Currently there are hundreds of day centres up and down the country who are providing day care for thousands of patients. Many of their customers are disabled but the facilities that they have do not readily reflect this. As there is no national inspection team for these units at present, they do not have the incentive to provide full disabled facilities. If an annual (or more frequent) inspection were to be carried out by CQC then shortcomings could be highlighted to the governing body or local authority and provision made for the facilities to be upgraded. My wife has attended one such centre catering for Alzheimer's and other dementias for a number of years. She is wheelchair bound as she cannot maintain her own weight and has had to leave as they do not have adequate hoists or, indeed, a disabled toilet.

The "NHS Bill 2015" campaign is calling on all General Election candidates to sign up to the new "NHS Reinstatement Bill", and is already attracting cross-party support. The “Campaign for an NHS Reinstatement Bill 2015" has produced an “NHS Reinstatement Bill” which sets out the legal steps needed not only to reverse the failings of the Health & Social Care Act 2012, but to fully restore the NHS in England as an accountable public service. Unless we all keep the pressure on MP's of all parties in the run up to the next election, our voices will be lost in the spin, sound bites and agendas. We were fooled in 2010 by false the promise of no NHS re-organisations. With the secret TTIP negotiations ongoing, now, more then ever, everyone has to make their voices heard regarding the NHS. Please contact your MP and prospective parliamentary candidates and ask them to support Professor Pollock's "NHS Reinstatement Bill", and ask them if they do not, why not? You can reach your MP via https://www.writetothem.com/ For further information, please see: https://www.opendemocracy.net/ournhs/caroline-molloy/new-law-proposed-to-stop-nhs-becoming-simply-memory

Only 49% of current MPs were born in the area they represent and very slightly more (51%) completed their secondary schooling in their constituency. In England those born within their constituency stands at just 43%. There are many MPs elected via a so-called "safe-seat" who have had nothing to do with the people and the area they seek to represent. We should all be represented in parliament by someone who has solid links with the people and place he/she purports to speak for. Clearly many people leave their town of birth to live elsewhere, and politicians are no different. However, a minimum residency ruling would help create a better understanding by our MPs of the needs and concerns of local people and therefore a more repesentative parliament.

The Council are close to entering into a contract to outsource the running of all of the borough’s leisure centres. We are very concerned about the secrecy surrounding this process and the lack of consultation which has taken place. Requests to Councillors for information have been met by statements that the information is “commercially sensitive’. This information is crucial so that residents and users can understand what is being planned. We challenge the refusal to answer our reasonable questions. We request that, if necessary, the Council seeks the agreement of the preferred bidder to waive any restrictions on the release of information which is stated to be “commercially sensitive”. it is impossible to know what the outcomes may be. I have therefore posted a petition on the RBWM website- please see link below- and would be most grateful for your support by signing it and encouraging any other residents you know to do the same. This matter is urgent. We understand that the Council may make a decision committing to sign the contract before the end of October 2014, so we welcome your support now. NB when you do sign up you’ll get an email and you need to click on the link they send so as to activate your signature!

The least wealthy of the richest 85 is worth $11bn. $25million is less than 0.25% of their wealth and considerably less than that for the wealthiest. It'll make no difference to them but will save the lives of countless people.

Where are the hundreds of people who visit Broadwater Park going to go when they need to?

Services are being broken up and sold off to private companies for them to make profit from crime. Criminal Justice should be above the profit incentive and motivated by justice, the clues in the name. People are being put at risk by the creation of artificial barriers between staff, depending on who they work for. This is very bad for the sharing of information and risk management. Work is already being skewed towards working with those who will be the best bet to comply, rather than according to risk. A lot of what was previously done to protect the public is becoming impossible because of a ludicrous diversion of resources. Staff in the private companies will not need to be trained as they are in the public sector. They will be dealing with violent domestic abusers and others who pose a real risk to the public. The Probation Service was already a high performing organisation that had exceeded targets set for it by government. This privatisation politically is driven and is not cost effective or in the interests of the public.

With a yes majority in Westminister we will be in a very strong position to fight for Scotland without being sabotaged by No parties. If we can achieve a pro-indy government we have the future of our nation back in our hands. Without a Yes majority Scotland will be back in its box, this is why we must focus the YES from each constituency so that we achieve a majority over the divided (Labour, Tories, LIb Dems, UKIP, BNP, ect) No vote.

There has been a rapid decline in the number of Sea Bass, due to increased commercial fishing and low numbers of young fish surviving to become adults. EU scientists have said that the EU must urgently reduce the landings of Sea Bass by 80% in order to meet the legal obligation to fish sustainably. Urgent action is needed now to prevent a crash in the Sea Bass population that may never recover.

The London Borough of Barnet is fortunate to have four excellent nursery schools (Brookhill, Hampden Way, Moss Hall and St Margaret’s) all of which have been graded 'outstanding' by OFSTED. All four are under threat from the latest Barnet Council proposal. http://barnet.moderngov.co.uk/documents/s18692/Nursery%20School%20Review.pdf All four nursery schools put in place the essential building blocks of education in a safe, social and rated ‘outstanding’ environment. Barnet Council Officers are proposing changes to meet the planned cuts in funding which, we are concerned, could spell the end for the 'outstanding' level of education offered by our community nursery schools. Currently each school has its own head teacher, deputy head teacher and each class has a teacher to achieve its outstanding status. This level of staffing cannot remain with the proposed changes to funding. We believe it is wrong that providers delivering basic childcare are funded at the same rate as schools providing ‘outstanding education’. This funding formula will result in drastic cuts in staffing which will directly undermine the schools' ability to provide the same high standard of education and support to parents and the community. We also fear the schools are at risk of ending up being stripped back to providing only basic childcare in 'bare minimum Barnet'. If these draconian proposals are put in place the damage will be irreversible.

The utility of excessive homework even at secondary level is far from clear and at primary level and below is deeply resented by growing numbers of children, their parents and their teachers.Ridiculous amounts of homework are routinely imposed on young children as a short term means of - for the teachers' and headteachers' benefits - passing tests and meeting targets that are themselves narrow, methodologically unsound, unnecessary and politically motivated. Whilst some might argue that 'moderate' or 'reasonable' loads of homework are not detrimental, the present structuring of education to such short-term school goals and the failure of the teaching profession to resist the associated attack on decent educational values ensures that such moderation now exists only rarely. Instead, teachers and headteachers are consumed in 'races to the top' of league tables directly at the expense of the children in their care. In the short term children are denied the leisures and pleasures (many of which are of far more learning value than homework) of the different childhoods they could otherwise have had. In the longer term, an inevitable and resentful disengagement from the love of learning scandalously underline the intellectual and moral poverty of our educational 'leaders'.

So Scotland gets the exact revenues from fisheries and oil and gas revenues that is due Rightfully due to Scotland.