• Save Suffolk Fire Service
    To a certain extent, we take the Fire Service for granted. But at a time when we need them, they are there for us. These people spend their careers risking their lives in order to save others. They work under huge pressure just by the very nature of their job, the last thing they need is further financial pressure. Less stations means further distances and longer travel times to emergencies. Less engines means a station unable to deal with as many emergencies and having to call in support from elsewhere. Less funding means less Fire Fighters, less training and less equipment. The people who will be affected by these cuts in the long run are members of the public. Who in their hour of need, will be left waiting longer for a Fire Service which they pay for, but which struggles to get to them in time. Ultimately, further cuts to a struggling Fire Service will cost lives. If you live in Suffolk, you will feel these cuts when you most need this service. When you are having the worst day of your life. So please sign this petition and share it with as many people as you can now, so together we can stop Suffolk County Council dismantling our Fire Service and risking our lives. A series of Public Consultation Meetings hosted by Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service will be held across the county in the New Year, where you learn more about the proposed cuts and we can have our say. To attend these meetings, send an email to - [email protected] The public consultation meetings will be held in Bury St Edmunds, Ipswich and Sudbury, two meetings will also be held in the Lowestoft area. These are on January 28, 2016 at Wrentham Village Hall, running from 6.30pm to 8.30pm, and on February 1 at the Riverside Centre in Lowestoft from 6.30pm to 8.30pm. Please help to support our Fire Service and the Men and Women who work tirelessly to keep it running. Thank you.
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    Created by Diarmuid O'Driscoll
  • Social Housing in Stratford East London
    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.
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    Created by margaret hamilton
  • Better mental health provision in the UK
    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.
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    Created by Cath Fletcher
  • Encourage farmers to plant trees in river uplands to prevent flooding
    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.
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    Created by N Cooper
  • Commission research to make new antibacterial drugs now.
    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.
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    Created by Gareth Greenslade
  • Bio gas not fracking gas
    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.
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    Created by Marianne Martin
  • Dredging of all rivers and waterways to prevent flooding
    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.
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    Created by John Mcintosh
  • Understanding the benefits of getting disabled people into work
    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
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    Created by isobel calladine
  • Government interference with councils
    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.
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    Created by Dave Bradley
  • Stop upland heather burning
    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
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    Created by phil milston
  • Bias "journalism"
    It is getting to the point where it becomes propaganda and dangerous to British society intentionally trying to sway the opinions of every day people(the electorate) to their (guardian) very own political agenda.this is a dangerous act that they are committing with almost 5 articles daily demonising corbyn. There's nothing impartial about this newspaper when it comes to politics,whilst other papers are accused of bias reporting I feel the guardian is most important with recent breaking stories such as the Edward Snowden release.
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    Created by Scott Maciejewski
  • Block Investigatory Powers Bill
    In short, privacy. As we have seen in the past, there is no such thing as privacy when hackers have become very skilled at accessing whatever they want or desire. End to end encryption adds a very large barrier to this snooping, and adding a backdoor for governments also adds a back door for hackers. The government should have no right in accessing anyone's encrypted communications. Not everyone is a terrorist and the people have the right to a level of privacy.
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    Created by Simon Zielonka