After long resisting the call to make land ownership transparent in Scotland, the Scottish Government has finally said that it will make provision for ‘a public register of persons who control land in Scotland’ – but the details remain unspecified and, with the Holyrood parliamentary session ending on 23 March, there may be no time to review or amend the proposals. We need the Scottish Government to fulfil their belated promises on transparency of land ownership. In 1617, James VI of Scotland (& I of England) brought in the Register of Sasines Act to counter fraud in land transactions by creating a register of title to record who had sold what to whom, but today in Scotland – four hundred years later - the owners of at least 3.45 million acres (22.1% of all rural land) cannot be identified, largely because the owners shelter behind nominees, many registered in offshore jurisdictions (eg the British Virgin Islands). It is clear that the prime reason for concealing ownership is to avoid tax (eg Land and Buildings Transaction Tax and Inheritance Tax) and to ‘launder’ ill-gotten cash. Parliamentary committees (and the SNP 2015 Conference) have urged the Government to make radical improvements to the law and ensure transparency in land title, so that the people of Scotland can know who owns Scotland. But the Government resisted all changes to its Land Reform Bill until mid-February, when the Minister relented and stated that she would be making provision for ‘the creation of a public register of persons who control land in Scotland’ so that they could no longer ‘hide behind obscure company titles or trust arrangements.’ The belated conversion of the Minister is welcome, but it may come too late to implement the measures in full before Holyrood breaks up on 23 March. We are now very short of time and we need to get it right in this Parliamentary Session: a four hundred year delay is enough!

Because the government is telling us we are all in it together.Prove it by Using the same method as public workforce pay is set by.

I will sadly loose the chance to make a difference as well as my livelihood. Within 6 months I will create my business with the need to employ people from the local community. With in 1 year I will be able to help my community sustainability in teams of job creation and long term employment prospects. These are just a few things I do: I am a local children's charity supporter and make regular financial contributions. I am a member of the Dudley Health Group. I am a weekly contributor to the local Dudley food bank. I also work alongside the youth of all nations to assist in there future growth and development. I am a chief church usher and I am an active church member of 13 years for the Dudley New Testament Church. I work closely with the Afro-carribean centre. Sending me back to Jamaica means l loose my formed friendships and community family, l will have nothing and I will be homeless. The deadline for the immigration tribunal to receive this is the 30th March 2016. Help me to continue to make a positive change and contribution to the UK future growth and to the future adults of tomorrow. Please sign this petition. And thanks for all the support. Dwayne Millwood.

It is important for the city council not to cut the services as there are many people from different walks of life..please help us keep this service going

Bristol is now the second most congested city in the UK and pollution kills nearly 200 people a year. Yet in the last 3 years just 1 km of truly protected cycleway has been built. Bike Life survey shows that in Bristol – 80% of people support increasing the safety of cycling 70% of people want to see more spent on safer cycling infrastructure The next Council needs to make a comprehensive network of safe, connected cycle routes.a priority.

BT / Openreach have been promising fibre-optic broadband to rural communities in Pembrokeshire for a long time, and yet installation dates keep getting pushed further back because we are simply not a priority. As customers we cannot just switch provider, because the majority of rural communities have old-fashioned BT exchanges, a fact that not only means we are caught in a monopoly trap, we actually pay more for our services than areas which do have other suppliers. Enterprise and entrepreneurship are big buzz words in our county at the moment, but how can successful businesses be built when our Internet speeds barely pass 3 mbps? We need more choice, and better service!

