Football is traditionally a working class sport with a significant proportion of supporters being of a low income background. This is particularly the case where Blackburn Rovers FC are a relatively small club, where the majority of its fan base is in Blackburn itself. The town arguably has more social deprivation than many in the UK, and as such, the population is likely to be more vulnerable to be taken advantage of by fee charging claims management companies, debt advice companies etc. Blackburn Rovers FC is the most important organisation to the town of Blackburn in the 21st century, and there is therefore a moral duty for it to reflect the needs of the community around it. The football club would gain significant respect if it were to display charities such as the Citizens Advice Bureau and Step Change or an ethical private company such as Payplan on its shirts. This would be a statement that the club acknowledges the level of financial difficulty a large proportion of the town and its fan base faces. It would also encourage other football clubs to do the same where fans are feeling increasingly distanced from their football clubs with television deals coming into hundreds of millions of pounds and accusations of tax evasion now commonplace.

It is an outdated tax that now has no other function than to support the department that administrates it. The equivalent income to treasury could be added to the price of petrol at the next budget at zero financial cost.

Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories cause harm and poverty to Palestinians, and are an obstacle to peace in the region. Israeli settlements are illegal under international humanitarian law. This is important because the Palestinians are currently under violent attack and need resources to rebuild their lives, home and future. They cannot do this if their produce are stolen from them and sold to the Americas and Europe. According to a study conducted by Dr. Majid Sbeih from Al-Quds University for the Democracy and Workers’ Rights Center in Palestine, 82% of Palestinian workers have the desire and willingness to leave their jobs in the settlements, provided that a suitable alternative is available. However, suitable alternatives will not be found as long as the Palestinian economy is under occupation. We are calling on companies to withdraw investment in and end trade operations with Israeli settlement businesses.

At a time of austerity, when almost a million people per year in the UK depend on food banks and when the average wage is stagnating, it's completely inappropriate for MP's to be getting a pay rise. We are not 'all in this together'. http://www.trusselltrust.org/stats To be fair to them, most MP's have already criticised the pay rise. Let's make sure they put their money where their mouth is.

There is no scientific basis that the culling of badgers will help combat the spread of Bovine TB. If anything, it will make the problem worse and the trial culls have been proved both ineffective and inhumane. It is a political tool with which the government perseveres, to appease the farming industry despite overwhelming expert, scientific advice. It seeks to remove an iconic, protected and much loved wild mammal from our landscapes and encourages illegal baiting and cruelty towards this and other wild animals.

Next time it may be an issue you feel strongly about that is reported less than fairly. You may not agree with my politics but everyone on 38 degrees seems to agree that we should always get the best information. On the 15th of July there will be 1000's protesting outside the BBC. See if they report it, because they did not report the 10,000 outside the Israeli embassy last Friday.

EPSRC is a branch of Research Council UK, the largest public funding agency in your country. It supplies hundreds of millions of pounds in funding every year. See www.epsrc.ac.uk. The pretense is that this money is given to Research Organizations with adequate procedures to tackle scientific fraud. This is not so. In fact, fraud in publicly funded research has promoted the careers of incompetent people at British Universities. I know most of you won't know much chemistry, but there is Wikipaedia to check up simple scientific facts: what would you think, after checking that aluminum sulphate is Al2(SO4)3 and phenol an acid, I told you that two academics at two of the top five Universities in the UK wrote a research paper where they gave phenol as an alkali and aluminum sulphate as AlSO4? (Pst! Now that you are at the Wikipaedia site you could make a donation... ;-) ) And remember, corruption only spreads...It is therefore in your interest that public funding is not abused. Also, by claiming that organisations funded by EPSRC have procedures to deal efficiently with fraud lends legitimacy to such institutions when dealing with people they have damaged. For example, I want to confront EPSRC with a range of allegations which includes those made in this link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2umhkGxHbasY241U3huLUZQTzA/edit?usp=sharing in an example case which still affects me.

The clause which bars other food retailers leaves a toxic legacy by limiting the options: IKEA has now been granted permission for a full-size store and loading bay. IKEA aims to demolish the building and the eco-park which Sainsbury’s gave to the local community. The site is on the main commuter bus route to North Greenwich station. Locals will have to join the traffic mayhem or jostle for space on public transport through IKEA traffic to shop for food. If there is an emergency how will services reach the site on a peninsula surrounded by water on three sides with IKEA at its neck? Instead of 'village living in the city' this is an urban nightmare. Sainsbury's says it is committed to helping communities and sustainability: Lifting the clause will mean that a more suitable retailer than IKEA can move into the neighbourhood creating diverse shopping opportunities for locals without overburdening transport networks and ruining the environment.

