To encourage wealthy global organisations to be proud of taking an ethical stance and making this part of their branding, taking a lead in changing the world so that every man, woman and child associated with their supply chains can make a living wage.

This will save the average consumer around £180 to £200 per year as many (myself included) only have a fixed phone line service into my house because I have to in order to make it possible for broadband to be delivered. In many cases, the phone service is more expensive than the broadband. There is absolutely no technical reason why this service could not be turned off and as long as there is a copper pair into the property, the broadband will still work as well as it does now. We are effectively being held to ransom by telcos if we want fixed line broadband. This also affects most domestic, so called "fibre optic" broadband as this service is still delivered to the property over the copper wires. Whilst we cannot realistically expect that the provision and maintenance of the copper network can be carried out for free, Ofcom should look at what is fair pricing for the provision of a "naked" copper pair with only broadband provided over it and the removal of the obligation to have a fixed landline telephone service to the home as a large percentage would prefer to remove this option if they were given the choice.

In the light of recent events many ethnic minorities and religions are being targeted with vitriolic hate. People with differing sexual preferences are targets and there are more and more calls for violence against people who stand up for common decency standards. Comments such as "let them die because they will only grow up to be future terrorists" after the recent massacre of children in Pakistan are not seen to violate the current standards yet someone who has posted a photo breastfeeding their child is removed. Pages that posts, often incorrect, photographs targeting religions that then incite a whole raft of comments such as "drag the lorries over razor blades" in relation to a photo about illegal immigrants (which was actually refugees in a totally different part of the world), "maybe a sniper aimed at Downing Street/The White House will do the job" and "put them on a boat, tow them out to sea and let the Navy have target practise" are all acceptable according to Facebook's Community Standards yet a brave lady who tattooed her body to try and remove the taboo about a mastectomy isn't. A page that suggested that anyone who is gay should be ostracised, allowing boys to play with dolls will "turn them gay" and is "psychological abuse" is allowed to continue spreading hate. There are many more examples such as these but they don't violate the Community Standards! One photograph (whilst innocent enough) had the names of people opposed to the page in the comments with the suggestion that the page's likers "fight fire with fire - go get them" didn't initially break Facebook standards (until they were pushed to look beyond the photograph. Even then it had taken a week and the people listed had received hate mail and threatening, abusive comments from followers of these pages). I am asking Facebook to reconsider their community standards because I believe there will be more and more violence towards innocent people simply because they are part of a religion or their sexual preferences are different or they have a different point of view. To me this is totally unacceptable and needs to be looked into however a big company such as Faebook won't do anything about it unless enough people tell them it is unacceptable.

London is one of the most expensive, and unequal cities in the world. It hosts more billionaires than any other city whilst millions of people are forced to get by on poverty wages. The London Living Wage (LLW) is meant to afford people the opportunity to provide for themselves and their families with the essentials of life and to achieve an adequate level of warmth and shelter, a healthy palatable diet, social integration and avoidance of chronic stress. That is why everyone should be paid at least the LLW. The LLW is set annually by the Living Wage Foundation and calculated by the Greater London Authority. It currently stands at £9.15 per hour. Sotheby’s The cleaners at Sotheby’s, the world’s largest art business, are contracted out and only paid £8.55 p/hour despite Sotheby’s only employing around 1,500 staff members and dishing out around £150 million in wages between them. In fact, the cleaners at Sotheby’s recently received a pay cut from £8.80 p/hour to £8.55 p/hour being told that if they didn’t accept it their jobs would be at risk, despite Sotheby’s spending an extra £13 million on wages compared to last year. As such, the cleaners are really picking up the crumbs. Sotheby’s also uses unpaid interns to help run its business which is both morally reprehensible and legally questionable. Topshop Topshop only pays £6.50 to their cleaners, who are also contracted out. This is despite the fact that the Arcadia Group, the parent group of Topshop, recorded profits of £481m in 2013. Philip Green is also a renowned tax evader, uses sweatshops in Mauritius, and even uses factories in Britain in which workers are paid less than half the legal minimum wage according to a Channel 4 Dispatches. Barbican Centre The cleaners at the Barbican Centre, who are also contracted out, won the LLW in 2013 after a year long campaign. However, the Corporation of London (who owns the Barbican Centre) has refused to increase the LLW to the current rate of £9.15 p/hour. Quotes from cleaners (all wish to remain anonymous) A cleaner from Topshop says: “Earning only £6.50 per hour means I have to work so many hours a day to pay my bills that I barely have time to see my children. It also means I can’t afford to travel by tube and need to spend several hours a day on the bus just to get to and from work.” A cleaner from Sotheby’s says: “Working so hard that my joints hurt, for so little for a company that makes so much money is just not fair. Our wages should be enough to cover the basic costs of living in London, and they simply aren't." A cleaner at the Barbican Centre says: "After having fought so hard to win the Living Wage, to now be told that we won't be paid it is just tragic. We will have to go back once again and fight for the Living Wage.” The cleaners at Topshop, Sotheby's and Barbican Centre are members of the trade union United Voices of the World (UVW).

