I'm a queer woman who, over the last year, has become a pretty big football fan. It means this World Cup I actually feel invested in the outcome for once, and would enjoy watching some of the matches! Except it's being held in a country where people like me can be locked up just for loving someone of the same gender. So I was glad to hear European Captains planned to wear the OneLove armband as a stance against discrimination. And then saddened when, ahead of the first England match, they had to back down or risk being booked. German Minister Nancy Faeser wore the band during her country's match against Japan. It's a symbol of solidarity that could mean a lot to LGBTQ+ people in Qatar and around the world, so I've set up a petition asking any UK politicians who go to Qatar - in either an official or unofficial capacity - to commit to wearing the armband too. It might be too late to change things for this World Cup, but we can at least ask those in power who go along to send a message to FIFA: You claim to stand against discrimination based on sexual orientation, but you’re acting like you’ve forgotten that. The rest of us haven't, and we're not going to let you forget it.

There are real concerns surrounding the rampant institutional racism and discrimination that plague the cultural sector. Many prominent British cultural institutions have built the bulk of their collections on the back of colonisation and their interpretation continues to tell stories tainted with imperialism. As well as failing to address the legacy of colonialism, as employers, many museums galleries and heritage sites perpetuate a system of discrimination against PCS members who identify as Black, Women, Disabled or LGBT+.  2020 saw another outcry against racism in the Black Lives Matters demonstration following the murder of George Floyd. Numerous cultural institutions declared their support for the Black Lives Matter movement very publicly. However, this public support has failed to make a difference to our Black PCS members who are disproportionately employed on unstable, zero hour or fixed terms contracts.  Our union members who identify as Black, who are cleaners, security guards, and gallery/museum assistants continued to go to work as ‘essential workers’ putting their and their family’s lives at risk. In the Autumn, it also became evident that the redundancies at Tate, the Southbank Centre and Historic Royal Palaces disproportionately affected Black workers. Finally, a number of our Black reps and members have been at the receiving end of discrimination and victimisation when they have spoken out against racism and bullying. This worrying trend was exposed at Historical Royal Palaces. In Summer 2020 then in December 2020, PCS Black Culture Group reps wrote to many employers in the sector with demands to improve race equality in the workplace. Very few meaningful responses have been received. Those demands were: • Eliminate the racial pay gap, openly publish this information and draw up a plan to eliminate it. • Establish protections against privatisation, casualisation, exploitation, overwork and support for mental health.  • Put in place hiring committees that have clear guidelines, accountability mechanisms and training in place to consider issues around race and equality. Black members should be on such committees.  • Implement anti-discriminatory support measures for Black staff and put in place a set of accountable, procedures for promotion, including an external review process. • Improve dedicated anti-racism training and make it mandatory for all levels of staff, entailing ongoing refreshers. • Record racial breakdowns of disciplinary investigations and outcomes, publish the results and draw up plans to eliminate any bias. *Black: PCS uses the term black in the political context to apply to people from African and Asian diasporas, including people of dual heritage.

The petition is important to help to give the overall views of all BAME people in the UK rather than considering a small sample given by the commissioners in the report. Our BAME HUB-UK NETWORK organisation believes that BAME is a single entity that embodies all the ethnic minorities group as an umbrella which express our concerns related to structural and systemic inequalities, injustice and neglect. BAME HUB-UK NETWORK is also empowering and advocating for BAME communities and their families. Nations progress when all its people are involved in a collective endeavour to develop and cooperate. The word BAME and its activities should be retained and supported to achieve these noble objectives which not only help BAME members but also the wellbeing and understand of the nation at large. In BAME HUB-UK NETWORK we don't ask for any special favours but equal opportunities and fair treatment of all that is inclusive of our culture and religious needs.

Educating younger children about the LGBTQ+ community would help children to feel more comfortable and familiar with themselves when growing up and would help them to identify with themselves without feeling like they have to hide their feelings. It would also help to normalise it and prevent homophobia from a young age.

Amazon workers have worked under dangerous conditions through the Covid pandemic to fulfil all our orders. While the workers get minimum wages they have increased the Amazon owner's wealth by $79 billion in less than one year and Jeff Bezos is now worth nearly $200 billion. Surely his workers need to be properly rewarded and so we are calling on Jeff Bezos to give his workers the recognition they deserve and pay them a Christmas bonus of £5,000. This may sound generous but it is just loose change compared to the wealth they have made for Jeff himself.

Deserve to be treated equally and with dignity as the population is asked to stay at home where possible

Homelessness is a not a choice.

