Nurses have been on the front line of our battle against Covid - 19, yet new nurses receive a salary barely above the minimum wage. These highly skilled and dedicated workers have borne the brunt of the last 10 years of austerity, yet are supposed to put their lives on the line day and daily. They do it out of a sense of duty, but loyalty doesn't buy the groceries or pay the rent. So let's see this as the first step in paying them and people like them, what they are worth to society, not the minimum we can get away with. This will cost the average person just over £3 per week, a small price to pay for these heroes and heroines.

There are approximately 5 million Self-Employed workers in Britain. For millions of them all contracts have been terminated with immediate effect and ALL income stopped overnight. Currently the government’s protection of 80% of salary up to £2,500 per month applies only to a tiny percentage of freelancers who are also PAYE. With an entire and immediate loss of income many can no longer make ends meet. The effects on millions of self-employed will be catastrophic without urgent and immediate action.

This is important because £94.00 a week universal credit is not going to cover even the most basic of needs, especially for people with families to support. Even if the promised grants materialise Anytime soon - they will merely stop a gap in the expenses that the business needs to pay. The business owner is still left without an income - and very possibly at the end of this - without a business either.

The self employed pay the same tax and national insurance as employees but are currently not receiving the same help. Our self employed workers contribute a huge amount to Britain’s economy and shouldn’t be forgotten about during this crisis.

People are unable to work due to COVID-19. Pregnant women, asthmatics and the elderly are being asked to self isolate for 12 weeks. This is going to cause major debt and homelessness nationally. If landlords cant afford mortgages how are tenants supposed to be able to afford rent, which is at a higher cost than the mortgage?

Sales are down 60-85% depending on venue, they can’t sustain employment of our people being largely cash businesses for much longer - further a significant portion of these people are temporary workers on hourly rates who have little access to redundancy. Many hospitality businesses will otherwise not survive this period. With self isolation and government advice to further stay away from these venues to understandably bring this virus pandemic under control - these venues and people are increasingly at risk of not being able to survive financially. We need action now.

Coronavirus is a worldwide crisis requiring emergency government measures to support essential services - along with citizen action. We are all learning and adjusting rapidly. Businesses, organisations and individuals are making the best decisions we can. The consequences of those decisions for a lot of people mean keeping children, elderly relatives and neighbours safe while worrying about reduced or no income for the foreseeable future. The UK government could lead the way in valuing citizens as active participants in working through this crisis and could provide a model for other countries. Afterwards, in the summer months, when we are learning from how we dealt with this crisis and making the changes needed to be better prepared next time, there will be UK wide data available to study how people used the basic income payments and what difference it made. In response to the 2008 financial crash, the UK and other governments bailed out the banking sector. That didn't stop the following years of austerity. It's worth trying out a different approach and investing in citizens.

