Xplore are proposing two alternative routes to the 32/33 bus which would cut out Forfar Road. Their consultation highlights that the route could also stay as it is. You can see the proposed two route changes at this link http://nxbus.co.uk/files/NXDundee/misc/FintryRouteReview-PublicConsultationDocument.pdf This re-routing would severely restrict people's ability for travel: • make it harder for people with disabilities and older people with mobility problems to catch a bus and get out of the house, potentially leading to loneliness and social isolation • safety concerns of having to work through a scheme to get to/and from the bus • get to and from work • visit friends and relatives • access education and training • access to hospitals, doctors, dentists and other medical services • access to leisure activities including town and countryside locations Fewer buses on the road will mean more traffic congestion and delays which affects all of us.

In hindsight, it is recognised that the Beeching closures in the 1960s went too far as many larger settlements lost a very valuable lifeline to the national rail system leading to an explosion in motor vehicles for leisure and work and an equal increase in new road expansion and air pollution. The City Region hubs of commerce are now gridlocked in the peaks leading to high levels of air pollution from wear dust and exhaust emissions. 430,000 tons of tyre dust alone is produced annually from 50 million tyres. Particulate size less than ten microns become airborne and inhaled by all mammals and are small enough to reach the deepest parts of lungs causing pulmonary and coronary disease. Tyre wear dust also has a carcinogenic and mutatogenic effect on tissue cells contributing to 50,000 premature deaths annually from road traffic pollution. Many closed railway lines within urban areas are now essential in reducing city and town centre congestion and pollution. It is a known fact that bus usage has reduced at the same rate as rail footfall has increased in the last ten years to a point where more rail routes are desperately needed to increase capacity and opportunity to use rail. Rail is the preferred mode of transport in urban and inter urban travel and as such can encourage modal shift away from car by reducing travel time. There has been an increase in new rail route investment in Scotland and Wales, in the last fifteen years but not in England outside London. The Campaign for Better Transport has identified routes in every Region in England that would benefit local communities by being reinstated increasing connectivity and social inclusion with the rest of the UK. The Government would do well to take notice of Campaign for Better Transport's list of preferred reinstatements.

With the opening of the tolled Mersey Gateway Bridge, and the tolling of the Silver Jubilee Bridge and the Mersey Tunnels, there are now four toll ‘barriers’ along a substantial length of the Mersey which effectively divide the Region into two. These toll barriers damage both the local and wider economies and divide communities, families and friends. As the City Mayor said in his election manifesto of April 2017 “We are the only City Region in Europe where in the future all cross-river traffic movements will be subject to expensive tolls...… we need to ensure that our river ceases to be a barrier to movement and commerce.” Mersey Tunnels The region has been subjected to tolls since the end of 1933, when the tunnel from Birkenhead to Liverpool was opened to traffic. The £7 million cost of the tunnel was supposed to be shared between the Government, the local authorities and the users of the tunnels. The tolls were only intended to be for a limited period and should have ended before 1950. They did not. A second tunnel was opened in 1971, the twin-tube tunnel between Wallasey and Liverpool, at a cost of £37 million. This too was tolled and both the Queensway and Kingsway Tunnel toll charges have continued increasing ever since. During 2016, the total Tunnel tolls collected passed the one billion pounds mark. The tolls collected to date are now 23 times the original construction costs of the two tunnels. Money has been wasted on a vast scale and the Tunnels have been used as a cash cow to fund other activities. The two Mersey Tunnels provide important economic strategic links and they should be taken over by Highways England and funded from existing road-use taxes and not from tolls. Silver Jubilee Bridge This bridge linking the north bank of the Mersey at Widnes with the south bank at Runcorn was opened in 1961 and carried the A533. The £3 million cost was mainly met by the Government with contributions from Cheshire and Lancashire County Councils. It was never tolled in its 56 year history. It has now been closed to traffic and when it reopens it will become a tolled bridge crossing, making it the only free bridge crossing in Britain ever to have a toll imposed upon it. We want the plan to toll the bridge to be immediately abandoned. The bridge maintenance and repairs should be financed in the same way as it has been for over half a century – from Government highways grants. Mersey Gateway Bridge This bridge opened to traffic from midnight on the 13th October 2017. It is a tolled bridge crossing. There are many issues with this scheme, but we will mention just two. The Council and Government said that all such new bridges have to be tolled, but a larger bridge over the Forth was opened by the Queen in September 2017 and is not tolled. In fact most 'estuarial' crossings in Britain are not tolled, including all those in North Wales and the numerous Thames crossings in the Greater London Authority area, and of course the Silver Jubilee Bridge was not tolled when it opened in 1961 and has remained untolled – till now. The other issue is the effect on congestion in the wider North West road network. The tolling of the Mersey Gateway Bridge means that a significant number of drivers and businesses will actively avoid using it and are diverting to areas with free bridge crossings several miles upriver, adding to and even causing congestion in the greater road network in those areas. We want the Government to buy-out the private finance contract. This is likely to cost no more than the Government are already committed to spend to support the Gateway tolls, and the cost would be less than one week of one year of the taxes on drivers. The bridge should then be maintained by Highways England as part of the national road network.

