The reduction in opening hours has led to very long queues and waiting times. It is punishing those people who are trying to recycle and dispose of household waste responsibly. Making it more difficult to use the recycling centre will undoubtedly worsen the existing problem of fly tipping in the area.

Badgers are a key species in our British ecosystem and one of the most recognisable and best loved mammals in the English countryside. Native to this land, they have lived alongside humans for thousands of years. More recent intensive farming practices have placed enormous pressure on local wildlife, including badgers who are consistently solely blamed for the spread of bovine TB. Offering a bounty for the culling of these animals, infected or not, will have a massive impact on their numbers and put at even greater risk the fragile balance of our environment. A scientific study from 2010 suggests that "badger culling is unlikely to contribute effectively to the control of cattle TB in Britain".

To help prevent flash flooding which has caused damaged to people's homes, businesses and cars due to the rising river levels caused by extreme weather.

There is a difference between Wall Art and Graffiti. Wall art can be appealing, carry a message, be artistic, thought provoking and belonging to the community...Graffiti is random, mostly personal to the Tag holder and basically ugly, pointless and represents the view of someone with a chip on their shoulder...It defaces other peoples property. With the vast number of visitors now coming to a great City which has pulled itself up from the depths of despair it is important to give these visitors a great and lasting impression of the city and it's structures, its buildings its character. You can't see this if it's covered in random pointless garbage.

We pay Council Tax to have ALL of the grass in public areas cut, it’s been the same arrangement year-on-year; until this year. This year, Lincolnshire County Council (LCC) are trying to pass ‘non-essential’ grass cutting onto Stamford Town Council. As a result you will pay TWICE for grass cutting. Let’s let LCC know this isn’t on and stop similar stealth taxes being introduced. #LCC transparency

When it comes to re-cycling, Gedling Borough Council rates a poor 260th out of 350 English local authorities. Gedling re-cycles only 36.7% of its domestic waste compared to the national average of 45.2%. Gedling’s announcement that it intends to be a ‘Plastic Clever Council’ is welcome but has to be seen in the context of its recent closure of 6 local ‘bring’ recycling sites and the earlier cancellation of its commercial recycling collection service.

This well known spot deserves a more well thought through development. The Market town of Stone needs more independent businesses to bring sites like these back to life, to bring local people together. It does not need a corporate ‘service station’. Several planning issues are associated with this proposed development. - The property is in Green belt, and the over development will impact the openness which is unacceptable. - It adjoins a conservation area, so again is highly inappropriate - Road safety issues, multi stop, fast transactions from the centre of a busy roundabout. Will causes accidents and near misses for sure. - Environmental impact due to increased litter from the site itself, and from cars leaving the site. There are also light pollution issues during the evening on local residents. - Local economy, there are already two petrol stations within 1 mile (one within 1/2 a mile) and that excludes Morrisions. On top of the financial impact on those petrol stations, the council should be encouraging people to eat on Stone High street within local independent eateries that support local people. As is the policy! Support local businesses, not service station eye sores with drive thru take always.

'This tree is a part of the British landscape, its lore and utility deeply embedded in our history. Of our trees, the ash is second only to the oak in national importance; scholars of Anglo-Saxon might even place it at number one. The resilient and ubiquitous ash has always been respected for its benevolent or healing properties. At least three British saints threw their wooden staffs to the ground to see them sprout miraculously into ash trees.' (Tim Richardson, The Telegraph.) Ash trees are currently threatened with Ash dieback and this great old tree is not affected, it could live another 120 years.

In spite of 180 written objections, plans for a quarry at Crow Nest have been given the go ahead. The consequences of the plan include: - Large lorries carrying quantities of heavy rock, bringing intolerable levels of dust, noise, pollution and congestion to our peaceful community. - Dirt, disruption and noise from the quarry itself, which is set to operate daily between 7am and 7pm. - The closure of all footpaths and traditional rights of way on Crow Nest common. - The destruction of the woodland that runs behind the football pitch and beyond, involving the loss of the native animals, birds and wild flowers that have made it their home. - The loss of the large, grassy meadow that borders the golf course, which will be turned into a bare and stony landscape for the dumping of mining waste. Please sign this petition to help ensure that Hove Edge retains it's much valued green spaces and remains a peaceful and pleasant place to live. Such a beautiful, precious space. Home to over one thousand trees and Marshalls want to destroy it!

