The Labour Manifesto rightly says it is important to strive for greater equality in the UK. It commits to raising the National Minimum Wage to living wage levels by 2020. But this will not deal with rising pay inequality in the public sector - where taxpayers' money often gives the top more than 10 times the wage of the lowest paid. Nor does it deal with huge and unjustified salaries and bonuses in large private sector firms - many of which receive huge amounts of public money - and where top incomes are often several hundred times greater than those at the bottom. A renamed Fair Pay Commission would examine both low and high pay. It would make recommendations to Parliament to reduce income inequality and will monitor progress on a year by year basis. Curbing excessive high pay is not only fair, it is also important for the economy. It will encourage longer-term investment, raise middle and lower incomes across the board and reduce the fizz at the top of the housing boom.

Dear Leader of Bath and North East Somerset Council. To get my three children (8, 6 and 4) to school I have to cross a busy main road. This road is so busy that we usually have to stand on the tiny courtesy crossing in the middle of the road – that's me, at least three children, the odd scooter, school bags and other paraphernalia – and wait for a break in the traffic. In the middle of the road. This is not a safe way to get to and from school. I have spoken to other parents with similar complaints about walking their children to school safely. They too have to wait on so-called courtesy crossings to get across the road. They have to catch the eye of drivers in order to cross the road safely. They have to squeeze past lorries parked on the pavement. They have to step out between parked cars to cross the road to school. This is unacceptable. We are asking you, the council, to commit to our manifesto for Safer Routes to Schools. The objectives are listed below. No parent or child should have to rely on the courtesy of a driver to cross the road on the way to school. No parent or child should have to wait in the middle of the road to complete a crossing on the way to school. No parent or child should have to make eye contact with vehicle drivers to cross the road on the way to school. No parent or child should have to walk more than 150 metres out of their way to get to a safe crossing on the way to school. No parent or child should have to squeeze past cars or lorries parked on the pavement on the way to school. The council will commit to consulting on designated safe routes to school that fulfil the above criteria within six months of taking office. The council will consult school PTAs and other parent groups across Bath within this timeframe. The council will install the required safe crossings within six months of the completed consultation. Safer Routes to Schools would have many benefits. These include reduced pollution, less traffic congestion and healthier children. Most importantly, if our children can walk to school along designated safe routes our children can have some of the freedom and independence they desperately need. Bath wants to be a child-friendly city. Making the roads safe for our children to cross is the best way to achieve that. Best wishes Lou Abercrombie

According to Citizens UK the wages of supermarket workers are being topped up by £11 billion each year in benefits. For too long supermarkets have been underpaying their staff & expecting the tax payer to foot the bill but now is time to fight back. Supermarkets turn over billions of pounds every year & are easily in the position to pay the living wage & if they were to do so would save this country £11 billion every year. Imagine where that £11 billion could go - NHS, Police, Fire Service, Education to name a few. While our public services are being drained of resources huge billion pound, multi-national companies are being subsidised by us the tax payer, it must now stop to save our economy & our public services The living wage is set at £9.15 in London & £7.85 elsewhere & is calculated according to the basic cost of living in the UK - that's right, the basic cost of living. All employers should be paying the living wage but supermarkets have the moral right to do so as they employ such a large number of employees (5 million) & turn over such masses of money. It's important to remember as well that this isn't just the big 4 who are guilty, those with a smaller market share must also accept responsibility - particularly the Co-operative whose morals & ethics were built on challenging greed & dispersing money back into society 170 years ago facebook.com/blocuk twitter.com/ukbloc

The high rents are pushing people more and more into poverty or homelessness Letting Agencies can pick and chose and the majority are exclusive. No matter whether you have evidence of being a good tenant or not makes no difference if you are not working for what ever reason you are automatically excluded by most of the agents.

This is important because disabled people are suffering due to austerity cuts made by this government and the very least the government can do to alleviate this suffering is provide them with accessible premises (as any educational or professional establishment is legally obliged to do) for compulsory interviews.

To keep a market town still here and stop the increase in parking charges.

People should not be forced to choose between bad and worse candidates. We should be able to reject candidates outright, all candidates if need be. We spend too much time waiting for unqualified, lying, cheating, unworthy, ethically and morally corrupt individuals to serve their time in public office at our expense when many of us would have preferred they not be there in the first place. It's time we had the democratic option to say no from the start.

In 2009, a survey suggested that most fans felt that the F.A were not doing enough to tackle homophobia in football. Six years on and this is still the case. In 2012, the F.A released a video of premier league players discussing the topic, this is simply not enough.In a Wikipedia post, it states that'The Guardian's Secret Footballer columnist said that a gay player would be accepted in a typical dressing room instead said that the worry for any would-be gay player would be the abuse from the terraces.' From this quote you can infer that the football governing body is simply not doing enough to tackle the issue. To exacerbate this an Integrated Household Survey estimated 1.5% people in the UK identify themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual. From these statistics it is clear to see that the amount of open LGBTs in football is far below the national average ; from previous information, it is apparent more needs to be done in the terraces rather than within the club. By treating Homophobia the same as other discrimination types such as racism (by creating harsher punishments on those convicted) we will see a dramatic decline in homophobic abuse and football will move on and will catch up with the modern society where everyone is accepted for who they are.

