George Osborne has announced plans to take £70 a week away from thousands of people with disabilities, by cutting Personal Independence Payments (PIP). For many of us, this will mean losing the crucial support which enables us to get out of the house. Many people in our area would be hit hard by this cut. This petition calls on our local MP to do all they can to stop this cruel and unfair plan. Please, show your support for local people with disabilities and help stop the cuts to PIP.

George Osborne has announced plans to take £70 a week away from thousands of people with disabilities, by cutting Personal Independence Payments (PIP). For many of us, this will mean losing the crucial support which enables us to get out of the house. Many people in our area would be hit hard by this cut. This petition calls on our local MP to do all they can to stop this cruel and unfair plan. Please, show your support for local people with disabilities and help stop the cuts to PIP.

Being a parent of a beautiful child that is currently going through this process I understand the complexities that arise from having a child that has different needs. It not only affects the individual but the whole family as a unit. Research tells us that THOUSANDS of young girls are getting misdiagnosed or underdiagnosed due to a lack of awareness and MALE BIASED assessments. Meanwhile this leaves the families crying out for help and more importantly our children suffering unnecessary anxiety, stress and a low quality of life. As a parent all we want is for our children to be safe, healthy and happy. Our children have a right to a fair assessment and service.The whole autism process is way too complicated, frustrating, inconsistent and can take years to attain a diagnosis. No diagnosis no help. Individuals with autism are NINE times more likely to die prematurely, with suicide being the principal cause. This figure could potentially be a lot HIGHER if girls are getting missed. Many girls will have either have been dismissed as a problem child or driven by their overwhelming anxiety and depression into an already underfunded mental health service. We as a society always focus on our physical wellbeing, yet both emotional and physical walk hand in hand. There is an urgent need for the government to address this GENDER BIAS and ensure ALL KEY PROFESSIONALS across the UK are trained and made aware of the differences. Additionally ALL AUTISM SCREENING TOOLS need to include the subtle autistic traits of girls to ensure fairness and consistency. Awareness, early diagnosis and intervention is all that is needed to help our children. Please sign this life changing petition to ensure that no female child or adult gets overlooked or misdiagnosed and suffer unnecessarily. http://network.autism.org.uk/knowledge/insight-opinion/interview-dr-judith-gould-women-and-girls http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/15332985.2015.1031858 http://autismwomensnetwork.org/autistic-women-misdiagnosis-and-the-importance-of-getting-it-right/ http://www.iancommunity.org/cs/simons_simplex_community/autism_in_girls http://www.theguardian.com/social-care-network/2016/apr/05/autism-learning-disability-premature-mortality

This is important because bullying affects thousands of children across the UK and whether it be in, primary, secondary or college it can affect them greatly. When I was in school I was bullied very severely and it led to many future problems that I then had to deal with myself because of the bullies I had. Bullying can lead to a variety of different problems from anxiety to self harm. I myself when through self harm and am still dealing with it now, three years later, I am so far beating the urge, but the feeling is still there and I hate to think that so many other children are going through the same thing that I went through. There is a statistic that shows 1 in 30 children self harm, which works out 1 child per classroom, which to me is an outrage and if stopping bullying or at least doing more to prevent it, can reduce that statistic, I think a lot more children would be happier. Bullying doesn't necessarily mean a child will self harm, but I feel that if you are bullied is does knock your confidence, no matter who you are, it will knock you. If schools started to put in place real policies and procedures for bullying, like a zero tolerance rule and go through with real consequences then bullying will cut down. When i was in school I would often go to my headteacher with the fact that i was being bullied, and nothing was ever done about it. It got to the point where my mum would call in, but still nothing was done. I feel like this probably happens for a lot of other students, and I think school staff should take it a lot more serious than they do and actually do something when a student comes to them about being bullied. Children are often too scared to go and tell someone, children should be able to feel like they can talk to someone if they're being bullied. I would like to start this campaign against schools dealing with bullying. Eventually i would like to be able to go into schools and do talks about bullying, and maybe ask children to fill in a confidential survey about bullying with questions such as: Have you ever been bullied? Have you ever bullied someone? Has there been any consequences for your bullies? Has there been any consequences because you bullied someone? Has there been any consequences on yourself as a person because you've been bullied? What do you feel when you bully someone? Do you get anything out of it? I could then use these surveys to get statistics to use in other talks and to help show the severity of bullying in certain schools. This is an issue very close to my heart as i don't want children to have to feel the same way that I did when I stepped into school and to have to face the same issues that I did. I know the world is never going to be rid of bullying completely, but if i can at least make a small change in some schools across the UK, it would give me a great sense of achievement and i feel like it would benefit a lot of children.

