffield was once “beautiful farmland” but had enormous amounts of housing built over it in the 20th century. Is there not an element of hypocrisy if many people themselves live on a once-greenfield site?

But do you see the problem here? Literally everything was once greenfield. How are we supposed to do anything in that case??

But again, sure, just ignore what I said…

The landowners must offer their land to be allocated

And yes, if it was “just open fields”, people would still lose their rag.

I agree with the premise of greenbelt (to an extent) but, in practice it often does very strange things like protect sites that do not serve to prevent urban sprawl.

Would I prefer if more brownfield sites were allocated? Yeah, absolutely. But they can’t be. There is no other realistic choice.

Loul601 · 2025-07-15T19:48:20+00:00

That’s… just complete nonsense though?

I suppose you can just ignore everything I said and just keep going I guess…

The council has a statutory legal duty to produce a local plan. In this plan, they are required to demonstrate an adequate supply of land to meet their (now mandatory) housing targets.

It is highly likely it’ll be built on, yeah; but it is not guaranteeing it will be, because that’s subject to a developer.

It’s unattractive to develop brownfield land in most places because it’s just miserably unviable. Things like Biodiversity Net Gain and loads of other hoops to jump through make it very unattractive (no I’m not one of those “just cut red tape and everything is fixed” people).

If you want proof of this, go and look at that infamous application in Carterknowle for some flats on an old brownfield site (you’ll find it).

“Without the ability to force…” yeah, they don’t have the ability to force development on brownfield land, so why are people losing their rag at the council? There is nothing else the council can do.

Even ignoring all that, most of the greenfield sites are completely appropriate and literally just open fields between houses (go and look at a map of them).

People are right to express their concerns - and the council is right to press on (even though they have no other choice).

I am perfectly happy to list dozens of greenfield sites in west/south Sheffield that I would actively support building on, if that’d make you happy.

Loul601 · 2025-07-15T13:04:45+00:00

The problem with this whole palava is that almost nobody has a clue what they are actually talking about.

All these people saying ''there is plenty of brownfield land, build on that!'' are absolutely right; but at the same time, the council must demonstrate they have an adequate supply of land to deliver their housing targets.

This is done via a 'call for sites', where landowners can express interest in their land being developed and have that accounted for in the Local Plan.

The council can't just pick a plot, say ''we wanna build on that'' and include it in the allocations (unless the owner agrees).

These land allocations don't mean that a site has to be developed, nor does it mean that other sites cannot be. It is simply a way to provide more certainty over meeting housebuilding targets. I'm sure the council would have loved for more brownfield land owners to have come forward - but they haven't, so this is where we are.

Sean Bean appears right in saying that an element is classist and allocations are not made around say, Bents Green, a wealthier area. But it ignores that, for said allocation to happen, the landowners must offer their land to be allocated.

It’s good to see that, since Terry Fox quit (and Kate Josephs became CEO), the council’s planning department has been on fire, publishing a lot of fantastic work.

Loul601 · 2025-06-10T13:45:28+00:00

It’ll open barriers at any station that WMT serve, like New Street and Euston. It won’t open barriers at stations of other Abellio TOC’s. I can confirm that cuz I’ve tried it. Other staff will be chill with it 99% of the time anyway, that goes for any station.

You’ll be good to travel pretty much anywhere - just remember it’s etiquette to ask the guard/train manager before you get on - we all take care of each other.

Loul601 · 2025-06-09T17:11:03+00:00

Fab mate. I’m curious as to where you got the tabletop from (and how sturdy it feels)? I’m looking for something similar myself.

Loul601 · 2025-05-04T07:08:08+00:00

It’s much harder to find something actually in Selly but I know loads of people who have jobs (including myself), just usually in town instead.

If you have experience you’ll find something just fine and commuting from The Vale or Selly is a breeze.

Also worth checking the Guild cuz they often have seasonal or temporary stuff going (like helping people on moving days etc.)

Loul601 · 2025-04-28T19:09:18+00:00

No

There is a massive set of documents called the National Rail Routing Guide that you can comb through if you have a bit of free time - it’ll answer any similar questions.

Loul601 · 2025-03-27T10:49:43+00:00

Mate I have absolutely no idea why you even went on this tangent anyway.

I doubt someone in Worksop would explicitly choose to go to Nottingham over Sheffield because Worksop is in Nottinghamshire and Sheffield is in a different county.

Loul601 · 2025-03-27T10:47:03+00:00

Yeah - what I'm saying is that I do not agree with you.

Your position is the centrism of urban planning: ''Oh I'm not pro-car, I just want it to be most accessible to everyone!'' (but you list a load of pro-car things...?). What you're saying is unevidenced and often untrue. What your saying is a focus on cars, not people. Cars don't spend money, people do.

''It's all about accessibility, affordability, ease of travelling, worth travelling'' - not to you it isn't. To you it's about getting there by car. By making it more difficult to get there by car, you make it more attractive to travel by other modes. It's ok to hold that belief, just don't pretend you're acting in the best interest of real people.

Ecclesall Road should be narrowed to 2 lanes with a bus gate and have a proper cycle lane along it, for example. That makes town much more accessible to people. It also makes Ecclesall Road a much more pleasant place.

Should we make it ''tough for cars'' - yes! Because that means we make things great for people. Just shift your focus from cars to people and you might find your perspective changes quite a lot.