The government have decided to take NHS money out of hospitals, call it the 'Better Care Fund' and give it to Health and Wellbeing Boards. In Kirklees, this body has sitting on it, the Chair and Chief Officer of Greater Huddersfield Clinical Commissioning Group and the Chair and Chief Officer of North Kirklees Clinical Commissioning Group. It also has a number of councillors and a representative of a company contracted to do work for the CCGs, the representative of the council responsible for Public Health and sometimes representatives of Mid Yorkshire Hospital Trust, Calderdale Hospital Foundation Trust and Healthwatch. The NHS has always been run with a public service ethos. Increasingly multinational companies without that ethos, are being awarded contracts to deliver services and they fail to honour their promises. Any private company is vulnerable to takeover bids from larger firms. We consider it worth reminding the bodies responsible for allocating around £2.5m of public money, that money channelled away from the hospitals has a potential to weaken them and that there is no clear evidence that 'Care Closer to Home' will either keep people out of hospital or save money for the NHS. eg. A very recent Kings Fund report - 'The Reconfiguration of Clinical Services - what is the evidence?' (Nov 2014) has stated that there are consistent findings that moving care out of hospital does not cut costs or reduce admissions to hospital. In fact in one study (Roland et al 2012) it increased admissions. The report states that in fact, this kind of reconfiguration of clinical services can act as a distraction from core tasks and can increase risks. North Kirklees NHS Support Group and Dewsbury Keep Our NHS Public (KONP) have been out in Dewsbury, Cleckheaton, Birstall and Batley with paper petitions, but the area of the CCGs stretches to Heckmondwike, Mirfield, Hopton, Kirkburton, Meltham and Huddersfield and district. It is with the idea of giving people a chance to sign in all the relevant areas, that we are running it for a short time online. Please sign and share, if you have a Kirklees postcode. Thank you.

Children are putting themselves at risk be inhaling nitrous oxide, already 17 people of died as a result of its consumption. This is due to this product being so readily available, affordable and unregulated. My concern is that very young innocent children will loose their lives from its use. Criminal gangs are now making fake cylinders as they see a market opportunity, this is only going to end in more deaths will youths having no idea of what they are inhaling.

All over the country people are tired of politicians who promise one thing at election time when they need our votes and then go off to Westminster and ignore what their constituents really want. In a recent survey, 77% of us said we wanted MPs to put the views of their constituents first but only 27% of us thought they actually did. In constituencies across the UK, voters are fighting back by demanding all parliamentary candidates sign the MyMP pledge. This means any candidate who gets elected agrees to consult with and poll constituents on key parliamentary decisions and vote accordingly. We have a great opportunity during the election campaign to force our candidates to do politics in a different, genuinely democratic way by demanding they put the views of the people of Barnet first on issues like the NHS, immigration and living standards. If you live in the London Borough of Barnet, sign the petition and make sure your voice is heard over the next five years.

In the UK we have bishops in the House of Lords making decisions that could affect each and every one of us, these bishops are being influenced, not by us, not by society as a whole but by religion; the same ideology which influenced a group of religious men to fly planes into the world trade center killing thousands of innocent lives, the same ideology that for thousands of years has caused unnecessary death and suffering of innocent human beings. The only thing religion is very good at is conferring a sense of moral superiority on its followers and I will take no part in it; nor should anyone else that has any sort of individual morality; nor should our 21st century parliament, get religion out of the political decision making processes and as far away from the governing of the country as possible. If I created a religion right now and put in writing what I thought was right and wrong; I could even write a great load of mumbo jumbo proclaiming that I know all the answers, or I add some fiction in there about resurrection and healing powers. Well first people would probably say I’m crazy and I’d be sectioned; but what if over time people actually started believing it? And hundreds, even thousands of years into the future people start sacrificing their lives over it, wars break out because of it, governments changing their laws because of it and the entire sociological ideology of the world’s populous would have changed all because of a religion I could make up on the spot right now. Well, I needn't go on, I’m sure you get the point. We can listen and chose to abide by the rules of society but we don’t have to listen and chose to abide by the rules and fundamentals of anything else. Each and every one of us has our own morality and that is okay! If our own individual morality tells us that something is right or wrong then who is tell us otherwise? The government? The police? The church? A 2000 year old book written by a group of men with their own morals; I ask who influenced them? Who influenced their moral standpoint on things and why should we be dictated to by a group of men who aren't even alive anymore? Let’s say that the authors of the bible thought that murder was right, does that mean that through the ages our morality would in-fact change and not only would we believe this to be the case, it would be instilled into us, into who we are and our individual conscious would know no different. Just because a majority believe something to be right or wrong does not make it so. There’re people in the world that will look to others to influence them morally, the church is the biggest example of this, praying on the weak and feeble telling each and every one of them how to live their lives and they pay the price for it, every single religious person in some way pays a price; be it monetary or non-financial. Whether that be sacrificing their lives or donating ten percent of their hard earnings, they pay a price.