Nigel Mills admitted to having "probably had a game or two" of Candy Crush during a Commons committee hearing on pensions, but still claims he was "fully focused" on the meeting. The Work and Pensions committee help to make decisions that will effect the lives and futures of millions of people across Britain and Nigel Mills's actions, and flippant attitude in response to the allegations, demonstrate a huge lack of respect for the people he represents and how trivially he views his work as an MP, whilst perhaps underscoring a wider issue of accountability in the commons. It's time politicians took our future seriously! This is not a game!

Diesel fumes are a dangerous hidden killer in major cities of the UK. Tons of diesel particulates are breathed in by British people every year, unseen and causing untold illness and early death through their inhalation. Cars, lorries, diesel trains at stations, chocking us with this stuff every day of the year. Paris has a strategy to eliminate diesel pollution by 2020. But in the UK, their is no strategy. No serious and thorough monitoring of diesel vehicle emissions in our cities accompanied by restriction of traffic if dangerous levels are reached. No long term strategy to reduce the usage of diesel cars and trucks overall. No strategy to eliminate highly polluting diesel trains by speeding up the electrification of the rail network and replacing ancient rolling stock. Why not? Because the government couldn't care less. The government are happy to allow pollution of our cities with these noxious fumes, little caring about the appalling health effects, and making no attempt to restrict them. Cyclists, pedestrians, babies in prams, open food displays, everybody using our city streets and railway stations, are breathing in the dangerous, and unseen diesel particulates, slowly but surely damaging their health. Something must be done. Starting now. Sign this the petition to demand that the government take immediate and effective measures, and implement a strategy to drastically restrict diesel fumes from wrecking the health of many British people, setting targets for drastically reduced limits of measurable diesel particulates.

How many of you with a landline actually use it? Ofcom proposed an upto 8% cost reduction, yet the costs have just gone up by 6%+!! Ofcom produced a report that proposed the reduction in the costs of landline rentals over a number of years. At the time of the Ofcom report, 11th July 2013, the wholesale cost of a landline was £93.27 per annum or £7.77 per month. These are phone lines rented from BT by the likes of Sky, and then re-sold to Sky subscribers at a cost of £196.80 per annum or £16.40 Ex VAT per month (current price after latest price rise). The current landline rental price from Sky Is £16.40 Ex VAT per month and that's a rise of 6.49% on last years cost - yet Ofcom proposed a reduction in these rental costs! Ofcom stated in its published article 11th July 2013, and I quote: "Wholesale line rental: the regulated wholesale price today is £93.27 per year. Under Ofcom's proposals the prices will fall in real terms by between CPI - 2% and CPI - 8% every year" and if the proposal was successful the reduction in charges would come into effect on 1 April 2014 and run until 31 March 2017. CPI = Consumer Price Index. See full details of Ofcom's proposals here:http://media.ofcom.org.uk/news/2013/new-prices-for-landline-and-broadband-services/ What happened to Ofcom's proposals as monthly costs for landlines are still rising? Perhaps this text below explains the price rises?! According to a BBC article; Latest figures from the regulator, Ofcom, show that consumers spent three billion minutes fewer on their landlines in the year to June 2014, a reduction of 12.7% in one year alone. As a result, operators lost out on £85m of revenue compared with the previous year. "Call volumes are declining," said James Barford of Enders Analysis. "People are using Facebook or WhatsApp, or even email if they're a little old-fashioned, so operators are having to recover their costs from increased line rental," he added. see full article here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30251029 The landline price increases: Sky: up by 6.49% to £16.40 a month BT: up 6.25% to £16.99 Virgin Media: up 6.25% to £16.99 Talk Talk: up 4.7% to £16.70 Why are the costs of landlines still rising and what happened to Ofcom's proposals to reduce the costs of landlines? We all understand that companies have to make money but making a margin of £103.53 per year, per landline, per customer is scandalous, especially when the likes of Sky do not have to do any work or maintain the landline, as they pass this job back to BT. We do understand there are processing costs associated with these charges though!! Let's put this into context:- SKY have 5.3 million subscribers who need a landline to receive the full TV service from Sky and use their broadband services. So, all the subscribers have a phone line, thats 5,300,000 x £103.53 (Sky's margin on landlines) = £548,709,000.00 income from landlines per year! That's over HALF A BILLION plus revenue, per year from landline charges! BT, Virgin and Talk Talk are making vast amounts of money as well from landline rentals per month. There where as of December 2013 - 22.6 Million residential and SME broadband connections - do the maths at £103.53 margin per connection! See full details here: http://media.ofcom.org.uk/facts/ 'Margin' is the amount of money made by Sky when charging for a landline:£16.40 x 12 = £196.80 less the £93.27 quoted by Ofcom = £103.53 Margin. What about the elderly that don't have SKY TV or Talk Talk TV or BT TV/Sports? These are people that need a landline to stay in contact with family and the outside world? The fact that it costs them £16.99 + VAT per month or £203.88 +VAT per annum for a landline from BT is outrageous. Is it any wonder some elderly people will not put the heating on? They probably can't afford it when they are paying £16.99 + VAT a month NOT TO TALK! In 1995 BT ran an advertising campaign with the late great Bob Hoskins and the strap line was "It's good to talk". Their next advert should use No Doubt's song 'Don't Speak' as the backing track and they should have a Dick Turpin character holding a sign with the strap line "It's great for us!" or they could pay Bork to use her version of the song 'It's Oh So Quiet" with an elderly person in a cold house, staring at the landline telephone!! The more people that sign the petition the better. "Come on BT, Sky, Talk Talk and Virgin, show some community spirit and immediately reduce the costs for landlines for the elderly and for those who need landlines to communicate with the outside world because they are house bound. Individually we can moan about the costs of landlines, sign the petition and collectively we could get cost reductions as proposed by Ofcom. Please sign. Thank You Philip Smith-Lawrence