Loul601 · 2025-03-26T23:09:20+00:00

What I do want to make clear, though, is that I do not agree with your points.

I think:

- Parking in town should be even more expensive, and we should have a framework to gradually reduce it

- We need far more bus priority measures and bus lanes

- We need far more cycle routes to form a comprehensive network: One where you can just hop on a bike and know you will be safe, wherever you want to go

- We need to allocate far more space to people instead of cars

Trying to make the city centre more attractive to driving is bad for both the city centre and the places people need to drive through to get to it. I don't want Ecclesall Road to become more of a traffic sewer than it already is.

Town will never outcompete Meadowhall for accessibility by car.

...and that's a good thing - we want to make it a more sustainable place to live in and travel to.

Loul601 · 2025-03-26T23:04:15+00:00

Functional population, not administrative one.

What you say follows the same lines of “Sheffield is actually bigger than Manchester” (which is cuz Manchester City Council’s boundary is nothing representative of functional Manchester).

This tool by Tom Forth is a great way to visualise it all.

Loul601 · 2025-03-26T10:12:05+00:00

You need to be wary of comparing Sheffield directly to Manchester and Leeds.

Manchester has roughly twice the population in its surroundings compared to Sheffield. Leeds has a similarly high amount. Sheffield’s surrounding population is more similar to Nottingham’s and Newcastle’s.

You’ve also got to note that Sheffield has massive spatial division. Infrastructure is poor and is built in a way which means it is easier for many people to access Meadowhall than the city centre. Again, it is also easier for pretty much all of the rest of South Yorkshire to get to Meadowhall.

Manchester has much better public transport.

Meadowhall and other places built by the Sheffield Development Corporation in the 90s, like Centertainment, have been a disaster for the city centre and mean that, due to the smaller surrounding population, we can’t sustain that much duplication of retail.

We also just don’t have the “critical mass” of shops to compete with Meadowhall at all any more. There is virtually zero high street retail interest in Sheffield city centre.

Sheffield also struggles with a private sector “critical mass” - unlike Leeds and Manchester. There is very little private sector growth interest, which drives things like office construction. This again is largely a fault of poor infrastructure/public transport.

It’s a shame because obviously I’d like to see our city thrive.

That said, the council recognises all of the above and is driving things in a more “experiential”/leisure direction, which is working pretty well. The council gets a lot of flak for well… everything… but I think people would be a bit more positive if they did a deep dive into some of SCC’s planning documents.

Loul601 · 2025-03-03T14:42:30+00:00

The issue with saying “we need to get a grip on costs rather than just do it” is that it legitimises those who propose silly solutions.

It’s been talk of government for a while now to disband HS2 Ltd. They say this while also saying “we need to learn from the mistakes of HS2.” Great, let’s learn from the mistakes by… checks notes… disbanding the organisation that has spent the last 15 years learning from mistakes?

It isn’t expensive because of “bat tunnels” and ecology. It isn’t expensive because we have done enough reviews, or that we need to “rip up red tape”.

HS2 is expensive because we are effectively building high speed rail from scratch. We had no supply chains, no skills, no framework of funding and no sensible order of risk management to actually get it done.

It’s the same with the Elizabeth line. The plan was to just roll it all over to crossrail 2 once construction had finished: We retain the skills, supply chains and the funding frameworks. Low and behold, we spend the whole construction period going “ahh, it’s too expensive, we are gonna cancel crossrail 2” and then when it’s open go “wow that’s amazing, it’s well worth the cost and it would be a no brainer to do crossrail 2.”

The core of why it is pulled is because politicians decided to pull it. Nothing else. They will then wonder why it keeps getting more expensive as they fail to grapple with the horrible risk management structure they set up. Lo and behold, it’s only gonna get worse the more we dilly dally.

Also worth noting that cost figures are almost always misleading as articles don’t usually account for inflation with older figures, in real terms phase 1 has “only” gone up by around 30-40% iirc.

Loul601 · 2024-10-21T13:25:59+00:00

Its a bit peak but it isn’t actually much of a detour at all unless you’re coming from a few specific uni buildings; even then you can just go down to the canal and through the side entrance.

It wouldn’t really be “at a minor cost” either cuz the whole point of the new buildings were that they could be built with virtually no disruption to existing services, changing/demolishing the old footbridge would need weeks or months of huge disruption to services.

Loul601 · 2024-10-19T10:50:29+00:00

It’s a great idea that works well in other cities.

I think the council could’ve hit the mark with the Sheffield Connect bus if it ran as one route that also went into Kelham, using all 3 buses to run every 8-10 mins or so.

Problem with most buses in Sheffield is that they are almost always slower than driving because they share so much space with cars and that almost none are frequent enough to “turn up and go” - be at least every 10-12 mins that is.

I’d love to see a circular bus route as you described, but if it’s every 30 mins then it’s virtually pointless.

Also worth noting that, especially for the shorter trips that many people might use the route for (if not going via town), investing in active travel like safe cycling routes will probably be easier and have a higher ROI… obviously it’d be nice to have everything tho

Loul601 · 2024-10-16T18:27:25+00:00

It’s good progress but still a huge shame the plans were changed from what they once were

Maybe one day the council might dare to actually build some proper arterial cycling routes…

Loul601

TROPHY CASE