There are millions upon millions of nonrefillable plastic pens which cannot be recycled as they have metal components thrown away every day which is adding to the plastic wasteland and polluting the environment.

Evidence (from Institute for Government, British Ports Association, Ports of Dover and Calais, Eurotunnel, Freight Trade Association, Imperial College) shows that M20 and M2 and surrounding roads are likely to become slow traffic jams, if, a) the UK government takes us out of the Customs Union and the Single market, b) we don’t get a ‘no-tariff deal’, and consequently, DOVER and KENT are badly affected by the new border checks that follow. New 2018 evidence is even clearer of how unprepared we are. However we each voted in 2016, we cannot allow our journeys to work, school or health care appointments to be subject to gridlock, that will also affect emergency vehicles and tourists across the channel wanting to visit White Cliffs Country. Delays in the delivery of perishable food could cause ‘stockouts’ in supermarkets, a lack of pickers means crops are being wasted. As a result, food prices will rise, making life yet harsher for the most deprived. Computerised checks don't exist and to introduce them could take 5 years or more. The road infrastructure in East Kent needs to be extensively up-dated, in a SUSTAINABLE manner, if it is to cope. Contraflow is not a solution. We call on the UK government, to agree a ‘no-tariff deal’, to provide decisions and funding for Border Force to prepare adequately for change. We call on Kent County Council, to hold public consultations before February 2019, about the infrastructure needed. We call on all Kent MPs to vote this summer for a ‘no-tariff deal’ that will start to reduce the Kent traffic chaos we are told to expect.

A Tight Spot The big news this week on the BBC news channel, is that Meghan Markle has started wearing tights to prepare for joining the royal family, who don’t go bare legged, for unexplained reasons of protocol. This reminds me of having to wear tights as part of my school uniform. Never mind the gender pay gap I was a child and had no income, yet I was obliged to buy a product that had built in obsolesces. My tights didn’t last long before they laddered, especially on splintery school chairs and under desks where gum had been secreted. Nail varnish only halted a ladder for so long. I was lucky if I could wear a pair of tights more than five times before throwing them out. That’s a total of a week’s wear per pair. In today’s prices Marks and Spencer sell three pairs of thick black tights for £5. There are about 40 weeks of term time in the school year, and no one wears socks in summer, or those sheer tights that tear when you are taking them out of the packet, so I spent £66 on tights each year. Or rather my parents spent £66 on tights per daughter per school year, and I have two sisters, so my parents were spending £200 per year on tights. They might have done this buy giving their daughters pocket money and hoping we learnt budgeting skills, but there was no way of saving or scheming that avoided the need for their daughters to buy 40 pairs of tights each. According to government statistics, in Britain today there are 1,564,819 girls of secondary school age in state schools, and many will attend schools where trousers are not part of the uniform for girls. So at the end of each school year British school girls have spent about £104,321,267 on 62,592,760 pairs of tights all of which are slowly decomposing on landfill sites. And I mean slowly, tights have the wondrous ability to ladder like greased lightening and decompose at a snails pace. It strikes me that this is not a great use of the earth’s resources and is good neither for the environment or the wealth of Britain’s school girls and their parents. I never liked wearing tights. I didn’t like that they failed to keep me warm in winter, and were sweaty all year round, and sweaty means fungal infections. So I say that protocol needs to move in the other direction. Wearing tights does not equate with decency. I am proud not to be royal and bare legs are fine by me. I just wish the people who design school uniform weren’t influenced by the royal family as much as they seem to be. There are better thing that Britain’s school, girls could buy with £104,321,267. Heck if all girls could wear trousers to school up-skirting and environmental disaster would both suffer a body blow. Others have campaigned on the cost of tampons for school girls, I say there’s more work for feminists to do. Ask Damian Hinds to make wearing trousers and option for all Britain’s school girls.