For some self employment is chosen, for others, in this current climate, it is the only way of having an income, for some adoption is chosen and for others it is their only chance to have a family. An independent report by Julie Deane OBE recommends that self employed people should be given the same rights as those that work for an employer. This has been seen by parliament and so far ignored. I am proud to be self employed, I am also very much looking forward to starting my family however and whenever it happens but I know that without the same support the my employed friends get, we could struggle. This is unfair. The current government is very proud of the rise in self employment. It is one thing that has made the unemployment figures look better over the last few years. The entrepreneurial spirit is something to be proud of. It is time to bring adoption, maternity and paternity pay for self employed people in line with that of employees.

It's important as the decision and outcome that is created will have a greater effect on younger people. Scotland allowed 16 and 17 year olds to vote in the Scottish Referendum, which what's the difference between that and this vote? Why shouldn't the people who are going to be affected have no say in the decision?

The current refugee crisis is the largest humanitarian disaster facing Europe since World War 2.  Over 11 Million Syrians have been unsettled and were forced to flee. Once Syrian Students have managed to claim refugee status in the UK, they face dramatic barriers to enter university, as they cannot access student loans and suffer from financial restraint. Generations of students miss out on valuable education to rebuild their future and contribute to society. Our university is rightly proud to host an increasing international student body. Our Human Rights Center has been praised as one of the leading institutions of its kind. We would like to see the university act in a humanitarian way and find ways to support the refugees.   Other universities are starting to play their part: “Four UK universities (UEL, York, Warwick and Sussex) were offering scholarships to refugees. Since then a number of other universities have announced their scholarship and bursary schemes for refugees, including University of Edinburgh, Salford, SOAS, Newman and Sheffield.” In total, more than 26 universities have pledged to support refugee students to study at their universities. Let us join in this proud number: This is a petition BY students, FOR students. We want everyone to fully enjoy their right to education, regardless of the conflicts raging on in the world. Please consider this petition so we can contribute to the humanitarian disaster in what we do best: education.

Southwark Council are threatening to evict the Feminist Library from the building on Westminster Bridge Rd, London, that has been its home for 30 years. The council have given notice that the rent on the Library’s space in the building, which has housed a variety of community groups alongside the Library for the past 30 years, will be raised from £12,000 to £30,000 a year. Council officers are refusing to negotiate - join us in calling upon them to work with us to save the Library. On 10th February, Southwark Council Cabinet approved a report that ‘highlights the need for a thriving VCS (Voluntary and Community Sector) that mobilises community action and makes best use of community resources, skills, knowledge and spaces’. We cannot understand how treating our organisation in such a way is consistent with approving this report. [1] Dr Laura Schwartz, Associate Professor of Modern British History, University of Warwick has said: ‘"The Feminist Library is a wonderful cultural resource that needs to be defended at all costs. Generations of my students have used it for their academic research, as well as informing themselves about the continued oppression of women in our society and how to fight against it. The Library is now the only archive in London where a wide array of feminist publications are truly accessible to the general public and available on the open shelves. It also provides one of the few spaces in central London where women and feminist activists can come together to meet and organise for a better world. If the Feminist Library is evicted from its current premises, Southwark Council will not only be guilty of cultural vandalism but also of silencing women." Learn more about the Feminist Library and donate to our Emergency fund here: http://feministlibrary.co.uk/support/emergencyfund/ About the Feminist Library: The Feminist Library has an incomparable collection of over 7,000 books, 1500 periodical titles from around the world, archives of feminist individuals and organisations, pamphlets, papers, posters, and ephemera. We also provide space for meetings, readings, exhibitions and events, a space which supports and encourages research, mutual support, activism and community projects, with well over 20 different groups having used the events space just in the past calendar year, a number of them national and international. We are volunteer led, as we have been all our life; we are intergenerational, being significant custodians of our feminist heritage, whilst looking to the future; and our approach is intersectional – we provide a space for different feminisms to co-exist. We support not just archiving work, but also publish our own zines and support independent producers and artists. We are a registered charity, and completely self-funding. [1] Details of report http://casouthwark.org.uk/focus-southwark/southwark-council-agrees-new-voluntary-sector-strategy ‘Southwark Council Agrees to New Voluntary Sector Strategy’