The Bank of England's policy making committees make decisions which have a huge impact on everyone in Britain, yet their members come from a narrow range of backgrounds. Over the last decade, the Bank’s policies have disproportionately benefited the wealthiest in society, while doing very little for the rest of us. [1] Unless its most powerful committees are representative of society as a whole, they won’t fully understand how every community is affected by their decisions. 75% of those on the Monetary Policy Committee, which is in charge of setting interest rates and policy such as quantitative easing, were working in the City or for large companies before taking up their post. There are no members with recent experience working on behalf of the interests of the rest of society, such as in trade unions or civil society organisations. And out of the 23 members on the Bank’s most important committees, only two are female, and BAME communities are underrepresented. Appointments to the Bank’s most senior positions are made by the Chancellor. We support Chair of the Treasury Select Committee, Nicky Morgan MP's recent call for Philip Hammond to seek out and appoint a more diverse range of candidates. ----- [1] Researchers at civil society organisations like Positive Money have shown that quantitative easing and low interest rates - the Bank of England’s main policy responses to the crash - have benefited the richest households by almost 200 times as much as the poorest. See our website for more details.

The Directors of Airedale NHS Trust are about to transfer the staff who run hospital buildings, grounds and purchasing departments into a private company. This private company can only provide cheaper services to the hospital if it cuts corners, or cuts jobs, pay and working conditions. Lower pay and increased work will hit the morale of already overstretched NHS staff, making it hard for their families to make ends meet and the whole community. Hospital staff should be thinking about how to provide the best service for patients, not worrying about how they’re going to pay the bills. The NHS is not only a provider of health care for all, free at the point of need but an important provider of good quality, fairly paid jobs.

This is important because the cafe has been part of all our childhood and a huge amount of people have happy memories of this cafe. LLP Properties should be held accountable to explain why they are driving out our town’s local businesses and forcing the local people out of jobs which they need to support their own families too. NLC should be doing more to help local businesses NOT helping and standing by and watching them close down. Our home town is slowly dying due to the total greed by this company’s attitude towards its residents who are trying to make a living and serve a community. Start to think about folks livelihoods NOT bank balances for your own self gain. We the people of Motherwell demand that you withdraw the outrageous hike towards our town’s businesses. We demand it NOW!

This will be detrimental to all of the stalls, financially and through loss of footfall. During the work we will be expected to trade on what will basically be a building site. Some of the older traders have been through this before and do not want to repeat it again. With this uncertainty those who want to retire are finding that their business is un sellable. The empty stalls are not being taken up as no one wants to invest in something that might not be worth anything if they make us move. A lot of traders have within the last 2 years invested a lot of money into their stalls. If we have to move there is no guarantee that we will own our stall, but more likely that we will have to rent it from the council, meaning that we all loss what is the biggest asset of the business. The chip, fish, meat, etc stalls have specialist equipment that is not sellable or moveable. It seems that the council officers are throwing away good money / tax payers money on something that has been shown by other markets that doesn’t work. As stall holders we would prefer that the money was used to regenerate the market in its current location, to pay for a reasonable cleaning and maintance schedule (which they apparently do, but we see no signs of it), and a competent market manager.

