I believe it is the will of the People!

This petition has been amended to correct an error, to incorporate new information and to add this new development: On the 8th May 2018, the government announced a consultation on 'litter officers' and is asking for your views. Please sign this petition and then see the government DEFRA consultation page to make yourselves heard. The 1990 Environmental Protection Act is being misused for profit by Kirklees Council and its controversial private outsourcing firm Kingdom Security. The following cases are a small sample of what is happening across the UK in each of the 30+ areas where councils have initiated a ‘litter policing’ scheme by outsourcing to Kingdom. These cases highlight some of the ways in which our rights are being abused by local councils in the pursuit of shared revenue. They also highlight some of the dangers of local authorities outsourcing to private companies, abandoning oversight and disregarding responsibility; and illustrate why Kirklees should immediately cancel its contract with Kingdom. Imagine your elderly mother is leaving a shop and is suddenly cornered by two strange men demanding she give them £75 and her personal details because they say her receipt fell out of her bag as she left the shop. They are not policemen and they do not look or act like professionals, so she tries to ignore them but they stand in her way. They threaten her with the Police and the Courts if she does not 'comply' with them. They say they work for the Council. They do not tell her she has the right to remain silent but they do tell her she has no right to question them or to protest. How would she feel? Imagine you're in the park, peacefully feeding the ducks, and two of these 'officers', equipped with little more than a basic security check and a lanyard, loom over you to demand the same because they say feeding the ducks is littering. They intend to issue you with a Fixed Penalty Notice (FPN) for an environmental 'offence'. You protest at such a ludicrous interpretation of the Act and try to leave. They follow you, demanding you comply. People are stopping to stare and listen. How would you feel? You come home to find your wife distraught after she and your two young children were followed in a car for ten minutes by a stranger demanding she pay £75 because she had stopped for a moment to shake something from her shoe. She was so scared and upset she had to seek shelter in a friend's house, when the Kingdom officer finally left her alone. How would you feel? That case was witnessed by a Welsh undercover reporter who expressed the discomfort he had felt while spying on the victim and following her. In the same report, an ex-employee described Kingdom’s pressure to achieve four FPNs a day. The staff issuing these fines are not trained police officers and they have no professional rigour or standards. They have little understanding of the law and they use no discretion in its application. They are frequently caught on camera denying people's own right to film them. They wear bodycams but record no evidence of alleged offences. They only start recording evidence once they cherry-pick a target, giving no protection against false accusations. One ex-employee said he made almost £1000 in financial incentives in one month. The system is ripe for exploitation and that is exactly what is happening. The dubious practices of Kingdom Security have also been the subject of countless other newspaper reports and a BBC Panorama documentary in May 2017, after which Kent Council suspended all their Kingdom staff. In addition, YouTube has hundreds of videos by shocked victims and witnesses which evidence the aggression, as well as the distress and the public disorder being caused. In one of these, a Kingdom 'officer' in Liverpool is chased off by a small crowd of shopkeepers, disgusted by his manhandling of a visibly frail, elderly man with learning difficulties.  This is what happens when police powers are given to members of the public. This is what happens when councils like Kirklees put profits before people. This is what happens when services are outsourced to private firms. Kirklees has already seen many complaints from its own residents, demanding to know why they are being intimidated, harassed, publicly humiliated and falsely accused on the council's behalf. A sham appeals process does not allow for the concept of innocence, since no evidence is apparently required; meaning victims are simply stonewalled with threats of court action. I have been falsely accused myself by Kingdom in a distressing, humiliating experience which felt like an assault. All protests were overridden with threats of the police and demands for personal information. I will be giving my testimony in court. Kirklees will not bully me. Pensioners, students, the unemployed, the homeless, people with learning difficulties and mental health issues: no distinction is made as Kirklees demands money with menaces from its already austerity-hit residents. In 2017, one of Kirklees' own councillors publicly cautioned them against Kingdom after personally witnessing a worrying incident in Huddersfield. In March 2018, following public protests by several campaign groups over the dubious tactics employed by Kingdom, Gwynedd Council in Wales halted a 12-month trial after just two days. Anglesey Council also suspended their contract in March. In May, Llandudno’s tourism chief stated that Kingdom are doing more harm than good to the town; underlined by another official’s description of the environment being created by Kingdom as ‘purely negative’. It is time for Kirklees to adopt some respect for the public it serves; to follow the lead of these councils and to end its contract with this unethical company. Kirklees needs to clean our streets of the Kingdom 'litter police'.

