By upgrading the mostly unused tower blocks this would increase the social and key worker housing stock. The Carpenters Estate has a Tower Block and houses left empty for year in an area with no key workers homes or social housing. The Tower Block was considered unsafe but was used by the BBC during the Olympics and is still empty now. Newham Council's motto is " live work stay" but the reality is quite different We need homes for the people of newham not just empty tower blocks sold to overseas investors.

I lost my husband to mental health just before Christmas. This has ripped apart and devastated our family. As a family we were failed. We were given very little support and information. Basically left to cope on our own. More needs to be done. Mental illness can be a killer like cancer and heart disease but it has a very low profile and funding. This needs to change and it needs to change NOW! More and more people are suffering. Mental health wards are full yet run on minimal staff. Patient care is lacking and community follow up is so stretched that the support just isn't there. We need to change this for now and future generations. As a nation we need to do something. Stand together and fight for more help. Everyone knows someone affected. Please sign and support me in this campaign so we can hopefully change the lives of those suffering. Its what my husband would want us to do...he wasn't happy with the care he had.

UK farmers are subsidised millions of pounds by the British taxpayer. Despite this there is no effective regulation or carrot-and-stick approach to prevent soil erosion, plant trees and manage rivers to properly manage river uplands and prevent downstream flooding. Promoting natural flood defences and flood plains is more cost-effective. The Govt needs to stop focusing only on last resort man-made flood defences and tackle the root causes of devastating flooding, addressing its own contradictory policies.

British children are being denied funding from the students loan company if they have not lived in Britain for three years before going to university. This penalises children of parents who are teachers, aid workers and average British citizens working overseas.

A strain of E.coli is now resistant to all known antibiotics. The way the resistance is held by the bacteria means that it will spread to many other types of bacteria. This will happen within five years and we will be reduced to watching our loved ones die from infections that have been treatable for the last 75 years. This is the end of the antibiotic era and few will realise the true horror of this until it is too late. Antibiotics are poor earners for drug companies and they will not spend their resources to develop new ones. Only governments have the means to fund these drugs and then control their use to keep them effective for us all. In 1924 the most powerful man in the world, President of the USA Calvin Coolidge had to watch his beloved 16 year son die from an infected blister caused by playing tennis with his brother. Please stop this from happening to us again in 2020.

Although the scientific community have understood the dangers we face in climate change this is only just beginning to filter into the general public. MPs seem to be very loath to understand the issues. People have been saying fracking is safe rather than understanding that it is another fossil fuel and will contribute to global warming. Its short term safety is irrelevant. Why not spend our time and energy cleverly to produce the gas for our carbon neutral future. Invest in the small because we understand the big picture. Who are the lobbyists that persuade our MPs to allow our landscape to be ransacked for something that will only encourage more extreme climate events? Biomass gas could be an income stream for our farmers and Councils while giving us a carbon neutral gas. Invest now in our long term future - not in a fossil fuel.

It's absolutly vital that all waterways are drained correctly and if the outfall being ditches or rivers are not clear and dredged fields flood and overwhelm the rivers causing them to breach their banks and flood defenses causing havoc and damage to property's, animal livelihood in flash floods and extra costs reinstating burst flood banks which could all be avoided if dredging of rivers and ditches were carried out yearly, it's such a simple process which could save massive costs in repairs and insurance claims.

