We are concerned that the Conservative Government’s under-funding of the NHS has meant: In Reading: • The Royal Berkshire Hospital (RBH) is expected to make additional cuts of £45 million by 2020. • GP appointments are becoming harder to get with many patients having to wait weeks to see their doctor. • GP surgeries, like Circuit Lane Surgery, have been unable to provide good quality care and have been rated inadequate. • A&E departments are unable to cope, with many patients having to wait for more than 4 hours – failing a key target. The Royal Berkshire Hospital has missed this target. Nationally: • Patients are waiting for hours on trolleys in corridors. • Thousands of non-emergency operations have been cancelled. • NHS budgets are not keeping up with an ageing and increasing population and cuts to social care budgets are putting further pressure on the NHS. • The UK spends a lower proportion on health than other EU countries resulting in fewer doctors, nurses and beds per patient. • NHS staff are leaving due to poor pay and increasing workloads and stress. In 2017 33,000 nurses left the NHS.

Nestor Sylla is much loved and highly respected. Following the murder of his sister in Guinea, Africa, in 2006, he fled for his life to the UK, but previous legal work failed Nestor when a solicitor did not respond to a Home Office request for photographs. His complaint about the solicitor was upheld. A natural helper, Nestor has volunteered for the BOAZ TRUST winter night shelter for seven years. He has also volunteered for Red Cross and the Mustard Tree. Nestor has created a new family in the UK and, in the process, become a vital carer for both Lawrence, aged 14, and for Elizabeth Coleman, retired. Lawrence says: “He’s a really great guy and helps me with my homework and takes me to school.” And Elizabeth says: “Nestor’s home is England. He is like a son to me. He has a lot to contribute to our society.” In April of 2017 Nestor, who is also a natural leader, was elected to represent many destitute people, questioning the Greater Manchester Mayoral Candidates at a Housing Hustings about their plans for tackling the city’s desperate housing problem. Nestor was detained on Friday 30th June 2017. He had a new Leave to Remain application that was received by the Home Office BEFORE he was detained, therefore his detention was unlawful. His lawyer, Mervyn Cross of Duncan Lewis said: ”There was absolutely no reason to detain Nestor.” When Nestor’s MP, Lucy Powell, contacted the Home Office on Nestor’s behalf, the Home Office insisted that Nestor’s detention was lawful. The MP has now written to the Immigration Minister again pointing out that Nestor has documentary evidence that proves his Leave to Remain application was indeed received by the Home Office before his detention. The Home Office must be called to account for this unlawful detention and for attempting to deny that they unlawfully detained Nestor Sylla. An admission of such unlawful detention will contribute to ensuring that the Home Office stops unlawfully detaining people seeking asylum.

Due to a high traffic accidents! Pedestrian safety/child safety while walking to and from three local schools. Traffic accidents at a high with fatalities due to speeding vehicles which needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency! High volume of traffic including large vehicles now using this as a through road where cars are parked on both sides of the street.

Primary school children are having to take chances crossing the road in order to get into school on time. Vehicles regularly stop on the crossing causing difficultly for pedestrians Numerous accidents have caused lights and bollards to be knocked down - next time it could be one of our children. Greenbank School parents have commented how they need to set off earlier due to the additional time it takes to cross Smithdown road from all directions.

To keep the changing areas and poolside clean, visitors to Edinburgh Leisure swimming pools are provided with and encouraged to wear blue plastic pool shoes. While this does achieve its desired result, it results in a lot of plastic shoes ending up in landfill after a single use. If Edinburgh Leisure can provide a sustainable solution to this, we can seriously reduce the amount of plastic ending up in landfill and significantly decrease Edinburgh Leisure's carbon footprint. These plastic pool shoes resemble plastic carrier bags in many ways and, like plastic bags, are only designed for one use. We would like to see Edinburgh Leisure either get rid of them completely and encourage people to go barefoot when visiting their pool changing areas or replace them with a reusable, washable, fabric alternative.

People in Wiveliscombe rely on the 7am bus to get them to work and college on time. The 7am bus is being cut meaning people will not be able to get into Taunton on time. The last bus coming back to Wiveliscombe is now going to be 5.45 meaning people will not be able to return from work and college. People of Wiveliscombe pay their council tax and demand the services reinstated. The council should be encouraging people to use public transport not taking it away.

It's a life line to local people

Coin has two sides. If you do not consider worldwide income for a first time buyer of home mortgage, then how come you can tax him / her on his / her foreign income?

The government are introducing compulsory testing for children in reception. The tests will be in numeracy, literacy and behaviour. A £10m trial will begin in September, with the aim of introducing it to all infant schools in 2020. This must be stopped. Though early assessments are important, baseline testing is not the way to approach this. Different ways of assessing children were explored in 2015, and the most popular was based solely on observation of children. The approach of baseline testing came under scrutiny from teaching unions and parents, and the Department for Education quickly put an end to the tests, claiming the different approaches were too hard to compare. However, here we are again, and this time compulsory baseline tests are being pushed through. The only way to stop this is to speak up. The tests are unreliable. Many factors are thought to 'scew' the results, including 'whether the child was summer born, spoke English as a first language, or had settled happily into school.' The tests are also risking making social inequality worse. 'Parents with high expectations will prepare their children, which could mean these infants have a higher score and that higher expectations will follow them throughout their school careers. The opposite could be true for children from disadvantaged homes.' So the disadvantaged, the youngest, those who do not speak English as a first language, even those who are shy and not settling as well as others could have their education seriously damaged by these tests. Is this not discrimination? This approach being pushed through seems to be based on a November OFSTED report that 'highlighted that a third of five-year-olds, and half of disadvantaged ones, were not reaching expected standards of development in their reception year. The inspectors recommended more focus on reading, including phonics.' It suggested that reception pupils need to be 'pushed harder in reading and maths'. However, this is being challenged by parents, teachers and other education experts, who claim the OFSTED report was biased because 'the schools used as good examples by the inspectorate were chosen for their more formal approach.' The evidence suggests that baseline testing will be extremely damaging. Please sign and share this petition to show Damian Hinds that it is not supported. A good summary of everything you need to know about this issue: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/jan/16/tests-reception-children-immoral-england-play

The road are being left in a state that is potentially life threatining

Taxpayers do not want money spent on proving who is to blame at this time or suffer an eternity of news time discussing it. We want to know how you are going to protect the ordinary people - the many not the few.

There are over 320 million people worldwide who suffer from a form of colour blindness, mostly males (8% of the population). Having dealt recently with HSBC bank, they do not seem to be up to date with how to deal with people with this form of disability. We need to change their attitude. They have redesigned their cards to all be similar across 30 countries but with different colour combinations. I have been told on the telephone that the grey business debit card I have will not or cannot be replaced with any other colour. The card to me is silver with a shiny silver lion and silver embossed numbers making it impossible to read (like the image above but imagine it being laminated, shiny). Many people have already said they have cards with such issues and they are not colour blind so this needs to be addressed by all banks.