These images are plastered all over the tube, buses, bus shelters, newspapers, magazines etc. Subliminally de-sensitising young minds that this is ok and the norm. Young minds and easily manipulated minds that see the hero carries a gun or knife. There has been 11 fatal shootings already this year in London, and endless knife attacks resulting in fatalities not to mention acid attacks. Though this may not be considered an important change we need to change the influence culture has. We can't change the films and games themselves but we can change the way they are sold to us, glorifying killing. And these small changes will contribute to the change in society. I have started an instagram page documenting what I see called. https://www.instagram.com/gunsonthetube

Homelessness due to domestic violence is an issue which women are unable to control, these women often have nowhere else to go which is why they are resorted to living on the streets. Women on the streets are vulnerable, especially if they are pregnant or have dependent children, consequently, it is crucial for the government and local authorities to help eliminate this and recognise more women as homeless.

The legislation is harmful to those it affects and is a non sustainable method of supporting the homeless and those who rough sleep. We need more support distributed to those who are homeless, not to convict them and make them criminals.

The current policy of making payments to the bank account of one designated person in a household couple can create a situation of financial hardship in couples where domestic abuse is an issue. The current policy of being able to make an ‘application for special circumstances’ in which to request separate payments is likely to cause further friction in couples where domestic abuse is taking place, and the application is therefore unlikely to be made. We request a reverse of this policy so that it reverts to being the norm for individual payments to made with a ‘special circumstance request’ process available for couples who choose to designate a single payee.

There is no legal requirement for the prime minister to consult MPs before taking military action, or even to inform them. In 2007, shortly after entering No 10, Gordon Brown vowed to limit the Royal Prerogative under which the prime minister can unilaterally declare war. Parliament, Brown proposed, would be guaranteed the right to approve “significant, non-routine” deployments of the armed forces to “the greatest extent possible”. But absorbed by the 2008 financial crisis and the recession that followed, the government abandoned reform. Under the recent era of international relations and modern warfare catastrophic and irreparable damages to human and other life can be caused on errors of judgement. The constitutional powers, accordingly, need to be reviewed and renewed.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/01/arresting-kids-not-stop-knife-crime-stabbings-london In 2018, knife murders have become an epidemic and crisis in the UK. Young people are carrying knives as a means of defence, as a result of being exploited by organised crime or other complex social problems. There must be a robust response by the government as a priority in order to prevent a generation of young people's lives being destroyed.

This act has been successfully implemented in the US, targeting those malign actors (particularly in the employ of the Russian State) that utilise intimidation, fear mongering, thuggery, assassination and trolling to further their own ends, the ends of their state and avoid prosecution through the true rule of law. It targets them where they can be hurt the most: their wallets. Following the nerve agent attack in Salisbury on 4th March 18 the Russian State (as by far and away the most likely perpetrator) have taken yet another step towards exporting globalised intimidation, corruption and "warfare by other means". The Sunday Times has today (11th March 18) revealed that, despite promises from the Prime Minister in the 2016 election, "Russian oligarchs and their associates have registered donations of more than £820,000 to the Conservative Party since Theresa May became prime minister" (The Sunday Times - 11 March 18). The leading party in the UK Government has accepted money from the most likely state agent of this attack. As such they cannot be trusted, without pressure, to respond to this attack with the necessary "robustness" that they have promised. There are already calls from within the governing Conservative Party to "wait and collect evidence" so as not to "act disproportionately". The Russian State are reliant on such rigid adherence to "due process", knowing full well how to circumvent it and continue operating with impunity. This petition calls on all MPs in all parties to support the implementation of the Criminal Finances Act IN FULL and IMMEDIATELY as the only appropriate response to this heinous and egregious assault on our sovereignty and our safety. This will not stand, and while our politicians shuffle their feet, wring their hands and worry about their donations, we will act. For Sergei Skripal, his daughter and our own Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey who remains in a serious condition at this time, we raise this petition to force all politicians from all parties (including those financially incentivised to look the other way) to vote in favour of this act as a start to the UK's response to this attack on our people and our nation.

It is important to reduce the number of fatalities and encourage car drivers to be more vigilant careful , ,conscious and aware of motorcyclists . We would not accept the excuse that the driver had a temporary lapse of vision if he or she collided with a pedestrian . Making it safer for bikers and indeed cyclists is wholly achievable and I suggest it may help if the punishment for careless driving is increased.