“I’ve worked in social care for a long time and I love my job. Each day is different and I still find new situations that I’ve not experienced before, where I’ve had to think on my feet and adapt, in order to give the person I’m supporting their best quality of life. I believe this has made me an expert in what I do. When the first lock-down came along, I had to make a decision about how I would care for and protect my children. I am a single parent and my eldest has autism and a few other conditions which leave him with a weaker immune system. Not working wasn’t a financial option. Also, I would lose relationships with the people I support and would have felt I was letting my team down. In the end, for me to be able to continue to work and protect my children, I made the difficult decision to move my kids in with my parents. I’m highly trained and have a lot of experience behind me. The job I do is intricate, but I don’t get paid enough for the responsibilities I undertake. It’s kind of soul destroying. This is my chosen career because I want to help others, but the wage is not enough and I struggle financially. It’s not fair.” Beth The pandemic has shown just how much we rely on our nation's 1.52m care workers and the risks they take to fulfil their role to the people they support and to society. But they're not given the rate of pay that they deserve; few front-line care workers get above the national living wage. Non-profit social care providers are paid by local authorities to deliver vital support to vulnerable people. But the amount social care providers receive isn't enough to pay care workers a minimum of the Real Living Wage. We urge Government to provide additional funding to ensure care workers receive a minimum of the Real Living Wage. The Government is putting together its Build Back Better plan for social care and NHS - social care worker pay simply must be a priority. Please sign and share this petition today and show Government how much the country is behind our care workers.

We, the undersigned would like to offer a differing opinion to the 8,000 complaints we understand that you’ve had regarding the airing of the performance by the dance troupe Diversity on the show Britain’s Got Talent. We live in exceptionally trying times, for sure, but the issue that is coming to the fore, possibly fuelled by Covid 19, but certainly for many people, fuelled by Brexit, is the understanding that we do live in a society that is inherently racist. Incidents in America have certainly helped bring this into sharper focus, but government actions over Windrush and even this week, over Grenfell should bring into sharp relief that people of colour in this country still face issues of institutional racism. These ideas are fuelled by the way our press reports issues around migration and it’s that reporting that should bear more investigation, as without a doubt, it fuels hatred. The way the press have reported and tried to portray the Black Lives Matter protests as some sort of anarchist organisation prone to violence, whilst largely playing down the “statue defenders” who are actively far right organisations who are gaining traction in this country because of the manner in which populist right wing politics is reported. Black Live Matter is a moral statement, it’s not an extremist ideology. The performance by Diversity was written to reflect the times we live in, nationally and internationally, references to the current Covid 19 situation and the heroics of the key workers, particularly the NHS, appear to have been welcomed, but the point about police violence appears to have made many viewers feel uncomfortable, yet we know that again and again the police, as an institution in this country, have been accused of being institutionally racist, have used racial profiling and after the death of Stephen Lawrence, a full scale report by Sir William McPhearson, over 20 years ago, regarding the nature of institutional racism in the Met Police force; we are not, of course, saying that all police officers are racist, but they do unfortunately stand to be judged, by the manner of their own profiling, by the manner with which some racist cops behave. We’ve also seen the Kick It Out campaign to highlight this blight on the national game. Most work places now work hard to promote equality and diversity, with some going so far as to sack people known to have shown actively racist behaviours, so whether some people like it or not, we think we can confidently say that structural racism is at least recognised within society. The mediums of dance and storytelling have a strong tradition in British Culture and our Arts and entertainment sector has often promoted or provoked necessary questions, both nationally and internationally. Now is not the time to be squeamish. With this in mind, we feel that no action should be taken against the production Britain’s Got Talent, for providing a platform for this point to be made. Considering the reaction, the point clearly still needs to be made.

Britain’s citizenship test is broken and misleading - it ignores the vital role that Black and Brown people played in ending British slavery and colonisation. This white-washing of British history helps to fuel and solidify institutional racism in Britain today. Already more than 175 historians have signed an open letter calling on the government to remove the “misleading and false” representations of slavery and empire from the test. Everyone who wants British citizenship, has to take the ‘Life in the UK’ test. The handbook that helps prepare people for the test states things like: “...by the second part of the 20th century, there was, for the most part, an orderly transition from empire to Commonwealth, with countries being granted their independence”. In fact Decolonisation was often a violent process and people in the colonies had to fight hard for their independence. The British Citizenship test promotes the view the British empire came to and because British officials decided it was the right thing to do. Similarly the abolition of Slavery is presented as a British achievement and doesn’t mentioned the role enslaved people played in abolishing slavery.

Because they worked tirelessly during the pandemic..some of them didn’t see their families for weeks on end.. they sat with our sick and dying when no one was allowed in..if they don’t deserve it who does?

The use of Stop and Search by police against Black people in Dorset has reached unprecedented levels. Black people are now 31 times more likely than white people to be stopped under these powers. This is the highest rate of Stop and Search of an ethnic group of any police force in the country. It is also a 100 per cent increase in Dorset over the past two years.