The environment needs our protection for the future, for generations to come. If you can't explain to a child why it is OK to continue to dump contaminated silt into a pristine sand and sea shell bedded bay, smothering wildlife including protected creatures like the Pink Sea Fan, then it is time to stop trying to justify these actions. The Marine Management Organisation (MMO) has been given a great responsibility - on behalf of us, the environment and future generations. Despite years of campaigning and despite being taken to the High Court resulting in no dumping taking place for the last 13 months, the MMO is about to issue new licenses again. We call upon the Marine Management Organisation to use their responsibility wisely. Would the Rame Head South site - an inherited 100 year old ammunitions dumpsite - ever be taken into consideration as a new dumpsite if an application was put forward now to start using it for the first time in 2016? Of course not! Why? Because it would be ridiculous to do so: too close to shore, devastating sea life, right next to a Marine Conservation Zone (MCZ) with many protected species, very near to a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and in an area of outstanding beauty - the Rame Peninsula. Do the right thing: STOP dumping in Whitsand Bay - CLOSE the Rame Head South dumpsite. Whitsand Bay in South East Cornwall is NOT a Dump Site. Recent demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GB_gAcoYGVw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccnl5L-g1as Licence application and option to directly object: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hmnb-devonport-maintenance-dredging

There have been over 280 successful prosecutions under the Hunting Act as of today, a number that does not reflect the real number of cases of illegal hunting that are not fully investigated. There are far too many cases dropped on account of using the trail hunting false alibi without such alibi being properly challenged. There needs to be several new clauses added to the 2004 Hunting Act so that illegal hunting does not go unpunished. These include; making hunts responsible for their dog's behaviour so they cannot just claim 'accident' whenever their dogs chase wild mammals. The Act's main aim was to prevent unnecessary suffering to wild mammals - inevitable in hunting with dogs for 'sport'. Penalties should be consistent with those in other wild animal protection legislation, e.g the Wild Mammals Protection Act & the Wildlife & Countryside Act, More detailed possible amendments to strengthen the 2004 Hunting Act: http://www.powa.org.uk/id88.html Is the ban working? http://www.powa.org.uk/id88.html Keeptheban Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/KeepTheFoxHuntBan/

During Channel 4’s leaders’ debate, a member of the audience asked what the Conservatives plan to do to get more disabled people into work. David Cameron replied that the culture of employers needs to change. I could not agree more. I am a visually impaired qualified business administrator who has also studied business studies seeking a new job in the administrative or marketing profession. I have been asked questions during interviews that would never be asked of a non-disabled candidate – such as how I use the telephone – despite evidence of my competencies and ability to do the job. According to the Labour Force Survey, disabled people remain significantly less likely to be in employment than non-disabled people. It is not enough to comply with disability discrimination legislation or to offer “guaranteed interviews” to disabled applicants. Employers fear that disabled employees will be a burden and so reject these candidates – on grounds such as lack of experience in an area of work not essential for the job – even when they perform well at interview. This is important to me as I am a disabled young individual who is desperate to find work, but to barriers which employers put I place, cannot get a job. This is very frustrating for me, as I want to give something back to the community as wellraising awareness that disabled people can work and are just as qualified as able bodied people

Locally elected councillors should be free to reflect the views of their local voters, to whom they are accountable, on how council money should be spent - or where it should not go. To prevent local councils from making decisions to reflect the views of their voters is profoundly anti-democratic and Un-British. Compelling councils to invest in the arms trade, or industries supportive of law-breaking foreign regimes, is high-handed and centralising. It makes a mockery of previous government statements about local democracy.

Call for landowners to stop upland heather burning as new research shows link to increased flood risk New research from Leeds University into the impacts of permitted heather burning on upland peat bog shows that for the 20% biggest storms, the flow of water over land is higher than in areas where the moorland has not been burnt. This will contribute to “flashy” river flows in the valleys below the moors, with the water level rising quickly and causing flooding. The researchers conclude, “We would expect these effects to have a larger impact on river flow as the proportion of the catchment that has undergone more recent burning increases (i.e. the shorter the prescribed burn rotation interval).” The likely causes of this increased overland water flow are that prescribed burning – the controlled, so-called “cool burning” that Natural England allows in winter on protected sites like Walshaw Moor Estate – removes the rough understorey of dense vegetation such as Sphagnum moss and also compacts the upper peat. So instead of slow moving water that sinks into the peat, during intense rainstorms, water runs off the peat and pours into streams and rivers. image - www.independant.co.uk info - www.energyroyd.org.uk