1,000 horses are slaughtered each year and more than 370 are raced to death in the UK alone. The Government is encouraging people to bet on horse races and then take tax away from all winnings. Horse racing isn't needed to sustain the betting industry anymore. It kills innocent animals, fuels the rich and takes money from the people betting. The whole system is immoral - for the horses and the people.

The existing school funding model is unfair. The ten best funded areas in England will receive an average grant of £6,297 per pupil this year, compared to an average of just £4,208 per pupil in the ten most poorly funded areas. It means that schools around the country that are similar can get very different budgets, and children with the same needs can receive very different levels of financial support depending on where they go to school. Gloucestershire (including Cheltenham of course) is one of the worst-funded authorities in the country and is a member of F40, a group made up of poorly funded local authorities and has been making the case for a fairer funding system. Ministers have recognised the problem and promised to address it. We welcome this, together with the Government's confirmation that the additional £390 million awarded in 2015/16 as a “down payment” towards fairer funding will be included in the funding baseline for future years. We are now looking to the Government to deliver a truly fair funding settlement. At a time of spending restraint it is more important than ever that funding is allocated based on need. F40 has come up with a formula which would see the funding cake shared much more fairly. This has received a positive response from funding experts at the Department for Education. The f40 proposals would: • introduce a new national formula, based on a clear rationale and geared towards improving educational standards across the country; • include core entitlement at a pupil level, reflecting different needs and costs at various key stages; • use factors to reflect pupil level needs beyond the core entitlement, including deprivation and special educational needs, and reflect the needs of small schools that are necessary in a local authority’s structure; and • continue to use Dedicated Schools Grant, with blocks for mainstream schools, high needs and early years. Local authorities would be free to move funding between the blocks. We believe this formula can help deliver a solution. We want the children in our schools to continue to have a broad range of subjects to study, good resources to use, well maintained buildings, reasonably sized classes and excellent pastoral support. Fairer funding is integral to all of this, and we urge the Government to deliver it.

For anyone who lives in Rothesay or has sailed doon the water, this landmark church has dominated the iconic Rothesay Skyline for 170 years. Designed by the prominent architect of his time, Charles Wilson and housing many memorials to Brandanes this building is not only an important part of Rothesay's architectural history but also its social history.

IMPORTANT: please email your views, including the words "I object" and your reasons why to [email protected] by 6th November 2015. You can view the proposal here: www.rbkc.gov.uk/marlborough Live footage of the Marlborough demolition here showing the playground in question: https://timelapse.regenology.co.uk/api/embedded/DYz/ The Council plans to build a 40,000 sq ft block of offices & shops plus public walkway on the children's playground and is applying to the Secretary of State for Education to dispose of this playground (termed "playing fields" in S77 of the School act) We object strongly to 559 m2 of playground being disposed of as per RBKC's Council pre-application consultation letter of September 2015. We object to the fact that pupils at Marlborough Primary School in years 1-6 will have to play on rooftop play areas because all their playGROUND has been taken! Only nursery and reception children will have a ground level play space, the minimum necessary to allow children to be dropped off and collected. The Council's own advisory board, Architects Appraisal Panel warned that the commercial building compromised the new school and that it should be “substantially scaled back or, better still, removed altogether”. Having reviewed the planning documents and reports, we believe that the decision to demolish the Victorian school building was taken directly in order to rebuild the new school on a smaller site, thus creating space for the commercial building – we do not agree that there was “surplus land” on the site. We believe that the public walkway has been largely designed to take customers past the shops on the ground floor of the commercial building rather than from the necessity of a walkway here. In the consultation letter, it is stated that the revenue from the commercial building will be used “to maintain council services across the borough” and does not fit in with the S77 government guidelines that money should be reinvested in school sports (priority), recreation or education facilities.

