The Barclay brothers have a long history of questionable activities. Whilst their business dealings may be legal they are morally repugnant. Their hotels have not paid corporation tax for many years. They recently won £1.2 billion from the UK treasury relating to the VAT affairs of a company they bought - the VAT problems didn't even happen while they owned it but they are happy to profit from it. They are trying to ruin the channel island of Sark by buying as much property on the Island as they can then mothballing it - this is ruining a small special community. Whilst they retain their knighthoods they are a stain on anyone else with a similar honour. They do not deserve this honour.

Why is this important to us as a town? This campaign and petition has been started immediately it was announced that the Royal Bank of Scotland is going to close our local Invergordon RBS Branch. Doing this will have a devastating impact on not only our town and High street but on the elderly who are unable to travel, the disabled, the local residents as a whole who use the RBS everyday, the local businesses who use it on a daily basis. You have stated that you will not close any bank which is the last one standing in a town.......why then are closing this one? It is the last bank standing and a vital asset to the town and community! The above are just some of the reasons why we as a community can NOT ALLOW the RBS to shut our local Invergordon Branch! It is a focal point of the town for tourists and residents alike. In the cruise liner season our Invergordon branch is used by many tourists to change money and this is a service that will be denied to them and is also worth noting that we have aprox 60 million tourists enter the Invergordon Port every season! Everyone knows that a bank is a vital organ in a town especially a town such as Invergordon where if the RBS shut this one down there will be NONE! Please sign this petition and forward and share to all your friends and family. We can stop this but only if you get behind this petition and campaign!

It has been reported that MPs who were only elected last week are set to receive a backdated 10 per cent pay rise worth £7,000 within months. A review of MPs salaries is taking place in the next few weeks, and the review is likely to rubber stamp a finding from 2013 which was that MPs' pay should increase from £67,060 to £74,000. The review is being conducted by IPSA (Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority), who are Parliament's expenses watchdog. Jonathan Isaby, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "To press ahead with a 10 per cent pay rise is not only putting two fingers up at voters, but it starkly contradicts the pay restraint required elsewhere in the public sector if the government is to balance the nation's books. The only way to stop the salary increase is by Mr Cameron passing a law in the House of Commons to scrap Ipsa altogether." (The above as reported in The Telegraph) If "we are all in it together" then MPs should not have a 10% pay rise when public sector pay has been frozen for years.

The PM claimed we're all in this together. Now is the time to prove it. MP pay rises should be limited to the average of all other public sector pay rises. If we truly are all in this together, then why can MP's receive higher pay rise percentages than nurses, teachers, firefighters, etc? Now is the time to demonstrate that MP's truly believe we are in it together as a nation and agree to link pay rises to those in the rest of the public sector. Or is it as Orwell eloquently said in Animal Farm ... "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others"?

Channel 4 are contributing to the erroneous and damaging view that people on benefits are living 'the life of Riley' and draining our system. They clearly and shamelessly, continually concentrate camera shots on people smoking, drinking and breaking the law as if this is a normal and continuous action of EVERYONE on benefits. They never concentrate on people who have been made unemployed through no fault of their own, disabled people, vulnerable people who are unable to battle through the over-complicated and deliberately awkward benefits claiming process such as special needs individual or those who have never been faced with having to fill in deplorably convoluted claim forms before and are undoubtedly contributing to an erroneous image of what 'Austerity' will achieve.

Life saving equipment such as automated defibrillators and electric chest compressors are already very expensive, but to have to pay VAT on top is making NHS services less able to provide these. In Rural areas where an ambulance can take a long time to reach a person who has suffered a cardiac arrest, an automated defibrillator can mean the difference between life and death. In the Scottish Borders we send patients to Edinburgh for heart surgery such as fitting of stents. If the person arrests in transit it is not possible for a paramedic to provide effective CPR for the entire journey, particularly in a moving vehicle. An electric chest compressor has been shown to increase survivial rate in this type of circumstance from zero (as it is not possible to physically continue effective CPR for long periods of time), to an amazing 50 percent survival rate. Sadly this piece of equipment is £10,000 plus VAT. Surely it cannot be right for the government to give a budget to the NHS and then claim a substantial part of it back in VAT.

The money paid into these pension funds has already been taxed. Now they want to tax it again. This is nothing short of highway robbery. Why should people who have scrimped and saved all their lives to try and provide themselves with a decent pension (which government fails to do) be penalised? Yet another example of rip-off government in rip-off Britain. There are enough pensioners, and people soon to reach retirement age, in this country to put a stop to this.

CAMRA fully supports the production and availability of real ciders and perries. In many cases the proposed action would make small scale cider production uneconomic. This is wholly disproportionate given that a small producer selling up to 33 pints a day has no capacity to affect EU trade to any meaningful degree. The case for rejecting the request by the EU to tax small cider producers: - Someone producing less than 70hl (12,000 pints) will generally be making less than £10,000 a year in sales. This means the tax exemption only applies to very small businesses, such as hobbyists or farm-gate producers. If a duty were to be levied on these producers it would make their operations uneconomic and lead to wide-spread closure. - 80% of Britain’s 500+ cider makers are currently small producers. A tax will severely impact on consumer choice and will cause irreparable damage to one of the nation’s most historic industries. - An exemption from this duty is essential to supporting the growth of a vibrant but still small cider and perry market. - A tax charge of up to £2,700 would drive many small cider producers out of business costing jobs, harming the countryside and dramatically reducing consumer choice.

Because Lord Green subsequently became a trade minister and is a member of the House of Lords. We need transparency and accountability and unless he gives an account of his activities, his position in untenable.

Vodafone customers are unable to limit cellular data usage. When contracted limits are reached Vodafone sends a helpful text to advise that it will charge you for exceeding the limit. Fair enough - BUT - customers cannot opt out and self-limit until the following months allowance kicks in. Most smartphone apps and operating systems are very data hungry, even when operating in the background and not in actual use, so data allowances can be consumed without realising. Parents who fund a child's phone for safety and security reasons find this particularly stressful and difficult. Commercially it's obvious why Vodafone apply this policy - to make additional profit - but it is morally questionable if one party to the contract agreement has no power to limit charges beyond what was contractually agreed under circumstances often beyond their control. Other mobile operators have recognised this and allow limits to be self enforced, Tesco Mobile is one such responsible operator. So should Vodafone. "Always here for you?" is their service strap line "Always here to fleece you" would be more accurate.

Across the country, self-employed people who are low earners and therefore claim working tax credits have received letters from an organisation called Concentrix [a private, unelected and unaccountable body working on behalf of HMRC].These letters state that the recipients' self-employed status is to be investigated, and demand proof of hours worked. A person working alone from home will normally have no way to prove the hours spent on preparation, planning, strategising, thinking, social media, networking, paperwork, website management or any of the other daily responsibilities of a small business person. In the absence of this "proof", tax credits will be stopped. This will force many hardworking people to cease their business and become unemployed. Small businesses are the foundation stones of a strong economy. This policy will cause untold hardship and damage, not only human but also economic.

The UK Government have assured us that any other transfer of sovereignty away from the Westminster Parliament should be put to a referendum. This treaty is a back door method of getting around this pledge to the detriment of our democracy and sovereignty.