This station is on the mainline route from Swansea/Cardiff to Manchester and Holyhead, and serves a huge area of Monmouthshire and South Powys, the Brecon Beacons and Black Mountains as well as the town of Abergavenny. There are 2 ways to reach the far platform at Abergavenny. One is by a steep footbridge which has 45 steps and is difficult to negotiate, especially in bad weather. The other is to cross the line, accompanied by a member of staff. If you wish to do the latter, then you are expected to phone to notify your request to travel at least 24 hours beforehand. If you wish to travel out of office hours, there will be no members of staff at the station and you are dependent on the guard or the driver of the arriving train to accompany you across the line. So much for spontaneity of travel for many people! We want a bridge with passenger lifts to give full access for disabled passengers, older people and those with heavy luggage. 30% of the population in Monmouthshire is over 60. We were granted the money and planning permission for the bridge about 5 years ago. It never happened because Network Rail could not work out what to do about the position of the signal because the driver’s view of it would be blocked by the new bridge. We demand that Network Rail solve this problem, find the resources and, either replace or resite the signal in order that work on a bridge and lifts can commence. This is not just important to local people; Abergavenny station is used by visitors to major events such as The Food Festival and the Green Man Festival, the Hay Festival, and the 2016 National Eisteddfod. All these events bring visitors and revenue into the area. If you believe, like the organisers of this petition, that this situation is not good enough and that there should be equal access for all at the station, please sign this petition.

Naked Soap Company is a small, local family business based in Dalgety Bay, Fife - dedicating to passionately making handmade bath products for or customers. We believe in creating safe, natural products whilst providing a local, friendly service, our customers are our shareholders, our shareholders are our employees - we are a true local cooperative working towards creating local jobs, boosting the local economy and providing high quality products. No global corporation should hold the power over small businesses due to a single word - a word that determines and personalises a business. Yes, it may be easy to change a business name, but if that name encompasses the business' personality, it's ethics and it's origins then it's not an option at all. Corporations should not be able to determine the future over local business due to a single term. We want the IPO to tighten the rules on when oppositions can be made and the nature of such oppositions. Allowing global corporations to swamp local business in red tape, expensive legal action and threaten them with releasing their name should not be permitted. Stand by the Naked Soap Company in standing up against L'Oreal's bully tactics and prove that global corporations cannot eradicate the existence of local business.

Twickenham High Street has a high turnover of shops, and the dreaded 'Twickenham Refurbishment' sees many small independent shops constantly close down. Another Tesco is not required on the parade killing the few small independent shops that are already established at that end of the high street. What is needed in Twickenham is variety of shops to bring a higher social impact to the community and more people to the high street. This is not a good location for a Tesco which will have an adverse affect on traffic and noise for local residential neighbours. Numerous alternatives exist that would better serve the local community and strengthen its economy in these tough financial times. There are already 5 other Tesco's within a short distance of the proposed location. When the planning application is received, planning officers must notify the public or neighbours, and consult with other council departments and any other affected people or organisations. The statutory consultation period is three weeks. I will post the link here when the application has been added to the online planning portal. If there are issues of concern, the planning department will instigate a review meeting within six weeks of registration of the application and identify amendments that could address any issue or problems.

It will continue the movement against tax-havens which promote inequality and tax-evasion. It is hypocritical that these islands deprive other countries of tax-revenues and then immediately turn to the same countries to bail them out of a natural disaster. Hopefully if these islands are spending their own money, they will employ locals rather than importing expensive outside "consultants/experts".

This pub has been trading since 1892 and so it has huge historical reference in Pontefract and is shadowed by Pontefract Castle. The pub is loved throughout the community and is beginning to become a hive of music activity drawing bands from far and wide as well as catering for our talented local musicians. It is the home of Pontefract Scooter Club, who regularly host events to raise money for local charities such as The Prince of Wales Hospice and The Yorkshire Air Ambulance. The Hope & Anchor is an integral part of the community and we should be saving these historical institutions not turning them into offices etc