In New York, ‘reservation scalpers’ are making $80,000 a year, but I’m banking on a neighbour’s generosity

The land of restaurants is increasingly paradoxical. Every day, good ones close. Running costs are punitive and broke customers are eating at home more often. Yet still there are places where it’s next to impossible to bag a table; where to have even the remotest chance of doing so requires near superhuman levels of patience and determination, as well as no other demands whatsoever on your time – including paid employment.

I laughed when I read in the New Yorker ’s annual food issue of the “ reservation scalpers ” who make $80,000 a year by hoarding bookings to then sell them on to the desperate-to-be-there rich. Only in Manhattan, I thought. But this didn’t stop me. Just moments later, I was urging my neighbour, Sue, who is to restaurants what Harry Houdini once was to padlocks and straitjackets – just you watch her bust her way in! – to try to get us a table at X (I won’t say its name, for obvious reasons). Sue is also a hoarder of reservations, with the key difference that she then shares them with (I flatter myself) beloved friends at no extra charge. So now we’re on tenterhooks, waiting and hoping – and hoping and waiting – for the hottest Sunday lunch in town.

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Conservative supporters are hard to find in this area of Sheffield, but Lib Dems say Labour are taking these voters for granted

• Labour may fail to grab target seats as young voters turn away over Gaza and climate

On the high street of Crookes, a leafy hillside suburb of Sheffield with a large student population, there were plenty of people saying they would vote Labour at the next general election – but most weren’t too happy about it.

“It feels like the lesser of two evils – it’s definitely better than going back to what we’ve got,” said Amy Pattison, a 24-year-old occupational therapy student at Sheffield Hallam university. “All I know is I won’t be voting Tory. And whatever I do vote will be tactical.”

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What started out as a small protest escalated into a decade-long battle between the council and hundreds of ordinary people who decided to take radical action to save their city’s trees

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MVL Properties are granted licence to run venue that helped launch careers of bands such as Pulp and Arctic Monkeys

A public campaign to stop the owners of one of Sheffield’s best-loved music venues from being granted a licence to run it has failed.

On Friday, Sheffield city council granted a shadow licence to MVL Properties, the owners of the Leadmill venue, which will allow them to take over the running of the venue from its current operator, Phil Mills, should they be successful in evicting him.

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Licensing hearing will decide whether multi-city Electric Group can run venue after serving eviction notice on longstanding leaseholder

People in Sheffield have protested against what they call a “hostile takeover” of one of the city’s best-known music venues.

About 100 people gathered outside Sheffield town hall on the first of a two-day licensing hearing to decide the future of the Leadmill, which helped launch the careers of Pulp, Arctic Monkeys and Self Esteem.

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