If equality and social mobility are regarded as important in a society, that society will provide all with equal access to the whole education system. Either education will be free, or it will be subsidised in such a way that people are not disadvantaged based on their background. Generations in the past have been screwed over by the government, but nothing like the current youth. If you’re tired of being told you are lucky to be able to afford a £200 iPhone by people who bought a house in central London for £21,000, then this campaign is for you. For most of us, if you want to be one of the people who can change the situation we’re in, you’re probably going to need a certain kind of job. And to get those kinds of jobs nowadays, you’re going to need some form of postgraduate qualification. If education isn’t affordable for all, we can never expect to live in a fair society. A lack of funding for higher-education means that the only people who are able to change our country will be the very people who want it to remain the same. To protect our democracy, this must be opposed. On 6th January 2013, the Observer printed a letter from nine UK university vice-chancellors calling for action on the 'policy vacuum' on postgraduate study. Since then, the number of students opting for postgraduate study has fallen by around 16,000 a year. This is despite the importance of postgraduate qualifications skyrocketing in that time. A Confederation of British Industry (CBI) report states that ‘anticipated changes to occupational structure mean that by 2020 nearly half of all employment will be for highly skilled roles.’ Worldwide, the number of high-level jobs that require postgraduate qualifications is growing by roughly 75% per year, according to the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC). At home, all this means less influence in our society for ordinary British people. As Gary Bell, a man from a working class background who is now a QC specialising in criminal defence, put it in the Guardian yesterday: 'The chances I had just aren't there for deprived young people today.' When Labour introduced university fees and the student loan (as opposed to the grant), Ken Livingston famously accused the Blairites of 'whipping away the ladder that they themselves had climbed.' Of the Tories' current policy, Bell added that: 'The ladder has now been not just whipped away but burned.' The Government is currently considering providing a postgraduate loan for the 2016/17 academic year. However, this loan has already been rejected by six Russell-Group Universities for the following reasons: 1. The loan will be a maximum of £10,000. This figure is lower than the costs of many postgraduate courses and will not provide living costs, even if it covers the course fees. It therefore greatly discourages lower income students - the very problem such loans should be set up to avoid. 2. The rate of repayment is set at 9% on earnings over £21,000. This is the same repayment rate as the undergraduate loans, but they will be paid CONCURRENTLY. Therefore the real figure for almost all students will be 18%. When you add income tax and national security to this, a person with a postgraduate qualification earning £24,000 will end up taking home around £12,000. This figure is only fractionally above minimum wage and, like the minimum, is not sustainable for the vast majority of people. 3. The loan is only available to people under the age of 30. Not only does this rule out the option for any professionals who desire a change of career, but it makes it even more unlikely that people will have time to apply by the time they have paid off their undergraduate loan. We’re looking for the 100,000 signatures required to force the MPs to debate this issue in The House of Commons. Our goal is to make campaigns such as this one unnecessary in future. In the meantime it's up to us to build a fairer society together. THANK YOU in advance. Please SIGN AND SHARE!

Last month the government slashed and axed green energy subsidies because no money was left. But now the government is pushing full steam ahead with £17 BILLION subsidies for untested nuclear reactor at Hinkley. How can there be on rule for green energy and another for nuclear energy? If there is no money for green energy how can there be BILLIONS for nuclear? If there’s no money left why are we committing to subsidising a deal that’s been called as “economically insane” by city analysts and “one of the worst deals ever for British households and British industry” by Lord Howell, the pro-nuclear’ former Tory Energy Secretary. Agree with me that paying billions of pounds for nuclear energy is wrong? Please sign the petition now. There have been safety concerns over Hinkley. Two plants in Finland and France which use the same design, have been plagued with construction delays, spiralling costs and design flaws. Hinkley is under attack from not just from campaigners and community but also from one of our biggest banks. A report from HSBC on 2nd August 2015 warned that the massive cost was the new nuclear power plant was ‘becoming harder to justify.’ HSBC concluded: ‘We see ample reason for the UK Government to delay or cancel the project.’ The Hinkley deal is so outrageous and over-subsidised (£17 Billion), that ten green energy firms from Germany and Austria launched a legal challenge against it last month. Let’s not lavish the nuclear energy with billions of pounds while we’re cutting back from renewable energy because apparently the piggy bank is empty. The chorus of disapproval growing and if 38 Degrees members add our voice we could force the government to bin this bonkers plan.

The recent scandal involving Lord Sewel has highlighted the fact that peers can claim a £300 allowance for sitting in the Upper Chamber. Surely this level of subsidy is the real scandal here!

Yorkshire is the brand and Yorkshire is our identity. To command loyalty and seize the public imagination the whole of Yorkshire must be included in a devolution settlement. Further, only a united yorkshire can adequately represent us at government and the EU level.

Child poverty in Wales is currently at 31% and has been growing for decades. This means almost 1 in three children in Wales are not receiving the basic essential things in life that will help even their children one day get out of child poverty and the problem is getting worse. Failing to do this will see further suffering of Welsh children and they will not be able to reach their true potential in life whilst indirect costs of government such as law and order, social costs and health related costs in future will escalate.