The HIGH GROVE is the epitome of your friendly local pub and has been serving the Gatley estate for over 50 years. Our local pub is at the heart of the community. The pub is also the social hub of the area, providing local entertainment including regular quiz nights, evening events to raise money for local charities and hosting live televised sporting events. The pub is expected to close at the end of 2015 and we desperately need your help to save it. An application to register the High Grove as an Asset of Community Value has now been submitted to Stockport Council and will be heard at the Area Committee meeting on Sept 29th. The potential closure of the High Grove public house demonstrates how vulnerable communities are to speculative and aggressive development tactics, we need you to help us urge the Council to accept the application to list the pub immediately. This will ensure planning permission has to be sought and approved by the council for the pub to be demolished or converted to any other use. The listing also gives the community an opportunity to potentially come together to form a co-operative group to buy and run our local pub. Please sign the campaign and ask your neighbours to do also. Anyone you know who frequents the High Grove or lives in the Gatley and Cheadle area should also be asked to sign it. Protect our pubs from developers.

We the undersigned wish to express our concern that UNISON has not been given an opportunity to have a seat on the BBC 1 Question Time Panel over the last 5 years. Other Trade Union leaders have been given a seat on the Question Time Panel. Considering UNISON is the largest public sector union with 1.3 million members, this refusal to allow UNISON a chance to sit on this panel is unacceptable for a publicly funded broadcasting organisation. We are asking for a statement that the BBC rectify this omission and publicly announce that UNISON will be on future Question Time programmes.

Lets cut down on what goes into land fill, less to go into transporting of rubbish and better for environment.

The country is groaning under the weight of its obesity problem, with numbers of diet related diseases reaching epidemic proportions. The impact on the physical and mental well being of the population and the practical and financial cost to the NHS is an increasing concern. Removing the A 'level will further erode the status of food as a subject, it will become a vocational, craft option and uptake at GCSE by academic students will fall. It will be difficult to inspire the next generation of dieticians, nutritionists, food scientists and teachers. Trainee teachers will avoid specialising in a subject which lacks the job satisfaction and rigour of teaching sixth form and will become science teachers instead. Teaching hours and budgets will fall and there will be a shortage of specialist teachers to show children how to cook healthy, nutritious meals. The population will continue to turn to ready prepared convenience food and the spiral of obesity will continue completely unchecked. The government's response is that other routes exist for students wanting to pursue a career in catering - that is absolutely true - however these vocational courses do not provide a route for academic students through to university. They also say that Food Technology is not fit for purpose and again they are correct! Food technology was created 24 years ago to shoehorn food into the new Design & Technology suite, focusing on food as a material alongside paper, textiles and wood to design and make products for a profit. The sooner food is removed from Technology and celebrated for the multifaceted subject that it is, the better! A rigorous A ‘level which explores how to manipulate the physical and nutritional functions of food to create healthy dishes for a range of people would be invaluable for inspiring the next generation of nutritionists, dieticians and food teachers. It would also ensure there will be fully qualified food teachers ready to teach the next generation how and what to cook!

An import surcharge was imposed on solar panels some years ago, ostensibly to protect solar installation companies (presumably by trying to prevent people doing their own installations; the installation companies claimed this would damage their business (!)) The government is removing the subsidies provided for renewable energy installations. My belief is that if they're doing this then the surcharge on solar panel imports should also be removed. If the government is genuinely committed to the introduction of renewables then the import surcharge should be removed, especially as the government is drastically reducing subsidies on renewables. The surcharge was aimed primarily at Chinese imports... somewhat odd as the building of new nuclear power stations is now going to involve Chinese companies to a great extent.

It is coming up to that time of year again when fireworks will be sold in shops for the general public to buy. After hearing of too many horrific stories which include fireworks which involve pranks which may of gone wrong and fireworks used for animal abuse, I have decided to try and make fireworks illegal once and for all. Fireworks are an explosive and I don't think they should be on sale for the general public to purchase, make fireworks illegal unless at an organised firework display.

The 2 convenience shops in my village of Lochinver (IV27)are expensive & limited to what they can sell. I myself am disabled and cannot drive,as a lot of other people in the various communities around Sutherland don't have time to go driving 37miles to Ullapool (Tesco) or Tesco & Asda in Tain or Dingwall,approx 50-60miles away !!Even if people could get one of only 2 buses a day to Tesco,Ullapool,its not possible to get frozen products home in sufficient time.I have lived in another village in past years with a longer distance than where I have been now for 4 yes,it's EXTREMELY UNFAIR, especially when they charge for delivery anyway,it's not a free service we need.

Those who want to retire have the choice