My dads health is suffering and mine too with worrying it's for his sake

The Practice Group plc (a private company) has been running The Willows Surgery in Lower Bevendean along with four other GP surgeries in Brighton and Hove. At the beginning of this year they announced that they would no longer be running their Brighton and Hove surgeries after June (this already follows the closure of two of the city's GP surgeries last year). This announcement has left a huge hole and The Willows is now threatened with closure. Lower Bevendean is in a somewhat isolated area on the outskirts of Brighton. It is an area of mostly low income households and is made up of largely council and ex-council housing. The surgery has just under 2,000 patients and all have been feeling extremely anxious since the news. No-one wants to see their GP surgery close down! If The Willows were to close patients would have to travel outside their local area to see a doctor. The nearest GP to Lower Bevendean would be a long trek up and down a hilly area and as a large number of The Willows patients are elderly or disabled or in poor health they would not be able to manage the extra travel to see a Doctor. Even if travelling wasn't a problem, the nearest GP surgery simply has not got the capacity to take on an extra 2,000 patients. So realistically patients would have to travel a lot further to register with a new GP. As there seems to be no 'highest priority' scheme in place, the elderly and the less able bodied will be the last in the race to find a new GP and will find themselves having to travel the furthest. We've heard reports of elderly patients in tears as they are so worried about what will happen if their doctor disappears from their community. The less frail residents are angry. Why must they travel across the city to see a doctor? How is it possible that an NHS GP will vanish from the neighbourhood because the private company who were running the surgery decided that they wanted to earn more profit from us? In order to keep our NHS public we need to fight the 'behind our backs' privatisation of our health services! We need to make sure that our health service is about people and not profits! The community in Lower Bevendean need your support in their fight to stop the closure of The Willows GP Surgery. The community of Lower Bevendean needs to have local access to a GP and they require NHS England, along with Brighton and Hove CCG to ensure that a GP service will continue at the Willows Surgery !

‘At a time when councils are struggling with ever deeper cuts to our budgets, it makes sense that we use our spending power to favour companies that pay their taxes. After all, it is companies’ and individuals’ tax payments that ultimately fund council budgets. I hope that councils across the UK will agree – and adopt policies similar to Oxford City Council’s.’ Jean Fooks, Councillor for Summertown Ward, Oxford According to Christian Aid’s Sourced campaign Councils spend billions of pounds each year on goods and services. This puts them in a powerful position to insist on minimum ethical standards from the companies that they do business with. calls on local councils to introduce tougher questions about tax compliance when they buy goods and services from private companies. HMRC calculated in 2013 that the UK itself is losing in the region of £30bn, of which £9bn was estimated to be unpaid tax by big businesses[i]. However the official figure is likely to be conservative and a separate estimate by tax expert Richard Murphy puts tax avoidance(legal) at £19.1bn for 2013/14 [ii]– the amount pencilled in for cuts to our schools, hospitals and other services over the next four years[iii]. This figure is separate from tax debt of £18.2 and the still larger figure of £82.1 for tax evasion (illegal). Tax avoidance and evasion by big multinational companies also hurts local small and medium-sized companies that pay more tax proportionately. This means they cannot compete on a level playing field with multinational companies. The harmful impacts of tax avoidance and tax evasion are found not just in the UK. Christian Aid has highlighted the damaging effect of corporate tax evasion and avoidance on the world’s poorest countries. Tax dodging is costing these countries up to US$300bn each year – far more than they receive in aid. Case study: Experian is used by the majority of UK local authorities to provide information, data collection and analysis,15 especially for detecting cases of fraud. 50% of Experian’s subsidiary companies are based in tax havens,16 including Costa Rica,17 Delaware (USA), Ireland and Jersey[iv] [i] Measuring tax gaps, 2013 edition: Tax gap estimates for 2011-12, HM Revenue & Customs, 2013, p4,www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/249537/131010_Measuring_Tax_Gaps_ACCESS_2013.pdf [ii] Tax Research UK 2014 : The Tax Gap [iii] Guardian 18-Jan-2016: The Cayman Islands – home to 100,000 companies and the £8.50 packet of fish fingers [iv] Christian Aid Campaign Sourced

A lot of us are on package contracts and believe unlimited texts should include anything apart from photos sent as free!!

We are about to start a new build and have spent a year negotiating with SSEPD for an electricity connection. Their prices changed constantly, they sent the wrong contract to the Wayleaves team (the team that sort out the permissions with landowners) and then said that it was going to cost more because the works team had discovered a problem with the planned works on the quote. They say they won't tell us what the extra cost will be until they have done the work! So we have no idea if or what they might be planning to charge us on top of the amount we have already paid based on their quote.

Having watched PMQs for decades, today, 24th Feburary 2016, underlined what a farce it has become. The Prime Minister has now fallen so low as to mock the way people dress. Although this may be common behaviour on the playing fields of Eaton, it completely debases his high office and our great country. Despite some wonderful innovations from the leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, the Prime Ministers behaviour has worsened, and he continues as he did in 2010 to not answer straight questions to which the British public deserve straight answers. There seens to be a misconception from the Prime Minster that PMQs is a time for levity whereas it performs an essential constitutional function for British citizens to get information directly from the Prime Minister. In short it is time the Prime Minister grew up and lived up to his responsibilities to the people of Great Britain.