Our homes and businesses here in the Calder Valley, just as in many areas of the United Kingdom, flooded on Boxing Day 2015 and again in the last two weeks (February 2020) due to Storm Ciara and Storm Dennis. Many of us have lost what was replaced or salvaged last time when any flood measures put in place by the Government since 2015 proved wholly insufficient. To be honest, it has been devastating to lose so much again. The community always rallies together and helps each other but the Government does not do enough. We have been suffering through flood defence works totalling £32m since Spring 2016 - what with air pollution, earth works damaging buildings that were already flooded, noise pollution, never-ending traffic jams, building works 6 days a week and through the night - and that still hasn't completed for the one village that has gone through it. The scheme has yet to progress to other towns flooded on Boxing Day 2015 and, in the case of Elland, they are due to get no flood defences at all because the Environment Agency said it was not cost-effective. To refuse to give flood resilience grants to those who have been flooded, whose homes have not been protected despite the millions paid by the Government to private contractors, is beyond heartless. Many of us have struggled to get insurance at all, despite Government promises and the Flood Re scheme, and those of us who do have incredibly high premiums that local emergency grants simply don't cover. Most of us who flooded this time flooded last time as the costly flood defence works were both incomplete and actually left us further exposed due to flood walls that were overtopped in 2015 being taken down by the Government contractors VBA and not replaced, due to works not having been done throughout the valley and due to the Environment Agency's own planning deeming certain areas sacrificial and not cost-effective to protect. In the recent Statement on Flooding in Parliament, on being pressed by Halifax MP Holly Lynch, the Government said the recently announced flood resilience grants - intended to help properties become more resilient to future floods - would not be available for those who flooded last time and who therefore received a grant. The £5,000 is a blanket amount irrespective of how inundated properties were so those who had a foot of water in their cellar received exactly the same grant as those whose homes were flooded all through. Depending on your property and how the water gets in, the grant would cover the average cost of 2 flood doors and frames which is £4,000. A sump pump in the cellar might cost you £1250/£1500 but it would only work for as long as there was working electricity. Part of the grant had to be spent on approved surveyors carrying out a Flood Mitigation Report. Our flood mitigation report identified necessary measures costing over 3 times the £5,000 grant and even then, it said, "Due to the location of the building, flood remediation measures will not totally prevent flooding in the future, but if properly implemented may reduce the incidence of flooding by slowing or preventing water entering the property, reduce damage and loss should flooding occur, and allow faster recovery from flooding in the future." Even spending that money did not stop us being flooded to the same degree, only this time the main points of water ingress were through new points of weakness created by works done to the neighbouring property by the Government contractors VBA. Arguably, the only owners of homes and businesses who didn't receive a grant last time and who are therefore eligible this time are those who didn't own that home or business last time. Many of those bought those properties at knockdown prices precisely because of the Boxing Day 2015 flooding devaluing and damaging properties; in some cases, they also benefited from works carried out by the Government contractors.

The UK is a wealthy country, but this wealth is very unevenly spread. The UK government doesn’t properly tax wealth, such as land, shares and property. Our current tax system gives an advantage to those who live off their wealth, as opposed to those who work for a living. This leaves us with under-funded public services and sets the UK on track to become one of the most unequal countries in the world. One change that the Chancellor could adopt is taxing income from wealth at least as much as income from work. The Institute of Public Policy Research estimate that this would raise £90 billion over five years. According to a poll Tax Justice UK commissioned with Oxfam the public overwhelmingly support this idea. Join us in calling for an end to the low tax lifestyles enjoyed by some of the wealthiest people in the country and a fairer Britain.

Midcounties cooperative have announced a consultation period from October to December 2019 with a potential closure date of 26th January 2020. This food store with Post Office and pharmacy is central to the town and great example of a supermarket in the town. Midcounties Coop have said The long-term viability of our Hednesford Food store has been reviewed, and despite the hard work of our colleagues sales have fallen and continue on a downward trend, with the profitability of the store being impacted. As a result, the Society has taken the difficult decision to propose to close the Hednesford Food store. It is anticipated that if the closure proceeds, the store will close at the end of the financial year on 26th January 2020. The proposal is to continue to trade the Post Office as normal, and the Society is considering the building design to allow that to happen once the Food store has closed. The consultation period commenced on 4th October 2019 and is proposed to conclude on 10th January 2020.’

This will only benefit the highest 10% of earners and is estimated to cost the country £9 billion a year - that's around half of all the extra money that the government promised to the NHS. The poorest 90% will pick up the bill, either directly through taxation or indirectly through the scaling back of public services. This promise hasn't caused anything like the indignation that it should, perhaps due to Brexit and we need Boris cancel this proposal before he gets a clear mandate at the next election as it is morally disgraceful to reward those who need it the least.

Mandatory fortification of all flour with folic acid will have a serious effect on the future viability and integrity of small traditional mills, and could even mean that such mills have to cease flour production; putting at risk one of the main sources of income that sustains these important historic, and in some cases listed, buildings.