Young people need safe places to socialise. A place where there are reliable adults, no drug pushers, opportunities to try new activities and learn new skills. Many other facilities would be beyond the financial reach of the very youngsters who most need them.

In the UK a party can make pledges before an election and immediately do the opposite after taking office and the electorate can do nothing about it for 5 years despite the fact the party got elected based on the original pledges. Examples from the 2010 UK election include the Tories announcing they had no plans to put up VAT and then announcing an increase to 20% 1.5 months after it, pledging no top down reorganisation of the NHS and then publishing a White paper 2 months after the election doing exactly that. Personally I would consider getting votes on the basis of pledges that you have no intention of keeping as fraud, given how quickly the 2 examples above came after the election it seems unlikely that there was a unexpected change of circumstances to account for the change. Since we can't deselect MPs that break pledges they made to get elected, any pledges made in the manifesto should be legally binding since it is those pledges that got them elected, it is possible that a change of circumstances may occur which make carrying out a pledge they made less viable, a process should be put in place to give the government an option to revisit the electorate to get authorisation to break the pledge rather than the current carte blanche to ignore the pledges they gave to get elected. A computerised system could be put in place to allow for referendums to do this to be carried out cheaply, this could be via the internet or via public terminals in council buildings for example. The system could also be used by the electorate to block legislation they didn't agree with subject to a minimum percentage of voters taking part. The current situation encourages parties to make pledges before an election that they know they have no intention of keeping, a change in the law to make them legally enforceable unless they revisit the electorate would force them to be kept whilst still allowing for the pledges to be amended if circumstances should change.

The small amount we receive in profit is apart of our Welfare State and should go back to the few public services we have left. Our Government seems to be trying very hard to privatise our NHS and ALL of our transport services and the ten million pound yearly profit from the Eurostar should play a small part in financing what our nation needs the most. The money made from selling it will disappear very quickly and we will never know how that money was spent. Every time we have privatised a public service, such as the Royal Mail, the estimated profit was never reached and it just so happens that George Osborn's close friend, Peter Davies bought the most shares. Interestingly, very few other share holders made any profit where Davie's is said to have made £18 million. It is important that our politicians realise that if they sell everything the State owns, then there will be nothing left to help the Nation in benefits, health and education. These are fundamental issues that are not being looked at enough by our Government and the Eurostar is just one example of how, little by little, our Welfare State is being shredded to pieces. Please sign this petition in the hope that this will play a role in saving our services. We shouldn't sell business's that generate any kind of profit which could be put back into our system.

The mostly Spanish-speaking workers are employed on pitiful wages to clean Saatchis' offices because the work was outsourced to COC. The cleaners have no resources or understanding of the byzantine system they are in, and the costs of mounting an employment claim are far beyond them. Saatchis are an extremely rich corporation and, by outsourcing the work to a firm that has failed because it did not pay the taxes it owed, they retain a huge moral responsibility to make good the damage done by their own policy. They must be shamed into paying up! A typical example of the workers affected is Francisco Javer Horedia, who earns the princely sum of £800 a month from two cleaning jobs: 15 hours a week at Saatchis and 12.5 hours at another firm; he is unable to find full-time work. Could you survive on such wages? More details on the workers and their situation can be found here; http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/dec/07/saatchi-cleaners-fight-unpaid-wages-low-pay

