Why should a select minority make a profit from services which we all need and which could, with proper strategic investment, make Britain a more competitive player in the world.

The government is planning to sell off Plasma Resources UK, the firm responsible for supplying blood plasma products to the NHS, to a private contractor. We, the undersigned feel that this is unacceptable for the following reasons: 1. Blood plasma is essential for the treatment of many conditions, including burns, shock and major trauma; immune disorders and neurological conditions; protecting unborn children from haemolytic diseases. Possibly best known plasma product is Factor VIII used to treat around 3,000 haemophilia patients. 2. The profit impetus may compel any company taking over services to cut corners in order to make return. This could have devastating consequences for patient safety should contaminated, poorly packaged or improperly labelled products reach frontline healthcare services. The next part of this section is a fuller statement about Blood Plasma and why it is so important to stop the sell off of Plasma Resources UK. It shows how the Government has already split plasma services away from the National Blood Service so that part of what was a unified Blood Transfusion Service can be sold off for profit. Read on: First of all an apology. I started this petition on 38 Degrees after seeing and signing a similar one on the Government ePetition website. After doing a little research of my own and receiving an email via this site, it is clear that the Blood Transfusion Service (NHSBT) is not being sold off. However, Mr. Lansley has been party to breaking up NHSBT in 2011. It is the part that he has separated off that he is looking to sell off. That company is Plasma Resources UK (PRUK), the principal supplier of plasma and plasma products to the NHS. Blood and Plasma are obviously ‘joined at the hip’. When a donor gives a pint of blood, 55% of that fluid by volume is plasma. Much of today’s service is about producing blood and plasma products for the treatment of a wide range of patients. Treatments using plasma products are no less important than those using blood products. You have only to ‘google’ medical uses of plasma to find out the wonderful way its products can influence patients lives, such as the treatment folk suffering from burns, shock and major trauma; immune disorders and neurological conditions; protecting unborn children from haemolytic diseases. Possibly best known plasma product is Factor VIII used to treat around 3,000 haemophilia patients. The work of producing these valuable plasma products (there are hundreds of them) has been carried out by the Bio Products Laboratory (merged with the Blood Service in 1993 and now called Bio Products Limited (BPL)). Plasma Resources UK (PRUK) is the Health Dept company that manages the supply of blood plasma from the US through US based British owned company DCI Inc, which has been necessary since the BSE outbreak and concerns about people developing vCJD. For some years there has been a particular strategy to reduce the dependency of NHSBT's blood products division (BPL) on government subsidies. ‘Our Fractionated Products division (BPL) operates in competitive markets across the UK and globally with other multi-national pharmaceutical companies. A key strategic goal has been to move this part of our organisation into a profitable trading position. This was achieved during 2008/09 thanks to the continued growth in sales and throughput. Our future plans seek to sustain and build on this performance.’ Just a year later this part of the Blood Service was hived off to a separate division from NHSBT: ‘On 1 January 2011 Bio Products Laboratory was transferred into a new legal entity, Bio Products Laboratory Limited, a 100% owned subsidiary of Plasma Resources UK Limited (PRUK), which is 100% owned and managed by the Department of Health.' There are concerns about ‘blood and plasma markets’ in the US. The cost to DCI includes payment to donors. The market has also been described as working like a monopoly or cartel, where at one extreme price can be fixed or competition can be fierce leading to among other things attempts to reduce costs and all the inherent dangers in that. This market in the USA has been described as representing “everything wrong with American-style capitalism”. It is too early to know what relationship a privatised PRUK would have with the NHS and hence what the implications to the NHS might be in terms of cost and guarantees about supply. I recall that a few years ago there were fears of a flu epidemic (I think) and it was found that vaccine originally destined for this country was redirected to other countries where the Pharmaceutical Company could get a higher price. Could the same happen with a privatised Plasma Products company? If the time comes when we can recommence plasma donations in this country, would anyone sign up if their altruistic gift was given to a company concerned with making a profit from it?

The official minimum voltage is 216.2 and all appliances will work with this. For every 10 volts above this your bill will be approximately 8% higher! So, my 255 volts could be costing me at nearly 27% extra on my bills. Carbon release is also unecessarily increased.