I hope that those of you reading this never have to look after someone you love who is terminally ill. But, if you do, that you can ensure they can choose the death they want, are out of pain and able as most of us wish to stay at home. Lord Falconer’s Bill on assisted dying will have its second reading on Friday July 18th. It proposes that anyone who has a terminal illness who is judged by two Doctor’s to have less than 6 months to live and who is mentally competent to decide the timing of their own death to be given life ending medication. Objectors worry about the impact on the elderly and disabled but they are not included. This clarification means that if you are faced with the devastating news of an inoperable, incurable illness you can choose a dignified death at the time of your choosing without fearing that your loved ones could be prosecuted if they were to help you end your life: which may include following your instructions not to send you to hospital or call an ambulance because they know that you want to stay at home rather than face death in a ward full of strangers or unfamiliar place. As Sir Chris Woodhead explains in his brilliant article in the Sunday Times “To know there is a way out is a great comfort. For the GP to assist me is rational. I don’t want to die in hospital”see - www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/newsreview/features/article1433324.ece One can’t help feel the pain of Desmond Tutu’s final recollection of the way his great friend Mandela was treated as he echoes Woodhead’s words and makes a powerful case for “A mind shift on the right to die” see www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/12/desmond-tutu-in-favour-of-assisted-dying. As someone who finds it agonising to recall the pain of caring for a partner faced with a devastating cancer perhaps the only consolation is knowing I was able to enable him to be at home so that he could hear the birds and see the garden while being surrounded by peace, love and light. But it was a fight and one that could have been avoided if only Lord Falconer's bill had been passed. Please sign this petition to encourage the Lords to support assisted dying.

It is important because everyone who works with vulnerable adults and children should have a DBS check and be vetted. Why should there be rules for us and rules for them. Surely if I as a teacher have to have a DBS check paid for and a certificate in my hand before I set foot in the building I am working in then so should they. If you have been to the job centre recently you will notice that it now looks and feels more like a drop in centre. It is full of despairing people , hopeless lives trying to get out from under. I feel it is paramount that the staff not only have DBS checks complete prior to working there but they also need extra training and to have regular skills up dates too. The job centre is a difficult environment to cope with for the best of us these days but particularly for the vulnerable in society more so. And ironically most of the vulnerable people in society are unemployed and they are on the verge of becoming homeless and suicidal as a consequence of these punitive and unreasonable cuts. This is why the staff need to be properly equipped and show a professional duty of care.

Kew Garden is the largest oldest and biggest repository of plants and plant research in the world. The Governments and Defra's irresponsible action in cutting its grant aid and nudging it towards privatisation is a sacrilege, when we are dealing with the world's greatest. Rather our Government fund our own world ranking expertise than waste money on funding countries like India with overseas aid.It has achieved fame for being the world's greatest centre for botanical research, a place where the planet's rarest plant and tree species are preserved and studied. But now Kew Gardens, established more than 200 years ago, is set to become the focus of an international battle following an intervention by renowned biologist Jane Goodall, who has denounced a recently inflicted budget cut as "unbelievably stupid". Goodall, who carried out pioneering work on the behaviour of chimps, has written to the environment secretary, Owen Paterson, urging him to hand out £5m to restore the centre's budget in the wake of financial cuts imposed by the Department for Environment and Rural Affairs. "To read that 125 professional staff members are set to lose their jobs because of cuts in government funding is shocking," Goodall says. In an interview with the Observer, she revealed that she had made contact with several Kew scientists while researching her book, Seeds of Hope. "There is a tremendous feeling of anger and frustration there and I share it. This an unbelievably stupid thing to do. This is the mother of all other botanical research centres. Britain should be proud of it, not dismantling it. It is like tearing up the union jack. That is why I wrote my letter. I want my protest to go viral. I want thousands and thousands of people to protest as well." Last month a petition demanding the restoration of Kew's budget – signed by more than 100,000 people – was handed to 10 Downing Street, while 34 MPs signed an early-day motion expressing alarm "that vital international conservation work would be threatened should further cuts take place" at Kew.

The government commission on Digital Democracy is investigating "the opportunities digital technology can bring for parliamentary democracy in the UK" and will make recommendations in January 2015 (Google "Commission on Digital Democracy" - on their site you can see all the submissions so far to the commission). This submission proposes a form of e-consultations which provides an approach to e-democracy that is genuinely democratic, with people rather than politicians controlling the process. It also may help to get more young people involved in democracy and provide a means of youth constructively expressing its views and perceptions (which were certainly very relevant in the fable of The Emperor's New Clothes!) Whereas e-petitions, e.g. as organised by 38degrees, go a long way in e-democracy, they can be dismissed as un-representative of the population as a whole. An "official" e-consultation mechanism would be less dismissible - it becomes the MP's job to convince his constituents to support his "party line" on each issue raised by himself or by others. If there is a "Silent Majority" then the proposed e-Consultations would help them to be less silent. The "campaign website" (linked to above) contains a draft detailed presentation of the idea, based on the principles of "liquid democracy", for eventual submission to the commission - comments welcomed. An outline of the proposal is- • Govt. consultation websites on which anyone can include their issue, e.g. a petition on which citizens can vote. • Any activist group (from a local community assoc. to Greenpeace or a political party) can include their viewpoint on any issue, including links to supporting evidence. • There is a web page listing all the issues, each linking to: A page on which all the viewpoints on that issue are listed, each linking to: a page presenting that viewpoint. • Like Google search results – what matters is the order in which entries for issues and viewpoints are listed on these web pages - their relative position. • All citizens have equal “units of influence” which they have delegated to activist groups which they think should be listened to. At any time they can change how their influence is delegated. • An activist group applies the influence units delegated to it - to vote on the relative position of issues and of viewpoints on the web page listings. • Thus each citizen directly influences which issues and which viewpoints are most strongly presented to their fellow citizens.