Parliament is currently considering spending at least two billion pounds on renovating the Houses of Parliament. The building is increasingly unsafe to use, with falling masonry, asbestos, fire hazards and many other dangers. Spending this amount of money to keep an out of date system hobbling on would be indefensible. This is the ideal opportunity to change not only the home of Parliament, but the way it works. The Government say they want to make the North of England an economic powerhouse: now is the opportunity to make a move in that direction. A new purpose built campus would be a start. A modern debating chamber - such as we have in Scotland, with a design to make it less confrontational - would be a start. Apart from the chamber, offices, committee rooms etc,. the campus should also include flatted apartments for MPs who have to travel. These would be furnished to a comfortable, but not luxurious, standard and would be free to use, so there would be less opportunity for the suspicion of fiddled expenses. This could be extended to including an on-campus dining system where a number of restaurants would be available. MPs would be given a daily allowance when staying on campus to attend committee meetings or plenary debates. These could be paid for by a customised debit card system. This would allow them to budget by dining in their apartments at times, or going out at others. The cost of security would be less, with all MPs under one roof whilst they were at "Northminster". The accommodation area of the campus would be secure and private for the safety and convenience of MPs and their staff: the debating chamber would be open to the public, as well as being visible on televsion as now. One big advantage for all of us, including MPs and their constituents, would be that the new system would be designed for video-conferencing and electronic communications generally. This would reduce the inconvenience and cost of MPs having to travel as frequently as they do now. Of course, there would be a need for occasional plenary sessions, but these could perhaps be reduced to one week in four or something similar. There would still be a need for a presence in London, for the meeting and greeting of foreign dignitaries etc., so Number Ten could continue to function as the Prime Minister's residence. There might also be a need for similar official residences for one or two senior figures in the Government, but apart from that MPs would live in their constituencies - at least we'd hope so - and use a mixture of new technology and visits to "Northminster" to carry out their duties. There are, of course, already plans afoot for a high speed rail link: this would enable MPs from the south of England to travel efficiently from their constituencies, as required, and would mean MPs from Midland, North of England or Scottish constituencies had shorter distances to travel. I firmly believe that this would a) help the general population to see they were getting value and relevance from their MPs, b) bring an outdated and much-lampooned mediaeval system of government into the twenty-first century and c) bring economic benefits to an area which apparently feels left behind in modern Britain.

Five Quarter want use the North East as a testbed for undersea coal gasification (UCG), an experimental method of squeezing out the remaining drops of coal. They have received licences to test down the NE coast from Amble to Hartlepool. Five-Quarter claim that what they are planning is Deep Gas Winning. They admit that the rocks around the gasification chamber will fracture. This means they are fracking as well as gasifying. In tests run in Australia UCG wells were found to leak the same substances to groundwater as can be released by fracking. There are dangers of blowbacks and explosions. Many test have failed. It has never been used on a commercial basis. The gas produced is syngas or coal gas. It is a mixture of methane (natural gas), carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and hydrogen. They plan to pump it back into the hole they have made using Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). This is another process that has not been fully tested. Surely it would be better to use renewables and not produce the CO2 in the first place? There is of course the carrot of job creation. Any jobs created by UCG/fracking will be highly specialized. However, if the same amounts of money were to be invested in renewable energies and/or home and public building insulation, which the public have been shown to prefer as the majority of surveys have shown. There would be far more new jobs and far fewer environmental concerns. We don't want our coastlines to die.

Swimming is an essential skill that can save lives, promote better health, and be an enjoyable hobby for all people, of any age, gender, or cultural background. For example, disabled people with limited land movement particularly find swimming an essential activity. If this pool closes, the sole remaining one is far too small to cope with everyone who would wish to use it, services would have to be limited there, to allow for lessons, clubs, and a reasonable amount of time still allocated to public use. Derby is a city of approx 250,000 people, one public swimming pool in town is not enough. There has been other options and suggestions made by local people, but they feel that their opinions are being ignored.

It's important that the Inland Revenue are fair to the tax payer. Collecting for days you didn't use the car on the road feels like theft. I got caught twice because I have a private number plate. I had to pay road tax for the vehicle I was buying on 14th November. By the time all the documents were returned & I took delivery of the new car on 2nd December, I lost the whole month. I correctly sent off the sale part of the V5 for my old car on 2nd December but won't get a refund for any of December, it's unfair.

Our rural roads are becoming lethal to everyone . Many have no pavements.Both drivers, horseriders, cyclists, horses, pedestrians are being killed or injured on a regular basis. Animals are also getting slaughtered on the road such as horses, donkeys, dogs. Outside some stables many rural roads are 60mph and horses have to get across the road. Some rural roads have become residential after farms are becoming family homes and yet the road can be 60mph. Many parents do not allow their children to walk along the country roads as the roads are so fast., and there is an obesity epidemic. Elderly and disabled people struggle to walk on the roads to get to their letterbox. Commuters risk their lives every time they walk to the station or bus stop. Massive HGVS and coaches now use narrow country lanes adding to the hazard. It is time for change.