If recessions are to be eliminated from the UK economy the control of money by the private bankers must be ended. Because the more money that they create the more unbalanced the economy becomes.

He has ridiculed the system the standards of which he allegedly monitored. see http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/6560352/Baron-John-Sewel-drug-binges-with-prostitutes.html

workers are being criticised for underperforming & not giving value for money, resulting in cutbacks and redundancies. This criteria should apply to Mp`s as well. The public have no idea how much time MP`s dedicate to their jobs

Am I crazy? Surely giving social housing tenants the right to buy their homes and reducing their rent by 1% every year for four years is good news. Don't be fooled! In the short term these measures might seem advantageous to people living in social housing. In fact in the long term they pose a real threat to the very organisations that provide such housing and therefore to the tenants and future tenants. They also pose a threat to every taxpayer. Who will pay to pick up the pieces when housing associations (RPs) go under? Once lost to a social housing landlord, rent money cannot be recovered. Social landlords will not benefit financially from the sell-off of their properties - people's homes - but will have insufficient surpluses with which to replace them with new housing. Many RPs will have to shelve indefinitely their plans to develop new housing. Much social housing is old and costly to maintain. RPs might also have drastically to curtail their plans to modernise these homes. If they're really strapped for cash, routine maintenance plans will also be adversely affected. The knock-on effects of the Government's plans are serious and wide-ranging. There is a housing crisis! This is not the time to be impoverishing the very organisations that could help to remedy that.

It is not inevitable that the second largest party should form the Opposition, any more than the largest single party should form the Government. It is the normal state of affairs, but many combinations are arithmetically possible and from time to time special circumstances may apply. This is one of those times. The interim leader of the Labour Party has stated that having lost the General Election, it cannot and should not vote against Bills brought forward by the Government. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the parliamentary process at Westminster, and brings the whole House into disrepute. Adversarial politics requires a strong Opposition to hold the Government to account, by force of argument and by attempting to defeat it in divisions. An Opposition party that will not do so abdicates its constitutional role. In fairness, not all Labour MPs agree with the leader's position, and if there were so much as an even split it might be legitimate to leave the matter alone. But the 48 Labour members who voted against the Government's recent Welfare Bill constitute barely a quarter of the delegation, and are in themselves a smaller parliamentary group than the Scottish National Party. The official Opposition should be the largest party which actually opposes the Government. At present, that is the SNP, not Labour. There may be a case for reexamining the issue in September, depending on the result of the Labour leadership election and the policies it pursues thereafter, but that should not stay your hand now.

Deporting political activists to Sri Lanka poses a serious threat to their lives. The current Sri Lankan government is looking more unstable. The warmonger Mahinda Rajapaksa has confirmed that he will stand in the coming election and the political situation never looked more unstable. A no-confidence motion was passed against prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, and was signed by 112 MPs. It has been six years since the end of the bloody war but still no independent international investigation has taken place into war crimes and no justice given to the victims and survivors. The delay in the UNHRC report – which in March was put back by six months – is seen as a delay in justice to the Tamil people, and led to protests by Jaffna University students and many others. But the hoped for democratic breathing space under the new government was short lived. Although earlier this year there was a change of government, the rights of the Tamil minority, and other oppressed people, are still being attacked. Militarisation and land grabs continue in the north and east province, where most Tamils live. Recently, the right to protest was attacked by the government following the gang rape of a schoolgirl. This sparked a countrywide protest against violence against women but the Sri Lankan government is using this as an opportunity to spark up fear that ‘terrorism’ is on the rise. Under president Maithripala Sirisena no major change has taken place to protect political activists in Sri Lanka. They are persecuted for defending the rights of the people and continue to be imprisoned or abducted. Many still go missing and the disappearance list is on the increase. Freedom of speech and the right to protest are under attack. Tamils continue to be arrested on return to Sri Lanka. Suresh Premachandran MP and spokesperson for the Tamil National Alliance even told the Tamil diaspora not to return to Sri Lanka – http://www.tamilsolidarity.org/?p=4138 – Amongst the many returnees who have been arrested, only two have been released. These people were arrested by the Terrorism Investigation Department (TID). The newly elected president not only failed to address the issues of the rights of Tamil and Muslim people, it has continued with the agenda of the previous regime. The state is whipping up fear and xenophobia to perpetuate the military occupation, and maintains the culture of impunity through the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The recent report, ‘The Long Shadow of War: Struggle for Justice in Post War Sri Lanka’, by the US-based Oakland Institute think-tank, finds that thousands of people continue to be missing since the war ended in spite on the government’s promise to engage in a process of truth and reconciliation. Sri Lanka is not a safe place to send back those who have fled that country to save their lives. Deporting political activists back to Sri Lanka puts them at real danger of arrest on arrival, and the high risk of torture, and their disappearance.

There was a cry from a lot of places, mostly the north of England, for the SNP to field candidates in England. it would provide people with an alternative to voting UKIP as a protest vote. the many former Labour voters have nothing left to believe in, with Labour and the Tories moving further to the right. it would give people in England hope, that there is a decent socialist alternative, and put the fear of god up the right wing parties.