Our students are our future

After the debacle of Rail privatisation and the fall in the level of service witnessed over the last decade on our railways, the last thing we need is a purely profit driven ownership of Eurostar looking merely at the short term in order to provide a return at any cost to their investors. This privatisation is purely ideologically driven and takes no consideration of the needs - short or long term - of Eurostar or, especially, it's users.The Governments of France and Belgium are considering increasing their share of the ownership of Eurostar (at British tax-payers expense as the profits will all go to alleviate the tax burden of other countries) whilst ours is so driven by an ideological distaste for any nationally owned service that they will press ahead with privatisation at any cost and regardless of the value of that privatisation to the current owners of the service - you! It must further be asked, can we trust a civil service which oversaw the huge loss to taxpayers through the undervaluation and mismanagement of The Royal Mail and RBS (where even according to the Telegraph taxpayers faced a loss of £1bn and £10bn respectively)? Please show Mr Osbourne and the Treasury your dislike of this half-baked plan to rush through privatisation before the next election.

We are continually told that MPs are on our side and understand what ordinary voters are going through. USA presidents publish tax information but UK politicians balk at the thought. Why should we not see how they earn their income and who might they be favouring in their policies. If they have nothing to hide why not publish and be damned or not as the case may be.

Repeatedly the benefits bill has been discussed by politicians and the media as being too large that we cannot afford it, despite it including housing benefits, pensions, disability allowances and job seeker's allowance, all of which help the poor, old, sick and unemployed in a time of need. The details of these social benefits are well known and publicised. The Conservatives have just promised to freeze this benefits bill to help cut the budget deficit if they are elected at the next election. Recent research published in the Guardian [1] has shown that at least £85bn was given to large corporations by the government to help make the rich richer in the financial year 2011-12 alone, but with the budget deficit we just cannot afford it. This information was hidden; it is about time that the government publishes the amount given in corporate benefits - so called wealthfare - and starts considering this costly expense as an area to cut to reduce the budget deficit instead of welfare because the poor cannot cope with anymore cuts. We are all in it together, as Prime Minister David Cameron keeps saying. We've cut social benefits, it's now time to cut corporate benefits. [1] Aditya Chakrabortty, "Cut benefits? Yes, let’s start with our £85bn corporate welfare handout", The Guardian, Monday 6 October 2014 20.30 BST, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/06/benefits-corporate-welfare-research-public-money-businesses.

We know there are thousands of dementia [and other disease sufferers] in need of nursing, not just personal care. If they manage to find out about the processes and arm themselves with a copy of the DST they are in with half a chance but it is only half a chance. Result = pay through the nose for care which the patient has already paid into the NHS and tax system for them to provide

I have a good deal of contact with older people, who often have increasing difficulty retaining information because of failing memory. I have also had contact with people experiencing significant difficulties because of learning disabilities or brain diseases, eg. dementia. These conditions often also affect a person's mobility and it is not so easy for them to simply visit the bank or Building Society and re-assert their identity, with the support of utility bills, passports, etc. Both of my parents are tragically affected by Alzheimers Disease. My father remains, for now, independently managing his own affairs (with considerable time and support from others). I have seen at first-hand the terrible frustration he experiences when trying to transact, or obtain information over the 'phone when agents are unable to help because he can't tell them the security information; he is unable even to recall his address of the past 2 years. I see that it may be difficult to find a suitable alternative to memory-reliant methods to assure security but I believe the problem to be an urgent and common one. The institutions holding our money must provide the means for us all to access their services, no matter our age, memory or health status.

Until just a few years ago we, as a nation, were beholden to the USA under the terms and conditions of the Lend-Lease agreement during World War 2. We have paid our debt to the USA in full, both in cash - with massive interest - and in human lives. We no longer have to join in their wars and we should be a peaceful island nation which just gets on with our global neighbours and trades peacefully with them.....rather than being a belligerent nation which spends a disproportionate amount of its GDP on its military and getting involved in warfare that we can't afford. Wouldn't our nation be so much better if we used this money to make life in the UK better and healthier for the people who live here? Warfare is paid for from the taxes we pay - we choose that our tax is spent on positive outcomes for the people of the UK, instead of bombing distant countries just because they have an issue with the USA.