This petition is not about censorship; it’s not about undermining freedom of expression or about anyone being offended. It is about protecting women’s right to access abortion freely, confidentially and without fear, intimidation or public shaming. Each year 40 Days For Life picket the BPAS Clinic, on St Mary Street in Cardiff throughout lent. They gather under banners and placards and hand out unsolicited, inaccurate, pseudo-medical anti-abortion material. These tactics are intimidating, distressing and damaging to clients and staff of BPAS. We respect everyone's right to peaceful protest; let 40 Days for Life publicly state their anti-abortion views, let them be held to account and their doctrine interrogated. What we can’t let them do is operate in the vicinity of BPAS to shame, distress and intimidate women who are accessing the legal and vital reproductive health care that they’re entitled to. It is inappropriate and unjustified for an anti-abortion organisation to be allowed to interfere with women’s fundamental human and legal right to seek medical advice and care in the case of pregnancy. If you want 40 Days for Life to remove their prayer, picketing and propaganda from the vicinity of the BPAS clinic, please sign.

There is far to much food waste when we have people going hungry. All stores should be required to donate unwanted food to charities and to food banks. It should apply to any supermarket with a footprint of 400 square metres or larger. If companies flout the law they are to incur fines. Supermarkets are to sign a donation deal with charities, which will be able to increase the quality and diversity of food that they currently get and distribute. In terms of nutritional balance, they currently have a deficit of meat and a lack of fresh fruit and vegetables. This will hopefully allow food-banks to push a fresh source of nutritional quality food to people and families in need.

Once a month, I take my blind amputee brother to Asda supermarket in Perth. During our last visit to the store, we were appalled at our treatment following the use of a disabled parking space. I discovered a fine which had been imposed on the grounds that my brother (who has lived in a care home for many years and cannot drive for obvious reasons) does not have a blue badge to display. Why should a genuinely disabled person be fined in an Asda car park for not displaying a blue badge? Blue Badge Scotland clearly state on their website: "The Blue Badge scheme is for drivers or passengers with severe mobility problems. The scheme provides a range of on-street parking concessions enabling Blue Badge holders to park closer to where they need to go. The scheme does not apply to off-street car parking, for example in privately operated car parks at supermarkets or airports." I immediately contested this fine with the store management and was shocked to discover that Asda have no power to waive these fines under any circumstances. This is because Asda allow a private company - Smart Parking - to run many of their car parks across the country. This company exploits the blue badge system under their "contract" agreement and employ their own staff to cowardly affix parking fines to windshields without care or consideration for who could be using this space. By allowing such a company to run their parking areas, Asda are complicit in this greedy money making exercise. Following my formal complaint, I had a call from an Asda corporate employee who claims to be among the highest echelons of customer service representatives. This individual showed no understanding or compassion whatsoever, responding to my issue with cold bureaucracy. This employee showed (as with any other member of Asda management that i have discussed this issue with) utter incompetence in understanding the difference between criminal law and contract law. I have been persistently shamed as having “broken the law”, which is absolutely not the case. Perhaps the most shocking revelation during this call is that Asda have confirmed they DO NOT provide their own spaces for disabled people who do not have (perhaps have forgotten or never had the need for) a blue badge. Their best suggestion was that I use the drop off point at the front door. This shows an incredible lack of understanding as they expect me to leave my blind, wheelchair bound brother unattended while I find a regular space. My brother is effectively barred from Asda as there are no suitable spaces to allow safe access to their stores. This amounts to discrimination against disabled customers, as confirmed in my correspondence with Citizens Advice Scotland. They have suggested that there is a strong argument here for the discrimination against the disabled and they have notified trading standards with regards to this issue. I am grateful to have guidance and support of local mps and msps on this matter in addition to a local newspaper that intends to run our story. PLEASE SIGN this petition to help prevent other people from suffering this discrimination, humiliation and indignity while visiting their local Asda store. N.B. Tesco have confirmed that they do not treat their disabled customers in this way and are equally shocked by the conduct of Asda.

This is so important.. how can a child custody case be judged honesty and truthfully if one or both parents cannot afford representation. .. it means that the parent who CAN afford a lawyer has an advantage over the other, as he or she will not know the law as well as a lawyer. This means that the child's welfare is NOT being judged fairly