Because you can't allow 90,000 children to be homeless in one of the richest countries in the world. It's disgraceful.

London is one of the most expensive, and unequal cities in the world. It hosts more billionaires than any other city whilst millions of people are forced to get by on poverty wages. The London Living Wage (LLW) is meant to afford people the opportunity to provide for themselves and their families with the essentials of life and to achieve an adequate level of warmth and shelter, a healthy palatable diet, social integration and avoidance of chronic stress. That is why everyone should be paid at least the LLW. The LLW is set annually by the Living Wage Foundation and calculated by the Greater London Authority. It currently stands at £9.15 per hour. Sotheby’s The cleaners at Sotheby’s, the world’s largest art business, are contracted out and only paid £8.55 p/hour despite Sotheby’s only employing around 1,500 staff members and dishing out around £150 million in wages between them. In fact, the cleaners at Sotheby’s recently received a pay cut from £8.80 p/hour to £8.55 p/hour being told that if they didn’t accept it their jobs would be at risk, despite Sotheby’s spending an extra £13 million on wages compared to last year. As such, the cleaners are really picking up the crumbs. Sotheby’s also uses unpaid interns to help run its business which is both morally reprehensible and legally questionable. Topshop Topshop only pays £6.50 to their cleaners, who are also contracted out. This is despite the fact that the Arcadia Group, the parent group of Topshop, recorded profits of £481m in 2013. Philip Green is also a renowned tax evader, uses sweatshops in Mauritius, and even uses factories in Britain in which workers are paid less than half the legal minimum wage according to a Channel 4 Dispatches. Barbican Centre The cleaners at the Barbican Centre, who are also contracted out, won the LLW in 2013 after a year long campaign. However, the Corporation of London (who owns the Barbican Centre) has refused to increase the LLW to the current rate of £9.15 p/hour. Quotes from cleaners (all wish to remain anonymous) A cleaner from Topshop says: “Earning only £6.50 per hour means I have to work so many hours a day to pay my bills that I barely have time to see my children. It also means I can’t afford to travel by tube and need to spend several hours a day on the bus just to get to and from work.” A cleaner from Sotheby’s says: “Working so hard that my joints hurt, for so little for a company that makes so much money is just not fair. Our wages should be enough to cover the basic costs of living in London, and they simply aren't." A cleaner at the Barbican Centre says: "After having fought so hard to win the Living Wage, to now be told that we won't be paid it is just tragic. We will have to go back once again and fight for the Living Wage.” The cleaners at Topshop, Sotheby's and Barbican Centre are members of the trade union United Voices of the World (UVW).

This will not only save the NHS millions but will save many thousands of people with ME untold harm and suffering and hundreds of premature deaths. CBT is a ‘scam’ therapy that is wasting vast sums of money. Patients are being misled because the short-term fix offered by CBT does not have a lasting benefit, says leading psychologist Oliver James. CBT is no more effective than placebo in treating anxiety or depression. Oliver James says proponents of CBT have ‘mis-sold’ the treatment to policymakers and the public, who are wasting their time. CBT is largely ineffective for the majority of patients. The management strategies making up the bulk of the ‘treatments’ on offer by the National Health Service in the UK — “CBT and Graded Exercise” seem absurd to patients and carers given the problem on the ground. ME Research UK CBT/GET is not only hardly more effective than non-interventions or standard medical care, but many patients report that the therapy had affected them adversely, the majority of them even reporting substantial deterioration. We conclude that it is unethical to treat patients with ME/CFS with ineffective, non-evidence-based and potentially harmful "rehabilitation therapies", such as CBT/GET. Dr Michael Maes and Dr Frank N Twisk http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19855350.................“GET is not therapy – it is simply the enforcement of an opinion rather than a treatment based upon any scientific examination of a patient’s pathology and treatment of that pathology. …..Graded exercise programmes may be significantly dangerous to many of these ME patients” Dr Byron Hyde.................“The whole idea that you can take a disease like this and exercise your way to health is foolishness. It is insane.” Dr Paul Cheyney.............CBT and GET are at best useless and at worst extremely harmful for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis patients. Patients with myalgic encephalomyelitis, particularly children, have suffered gross and barbaric abuse and persistent denigration as a consequence of the beliefs of certain psychiatrists who are attempting to control the national agenda for this complex and severe neuro-immunological disorder. These psychiatrists are shown to be clearly in breach of the first tenet of medicine --- first do no harm--- in that by their words and deeds they have wreaked havoc in the lives of M.E. The Hummingbird Foundation for ME http://www.hfme.org/meandmistreatment.htm

This is important because there are still many people that want their entire music collection on one device without the constant distractions of the notifications we receive constantly on a connected devicee. Considering the profits you make Apple, could you not, in this instance, think about keeping this section of valued customers happy, even if the revenue levels are not meeting your bean counters' approval.

Currently veterans receive a pin and yet many of them served during a time when there were few operations in the world. It is felt that a pin does not recognise this valuable service but the award of a medal gives formal recognition. There have been other National Defence Medals awarded to at least three commonwealth countries so the issue of expense should not be an over-riding consideration. When you see a veteran at a parade such as Remembrance it is very difficult to distinguish them from other members of the public. We should be proud of our Armed Forces and in particular those that have served previously. The medal shows that a service person has contributed in a valuable way to their service and this is only right for a nation that uses it's Armed Forces to punch well above it's weight in the world arena.