This is important because there are still many people that want their entire music collection on one device without the constant distractions of the notifications we receive constantly on a connected devicee. Considering the profits you make Apple, could you not, in this instance, think about keeping this section of valued customers happy, even if the revenue levels are not meeting your bean counters' approval.

B&Q have refused to make any contribution towards this cause, despite being contacted and invited to do so. They are using photos of the amazing work done by these volunteers for their own commercial gain without any concern about how they are exploiting a fundraising activity for a much loved local cancer care hospice. Other local businesses have donated towards the display and their products are being shown as if they were from B&Q. ******************************* IMPORTANT UPDATE ******************************* B&Q have responded to the petition and made a donation of £8,000. Please read the statement below from Colin and Alex Colin, Alex and all the team who help with the 1 Longford Road Christmas Lights are delighted that B&Q have finally accepted the moral responsibility to support the charitable cause the lights are in aid of. We are truly grateful for the initial payment of £8,000 and hope that B&Q, who have only made this gesture following over 3,000 people signing the online petition, will honour all that people have asked for and fully match the donations made by the general public. We would like to thank everyone who has signed the petition to date, and would encourage people to continue to sign the petition to help remind B&Q what the people have said on this. Alex, Colin, Sarah and the rest of the team would like to thank everyone who supported putting pressure on B&Q to make a donation and of course to B&Q for then donating £8,000. A great result for Dorothy House! Many of you supported the call for B&Q to match contributions made by the public but some of you felt that B&Q had now done their bit, albeit after your demonstration of support. The various messages have got through to B&Q so, everything considered, we are backing off from pushing further and concentrating on what this is all about and that's bringing a smile to faces and raising money for a great and deserving cause, Dorothy House. We must also mention that the Daily Mirror who ran the B&Q promotion in question are donating £1,000 for which we are also very grateful.

I believe this action will substantially reduce the number of 'cold calls' to households. Business callers are to declare their full names - first and second - plus the business or organisation they represent, and their formal position within it. I am fed up with cold calling as I am sure everybody else is. Cold calling is now something of an industry and some of these calls which tout for business are potentially fraudulent. How many innocent people have been scammed or duped over the phone, when they would otherwise have been spared this, if only they had been able to verify the identity of the caller? The concept of 'Name Is No Shame' equally applies to business letters written to members of the public and emails, where the full identity of the author has been withheld. Government it seems has done little if anything to stem the tide of unsolicited phone calls to the public; it is down to us to insist that they act. I am confident that if 'Name Is No Shame' becomes law and that it is mandatory for the business community to declare their identity in dealings with the general public, it will substantially reduce the number of 'cold calls' to households. Thank you.

Upon speaking to a call centre employee (based in India) he was forced to work overtime to make up time taken for 'holiday'; this may not seem like a big deal, but he has no holiday entitlement for the first 6 months of his employment contract with BSKYB (or whichever third party they are sub contracting the call centre work to)!!!… can you imagine anyone here in the UK having to endure that working arrangement? It's already bad enough that these multi-billion dollar corporations take jobs out of the British economy, and although workers in the developing world may not need equal pay scale don't we as fellow workers feel they at least deserve some basic working entitlements (for example accrued holiday earned via the hours they work)… Currently in India the statutory minimum is merely 1 days entitlement for every 20 days of work performed the previous year!!!… SHOCKING when you consider SKY TV has millions of customers here in Britain paying BIG MONEY every month into the coffers!!...

Everyone knows what is going on here and it is getting ridiculous: We talk about a "bad food environment" and yet there is little legislation to prevent the powerful retailers who supply most of our nutrition from using pernicious sales tack-ticks. Supermarkets know that will power is finite resource and the most effective way of getting customers to crack, is to tempt them with high sugar foods in close proximity for a long time. These counters are designed cause sugar cravings. They are deliberately overriding the consumers free will and in light of the obesity and diabetes pandemics it is a disgraceful business practice.