Prison leaders, from local to national, presided over an “abject failure” to provide a safe, decent and purposeful regime at HMP Liverpool, according to Peter Clarke, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons. In a report outlining jail conditions that experienced inspectors regarded as the worst they could remember, Mr Clarke said it was “hard to understand how the leadership of the prison could have allowed the situation to deteriorate to this extent.” Inspectors found squalid living conditions, with dirt, litter, rats and cockroaches, and an environment in which drugs were easily available and violence had increased. Mr Clarke added: “While much of what we found was clearly the responsibility of local prison managers, there had been a broader organisational failure. We saw clear evidence that local prison managers had sought help from regional and national management to improve conditions they knew to be unacceptable long before our arrival, but the resulting support was inadequate and had made little impact on outcomes for prisoners.” HMP Liverpool is a local category B prison serving the Merseyside area. A traditional local jail with “a very strong sense of local identity”, it held 1,115 men at the time of the unannounced inspection in September 2017. It was last inspected in May 2015. Since then, the prison had deteriorated in terms of respect and purposeful activity and these elements were poor, the lowest possible assessment, in 2017. Safety and resettlement work, the two other key inspection tests, were judged as ‘not sufficiently good.’ However, Mr Clarke said, the bare statistics “do not adequately describe the abject failure of HMP Liverpool to offer a safe, decent and purposeful environment.” He identified key issues: Violence of all kinds had increased. Over a third of prisoners felt unsafe at the time of the inspection, and 71% felt unsafe at some time. Nearly two-thirds of prisoners said it was easy or very easy to obtain drugs. Drones carrying drugs and other illicit items were a substantial problem. Staff had recovered 32 drones in the six months before the inspection, more than one a week. Half of the prisoners were locked in their cells during the working day. There were also significant failings in the leadership and management of activities and in health care. There was a backlog of some 2,000 maintenance tasks and it was clear that facilities management at the prison “was in a parlous state.” Mr Clarke added: “The inspection team was highly experienced and could not recall having seen worse living conditions than those at HMP Liverpool. “Many cells were not fit to be used and should have been decommissioned. Some had emergency call bells that were not working but were nevertheless still occupied, presenting an obvious danger to prisoners. There were hundreds of unrepaired broken windows, with jagged glass left in the frames. Many lavatories were filthy, blocked or leaking. There were infestations of cockroaches in some areas, broken furniture, graffiti, damp and dirt. “I saw piles of rubbish that had clearly been there for a long time, and in which inspectors reported seeing rats on a regular basis. I was told by a senior member of staff that it had not been cleared by prisoners employed as cleaning orderlies because it presented a health and safety risk. It was so bad that external contractors were to be brought in to deal with it. In other words, this part of the jail had become so dirty, infested and hazardous to health that it could not be cleaned.” Mr Clarke was particularly troubled by the case of one vulnerable man with complex mental health needs being held in a cell that had no furniture other than a bed. “The windows of both the cell and the toilet recess were broken, the light fitting in his toilet was broken with wires exposed, the lavatory was filthy and appeared to be blocked, his sink was leaking and the cell was dark and damp. “Extraordinarily, this man had apparently been held in this condition for some weeks…It should not have needed my personal intervention for this man to be moved from such appalling conditions.” Inspectors could see “no credible plan” to address these basic problems. Mr Clarke said: “Although there are several change projects underway at the prison, none of these will address the basic failings that were so painfully obvious at HMP Liverpool. I was particularly concerned that there did not appear to be effective leadership or sufficiently rigorous external oversight to drive the prison forward in a meaningful way. This report makes it crystal clear that leaders at all levels, both within the prison and beyond, had presided over the failure to address the concerns raised at the last inspection.” Michael Spurr, Chief Executive of Her Majesty’s Prison & Probation Service, said: “The conditions which Inspectors found at Liverpool were unacceptable and effective measures should have been taken to deal with the issues at a much earlier stage. We are committed to fixing this, have already made changes where we can, and have today published a comprehensive action plan to address the Chief Inspector’s concerns.Following the Inspection we took immediate action to rectify the situation. A new Governor has been appointed and a strengthened management team is in place; capacity has been reduced by 172 places; over 700 prisoners now have a named Prison Officer as their ‘Key Worker’; cleanliness has been improved and the maintenance backlog has been almost halved. Liverpool has a dedicated staff who are committed to providing a safe and decent environment for prisoners. The Governor will get the support she needs to deliver the action plan and make the changes necessary to substantially improve the performance and conditions at the prison.”

The current insurance system is broken. The more crime there is, the more premiums increase, and yet none of that money is ever used to prevent crime. It is not in the insurance companies interest to reduce crime, because that would mean they would have to lower their premiums (and hence profits), rather than increasing them every year. I propose a special tax should be levied on insurance companies, and that the money raised should be fed back into the Police's budget to put more officers on the ground, thus reducing crime. It would be a win for the good people of this country, and a win for the police. The only people that stand to lose anything by this arrangement would be the insurance companies, and I seriously doubt anyone really cares for their profit margins! As an example, my car insurance has increased by £400 this year. I haven't moved, I haven't had an accident - it's simply down to the fact that the area I live in has seen a spate of thefts. Surely, that £400 would be better spent on police, rather that ending up in the coffers of some insurance company.