Nurse are not paid enough as it is, and their pay rises are pitifully small. Yet the annual registration fee is set for a 20% rise.

Public spending has grown fortyfold since the start of the 20th century and no new mechanisms have been introduced to oversee this. We can: address the democratic deficit; increase accountability and control over government; update democracy for the digital age, applying time-honoured democratic principles with new technology; directly mandate policies, not political parties; and make the civil service more efficient by attaching budgets to policies, not time periods.

It's a matter of principles in belief and defense of the last remnants of the welfare state of which a slow and deliberate attempt has been made to eliminate to the benefit of nobody in society. It's also in contradiction of human rights legislation recognized on an international basis...

The secret negotiations for CETA (official name: Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement) between Canada and the European Union have already been concluded, without consulting any of us! - Even though Canada and the EU have been negotiating this so-called “next generation free trade and investment pact" behind closed doors since May 2009. But CETA is better understood as another corporate power grab. If signed, CETA will give multinational corporations the right to sue countries for loss of profits in secret courts of arbitration if those countries seek, for example, to pass laws to prevent fracking, to regulate prices, or to raise the minimum wage. Also (like TTIP), CETA will enable the multinationals to pressurise communities to privatise basic public services like water systems, transport and energy - and much more. As the social justice organisation the Council of Canadians points out: "The secret negotiating process, as well as the overall corporate agenda behind next generation deals are an affront to democracy on both sides of the Atlantic." If all this sounds horribly familiar, it's because CETA would have exactly the same adverse effects on our society and economy as TTIP - the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership planned between the USA and Europe (for further info on TTIP, see the 38 degrees campaign and petition to stop TTIP). Here are some examples of current cases arising from other, very similar "free trade agreements" that are already in force. Tobacco giant Philip Morris is suing Australia for billions of dollars in lost profits because the Australian government took action to reduce teenage smoking by stipulating plain packaging for cigarettes. Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly is suing Canada for $400 million because Canada has introduced laws to keep essential medications affordable. Worst of all, those proceedings are being held in secret international courts to which only corporations have access, in accordance with "investor-state dispute settlement rules" which also apply to CETA (and to TTIIP). This basically gives greedy corporations power over our social values, our legislative procedures and our trading standards. That's why CETA must be stopped now! To quote the corporation-loving TheCityUK website: "Canadian and the EU officials have agreed a complete CETA text, to be initialled at the EU-Canada Summit in Ottawa on 25 September 2014."... (That's only weeks away!)... "The gains to be had from the EU-Canada CETA are potentially very large." ...(Yes, you can bet they are - but only for big business!)... "The agreement – all 1,500 pages of it - now needs to be translated into all EU languages and reviewed by lawyers. Once approved by the EU’s 28 member-states and Canada’s ten provinces it will then be formally signed (probably in 2015). It is expected to be ratified by the EU's 28 member states and the Canadian provinces in the course of 2016." So big business is very confident that this undemocratic deal is going to go through, to the huge benefit of its profits. But if enough of us raise our voices and raise awareness about CETA, we can still force our politicians to think again about selling us out to big business. Please sign the petition to stop CETA.

At the moment hospitals across Wales and the NHS in Wales are struggling to survive and staff are stretched to the limit. . We need to fund more nursing staff and also to stop the current ridiculous abuse of the system where people go to A&E just to get a packet of Paracetamol or Calpol for nothing or ask their doctors for medication they do not need and probably will not take. A basic charge of £3.00 would stop such abuse of the system, and there could be a cap of £10.00 if people needed several items. This additional money would transform our NHS in Wales and provide jobs for much needed nursing staff.