How many of you with a landline actually use it? Ofcom proposed an upto 8% cost reduction, yet the costs have just gone up by 6%+!! Ofcom produced a report that proposed the reduction in the costs of landline rentals over a number of years. At the time of the Ofcom report, 11th July 2013, the wholesale cost of a landline was £93.27 per annum or £7.77 per month. These are phone lines rented from BT by the likes of Sky, and then re-sold to Sky subscribers at a cost of £196.80 per annum or £16.40 Ex VAT per month (current price after latest price rise). The current landline rental price from Sky Is £16.40 Ex VAT per month and that's a rise of 6.49% on last years cost - yet Ofcom proposed a reduction in these rental costs! Ofcom stated in its published article 11th July 2013, and I quote: "Wholesale line rental: the regulated wholesale price today is £93.27 per year. Under Ofcom's proposals the prices will fall in real terms by between CPI - 2% and CPI - 8% every year" and if the proposal was successful the reduction in charges would come into effect on 1 April 2014 and run until 31 March 2017. CPI = Consumer Price Index. See full details of Ofcom's proposals here:http://media.ofcom.org.uk/news/2013/new-prices-for-landline-and-broadband-services/ What happened to Ofcom's proposals as monthly costs for landlines are still rising? Perhaps this text below explains the price rises?! According to a BBC article; Latest figures from the regulator, Ofcom, show that consumers spent three billion minutes fewer on their landlines in the year to June 2014, a reduction of 12.7% in one year alone. As a result, operators lost out on £85m of revenue compared with the previous year. "Call volumes are declining," said James Barford of Enders Analysis. "People are using Facebook or WhatsApp, or even email if they're a little old-fashioned, so operators are having to recover their costs from increased line rental," he added. see full article here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30251029 The landline price increases: Sky: up by 6.49% to £16.40 a month BT: up 6.25% to £16.99 Virgin Media: up 6.25% to £16.99 Talk Talk: up 4.7% to £16.70 Why are the costs of landlines still rising and what happened to Ofcom's proposals to reduce the costs of landlines? We all understand that companies have to make money but making a margin of £103.53 per year, per landline, per customer is scandalous, especially when the likes of Sky do not have to do any work or maintain the landline, as they pass this job back to BT. We do understand there are processing costs associated with these charges though!! Let's put this into context:- SKY have 5.3 million subscribers who need a landline to receive the full TV service from Sky and use their broadband services. So, all the subscribers have a phone line, thats 5,300,000 x £103.53 (Sky's margin on landlines) = £548,709,000.00 income from landlines per year! That's over HALF A BILLION plus revenue, per year from landline charges! BT, Virgin and Talk Talk are making vast amounts of money as well from landline rentals per month. There where as of December 2013 - 22.6 Million residential and SME broadband connections - do the maths at £103.53 margin per connection! See full details here: http://media.ofcom.org.uk/facts/ 'Margin' is the amount of money made by Sky when charging for a landline:£16.40 x 12 = £196.80 less the £93.27 quoted by Ofcom = £103.53 Margin. What about the elderly that don't have SKY TV or Talk Talk TV or BT TV/Sports? These are people that need a landline to stay in contact with family and the outside world? The fact that it costs them £16.99 + VAT per month or £203.88 +VAT per annum for a landline from BT is outrageous. Is it any wonder some elderly people will not put the heating on? They probably can't afford it when they are paying £16.99 + VAT a month NOT TO TALK! In 1995 BT ran an advertising campaign with the late great Bob Hoskins and the strap line was "It's good to talk". Their next advert should use No Doubt's song 'Don't Speak' as the backing track and they should have a Dick Turpin character holding a sign with the strap line "It's great for us!" or they could pay Bork to use her version of the song 'It's Oh So Quiet" with an elderly person in a cold house, staring at the landline telephone!! The more people that sign the petition the better. "Come on BT, Sky, Talk Talk and Virgin, show some community spirit and immediately reduce the costs for landlines for the elderly and for those who need landlines to communicate with the outside world because they are house bound. Individually we can moan about the costs of landlines, sign the petition and collectively we could get cost reductions as proposed by Ofcom. Please sign. Thank You Philip Smith-Lawrence

The mostly Spanish-speaking workers are employed on pitiful wages to clean Saatchis' offices because the work was outsourced to COC. The cleaners have no resources or understanding of the byzantine system they are in, and the costs of mounting an employment claim are far beyond them. Saatchis are an extremely rich corporation and, by outsourcing the work to a firm that has failed because it did not pay the taxes it owed, they retain a huge moral responsibility to make good the damage done by their own policy. They must be shamed into paying up! A typical example of the workers affected is Francisco Javer Horedia, who earns the princely sum of £800 a month from two cleaning jobs: 15 hours a week at Saatchis and 12.5 hours at another firm; he is unable to find full-time work. Could you survive on such wages? More details on the workers and their situation can be found here; http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/dec/07/saatchi-cleaners-fight-unpaid-wages-low-pay

Five Quarter want use the North East as a testbed for undersea coal gasification (UCG), an experimental method of squeezing out the remaining drops of coal. They have received licences to test down the NE coast from Amble to Hartlepool. Five-Quarter claim that what they are planning is Deep Gas Winning. They admit that the rocks around the gasification chamber will fracture. This means they are fracking as well as gasifying. In tests run in Australia UCG wells were found to leak the same substances to groundwater as can be released by fracking. There are dangers of blowbacks and explosions. Many test have failed. It has never been used on a commercial basis. The gas produced is syngas or coal gas. It is a mixture of methane (natural gas), carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and hydrogen. They plan to pump it back into the hole they have made using Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). This is another process that has not been fully tested. Surely it would be better to use renewables and not produce the CO2 in the first place? There is of course the carrot of job creation. Any jobs created by UCG/fracking will be highly specialized. However, if the same amounts of money were to be invested in renewable energies and/or home and public building insulation, which the public have been shown to prefer as the majority of surveys have shown. There would be far more new jobs and far fewer environmental concerns. We don't want our coastlines to die.