Mae'r Gymraeg yn iaith swyddogol yma yng Nghymru, ac o bwysigrwydd mawr i'r rhai sy'n ei siarad. Pan mae'r pwnc trafod yn benodol i Gymru, mae'n gywilyddus i'n hiaith ni cael ei heithrio. Cymraeg is an official language here in Wales, and of great importance to those of us who speak it. When the topic is specifically about Wales, it's humiliating for our own language to be excluded.

B&Q have refused to make any contribution towards this cause, despite being contacted and invited to do so. They are using photos of the amazing work done by these volunteers for their own commercial gain without any concern about how they are exploiting a fundraising activity for a much loved local cancer care hospice. Other local businesses have donated towards the display and their products are being shown as if they were from B&Q. ******************************* IMPORTANT UPDATE ******************************* B&Q have responded to the petition and made a donation of £8,000. Please read the statement below from Colin and Alex Colin, Alex and all the team who help with the 1 Longford Road Christmas Lights are delighted that B&Q have finally accepted the moral responsibility to support the charitable cause the lights are in aid of. We are truly grateful for the initial payment of £8,000 and hope that B&Q, who have only made this gesture following over 3,000 people signing the online petition, will honour all that people have asked for and fully match the donations made by the general public. We would like to thank everyone who has signed the petition to date, and would encourage people to continue to sign the petition to help remind B&Q what the people have said on this. Alex, Colin, Sarah and the rest of the team would like to thank everyone who supported putting pressure on B&Q to make a donation and of course to B&Q for then donating £8,000. A great result for Dorothy House! Many of you supported the call for B&Q to match contributions made by the public but some of you felt that B&Q had now done their bit, albeit after your demonstration of support. The various messages have got through to B&Q so, everything considered, we are backing off from pushing further and concentrating on what this is all about and that's bringing a smile to faces and raising money for a great and deserving cause, Dorothy House. We must also mention that the Daily Mirror who ran the B&Q promotion in question are donating £1,000 for which we are also very grateful.

Exaro News, The Daily Mirror and The Sunday People are exposing a massive establishment cover up of paedophiles in very prominent positions. Most recently, current and former police officers have talked of a number of operations into peadophile networks being shut down as they got to close to VIPs. By not covering these stories in its mainstream broadcasts, the BBC in its silence is part of the cover up. Only by getting this story out into the highest profile news broadcasts will there be enough momentum gathered to bring these VIPs to justice. "This is about kids being raped by those in power that included politicians of all sorts" Ex-Met Officer of 30 years' service.

As evidenced by the recent online news reports featuring video footage of ducks in France being kept in disgusting conditions and obvious suffering, changes for the better are well overdue in this industry. I was served some fois gras to eat quite recently and it was a good, rich delicacy,.. but the suffering that the ducks must go through when it is produced in this manner, is unacceptable. If it can be produced by free range birds that are allowed a reasonable life span, with access to maize 24/7.....that would be humane. Any type of farming where the animals do not have a quality of life that is recognisably close to what it would experience in the wild (fresh air, space to roam, sunshine and things to look at, the ability to forage and associate with others of its species), should be banned and we should be campaigning to get this through in the EU parliament asap.

Many British citizens are being separated from their foreign spouses because they can not get their partner a visa unless they meet a very strict financial criteria and their partner passes an English exam. Meanwhile partners of European citizens automatically qualify for a U.K. spouse visa regardless as to income or English ability. Where British citizens have contributed to the economy of the UK through the tax system and other means, European citizens who haven't contributed the UK are given preferential treatment when applying for visa for their spouses. This isn't a fair system.

Residents of Fleet and Church Crookham are alarmed and dismayed to learn that there will be severe and substantial cuts to the bus services in our area. Under these proposals Bus 72 will no longer go to Aldershot from Fleet, instead replacing the number 30 to Farnborough, thus preventing people from getting to work in Aldershot and children from much of Fleet being able to get to All Hallows School and Sixth Form college. There will be no buses between Fleet and Aldershot. The number 30 as well as going to Farnborough serves as a school bus service to Calthorpe Park School from Ancells Farm. Bus 77 is going to be cut, meaning that children will no longer be able to get the bus to Calthorpe Park School – this at a time when Calthorpe Park School is rapidly expanding. Getting to Frimley Park hospital will become much more challenging. Furthermore Pondtail, Crookham village, Zebon Copse and Quetta Park will no longer have any scheduled bus service at all, isolating many in these communities. This will be a severe disadvantage for elderly and disabled people in our area along with many young people.

This proposal has been leaked by the Guardian in its article ‘EU plans to scrap laws on clean air and waste recycling’ (Guardian, 11/12/14) @ http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/dec/11/eu-plans-to-scrap-clean-air-and-waste-recycling-laws These are quotes from the article: "...Another victim of the legislative cull is a flagship clean air directive intended to prevent 58,000 premature deaths – and many more respiratory illnesses – as well as saving hundreds of thousands of kilometres of forests, wildlife reserves and ecosystems from nitrogen pollution and acidification. “The EU should be cutting red tape, not cutting life expectancy,” said the Liberal Democrat MEP Catherine Bearder. “Thousands of people in die prematurely each year from diseases caused by air pollution. To withdraw this proposal would send a message that the new commission puts the interests of big business ahead of the health of European citizens....”