This government will be looking at ending National Public Pay Rates and as part of this the public service staff working in poorer areas of the country will be payed less. It is important to note that this will have a huge negative impact on all people from both public and private sectors. There needs to be a strong case made against these plans and this petition is the starting point. We the people need to show the government that we won't accept the scrapping of National Public Pay Rates. We need to stand up together and make our voices heard. Getting rid of the National Public Pay Rates will only bring serious inequality and undermine both public and private sector. Most large private companies set equal pay rates across the country because it is fair, consistent and organised. The public sector pay system should remain as it is. There are already measures in place within the current system that allow for higher pay in areas such as London. Reducing the pay of people in the most deprived areas of the country is absolutely wrong and abhorrent! It just shows how disconnected and out of touch this government is. The private sector needs to improve its pay rates and pensions in line with the public sector instead of the public sector reducing pay and cutting pensions. In addition to this petition if everybody writes to their MP then that will contribute to getting the message out. Getting rid of the National Public Pay Rates makes no sense. Reducing public sector pay in poorest areas will not make private companies increase pay but give them a reason to carry on paying lower rates. I fail to see how this will help the economy because who is going to want to move to the poorer parts of the country when you get payed less for doing the same job but potentially working much harder because society is unhealthier, because there will be an increase in mental illness in these deprived areas, an increase in drug and alcohol use, an increase in divorce and poorer education because the best teachers won't do the jobs in these areas. People will become trapped in poverty. Who spends the money in shops, restaurants, hair dressers and on building extensions to their homes etc??. . . Millions of public sector workers do and they won’t be able to afford to do this anymore so how does this help stimulate growth in the economy when business will lose so much income? The answer is that it does not. This will place further pressures on household incomes and cause a crippling blow to the economy. People from both the private sector and public sector from across all fields and areas of work should be standing up together and telling the government that we will not allow them to do this. There will be serious inequalities in health and social care and serious inequalities in education and that impacts on all of us. The gap of inequality and deprivation in society will grow exponentially and we must stop this from happening. People must see that this is just morally wrong and we all need to spread the word, use social networking, write to the papers, write to the MP’s and Prime Minister and join the movement 38 Degrees if they have not already. This must not be allowed to happen! We must tell George Osborne and this government that we are the people and you will listen to us. The bankers are protected with their immoral, ridiculous and indefensible bonuses because “if they are not allowed to have them then they might leave the country” I say let them leave! This clearly does not apply to the Nurses, Teachers, Fire fighters, Police Officers, Radiographers, Social Workers and all other public sector workers. Already public sector workers are expected to have a pay freeze, contribute more to their pensions, work for longer and receive less and now they can expect to be payed less for doing the same job in poorer parts of the country where demand on these hard working and valuable members of society will be greater. This makes me so very angry and I am sure that millions across the country feel the same. This government is out of touch and slowly but surely destroying the foundations of our society. It must stop and the people must make it stop! Please make your voice heard and sign the petition.

The changes have resulted in approximately 250, 000 working FAMILIES losing a substantial part of their income, often as much as a quarter of total income. These are people who are working at poorly paid part time jobs, often because they are caring for children or are partially disabled or simply can't find full time work. The WTFC was introduced to make even low-paid work a worthwhile alternative to unemployment benefit. These people want to work and have shown that they can work. To penalise them is just wrong! My family of 5 have lost £300 of our £1050 earnings and now have to cope with an income of about £11,000 . With our son losing his £30 Educational Maintenance Allowance qwe are struggling to pay for his travel to college and see little future for his younger brother and sister other than whatever job they can get when they are 16. The poorest people in this country are now directly subsidising the wealthiest

The Channel Island of Sark has just 600 inhabitants. They lead a peaceful and historic way of life that has remained largely unchanged for hundreds of years. The islanders get around on bikes or by horse and cart - there are no cars or tarmac roads on the island. It is a unique and beautiful place, a rare piece of tranquillity in a chaotic modern world. But now the billionaire owners of The Telegraph newspaper, the Barclay brothers, are threatening that way of life. Twenty years ago, they bought the tiny neighbouring island of Brecqhou and built a huge mock gothic castle that looms over Sark. Ever since, they have been buying up every hotel, small business and piece of land they can get their hands on. The islands status as a tax haven means the brothers have to pay no tax on their fortune back to the UK. The Sarkees have been doing everything they can to resist their power over the island. In 2008, the Barclays tried to flood the island's first democratically elected government with their allies. When the islanders emphatically rejected them in favour of their own representatives, the brothers retaliated by firing everyone who worked in any of the businesses they had bought out - that amounted to a sixth of Sark's population losing their jobs. It doesn't end there. Those who speak out against the brothers' stranglehold on the island are publicly dragged through the dirt in the Sark Newsletter - a weekly propaganda piece written by the Barclays' lieutenant, Kevin Delaney. The islanders recently told the Guardian and BBC that they live in fear in a "culture of bullying and intimidation." The Barclay brothers company Sark Estate Management (SEM) has turned much of their good quality agricultural land over to vineyards, land that was traditionally used by the islanders for centuries for growing crops and grazing livestock. In November 2012 a peaceful protest at the Sark Mill vineyards against the spread of vines resulted in 120 Sark residents signing a petition asking the Barclays to reconsider their vineyard project but this was ignored. SEM continue to spray the vineyards with chemicals and residents fear for the health of Sark's pristine ecosystem and their fresh water supplies which come from under the ground. Sark is a dependency of the Crown but, so far, our government has left the islanders to fend for themselves. The Department of Justice has admitted that it has an "ultimate responsibility to ensure good governance" of Sark. They are aware of what's going on - former Justice Minister Lord McNally has already been to visit the island. It's time Lord Faulks, the new Justice Minister and Chris Grayling, the Secretary of State for Justice, lived up to that responsibility. You can find out more about the situation in Sark in this recent Panorama show: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01px74c/Panorama_The_Tax_Haven_Twins/ Or this earlier Today programme piece: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9709000/9709518.stm

The age of criminal responsibility in England is one the lowest in Europe, and the statistics show that we are in danger of criminalising too many children and young people. The age of criminal responsibility needs to be reviewed in light of the standards set by the UN Convention and these international comparisons. Young children are simply not capable of the sophisticated mental reasoning required to be held fully responsible for criminal actions, and we need to take a far more "welfare based" approach in dealing with young people who commit serious crimes. Furthermore, there is concern among neuroscientists in this field that the age of criminal responsibility in the UK is unreasonably low given the emerging understanding of how slowly the brains of children mature, and the evidence of individual differences suggests that an arbitrary cut-off age may not be justifiable.