Societies are judged by how they take care of their most vulnerable. As you yourself, Mr Cameron, put it so very well: "...Fairness means giving money to help the poorest in society. People who are sick, who are vulnerable, the elderly - I want you to know we will always look after you. That's the sign of a civilised society and it's what I believe..." ... David Cameron 6 Oct 2010 Those in power should not be cynically trying to distract the public by attacking the weakest; the young, students, immigrants, sick, disabled and elderly. Don't expect everyone to be fooled by these tactics for too much longer. Sooner or later, they'll wake up and realise that they're next in line. Why not make our democratic society fairer by asking more from those who can afford it - those who have profited most from the shrinkage and privatisation of our national assets; the corporate companies, the bankers, CEOs and executives, the politicians with their own private health care companies, beancounters and lawyers, shareholders, the hedgefund managers, the private equity companies, PFI contractors, russian oligarchs, and other rich and thriving individuals? The lucky wealthy have grown richer by exploiting the poor and powerless, and this 'Bedroom Tax' is yet another attempt to reduce the welfare state. Meanwhile the government continues to cut, chipping away at our welfare state, disparaging worker representation through Unions, closing hospitals, schools, public housing, swimming pools, libraries, welfare benefits, ad nauseum. The rich don't need, and don't want to pay for, any of the welfare state - they just want to benefit from the rich prizes of opportunity as public services collapse, and they pick up the cherries. And, of course their wealth has grown enormously since the recession started. Despite the poor losing their homes, the wealthy continue to do very nicely "Thank you very much" on their fat salaries and fat pensions, insider / offshore dealings, their directorships, private schools, investments, private healthcare, property portfolio, gyms, golf clubs, not forgetting their offshore: bank accounts, companies, and lavish homes with untaxed spare bedrooms galore. Why are they so greedy? Why do they need my bedroom? Will they force me out of my home?

The employees of Remploy are mainly disabled and their work there provides them with a high degree of independance, self esteem and the benefits of working with other people. closing these factories, especialy in the current economic climate is likely to throw them on the mercy of the benefits system.

The law is a discriminatory one which relies on an individual police officer's judgement and, as such, is open to abuse. The police officer is open to criticism for misuse of the order and under 16 year old's are vulnerable to overzealous application and miss-accusations. The discriminatory nature of the order encourages the hatred and fear of young people and allows some to feel justified in discriminatory attitudes toward them. It encourages those who have suffered at the hands of badly behaved youths to believe that they are all like that and to become more afraid. It will only serve to alienate young people and make them feel that the police are there simply to control them but not to protect them. Already young people in Bangor are avoiding going out to the cinema and to after school clubs for fear of being caught in the curfew or of being beaten up by the marauding gangs that this order implies are on the loose in the city center. Bangor is a lovely historic place with much to offer young and old alike. It suffers from very little anti-social behavior apart from a very few people in limited areas and the usual after pub and club problems present in all cities. It is suffering in the downturn from an empty high street (the longest in the country) but there was no rioting in Bangor last year, the out of town JJB sports, PC World etc were not ransacked as was seen in other towns and cities across the UK, so why Bangor? There was no consultation with the public or even their elected representatives on the City Council. This is despite the ACPO guidance that there should be consultation with the effected community and a Rowntree report, which concludes that these laws have only been effective where consultation and involvement had taken place. This law is badly worded, heavy handed, discriminatory and draconian and it should be stopped now!

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.

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CJS Reform is important if governments of all colours are to meet their primary duty: "To keep its citizens safe and secure".  There is little point in having crackdowns on knife crime if the CJS is unable and not equipped to deal with it. Once charged with an offence some defendants and victims are waiting over two years for a trial date. Case papers go missing, witnesses memories fade, and victims become dejected. We need police, CPS, courts, magistrates/judges, prisons, etc to work in sync with each other to prevent victims of crime, and offenders falling through the very large cracks in the 'service'.

❤️ Why is This Bill Essential? Facts and Stories from the Frontline The campaign to reintroduce and pass the Autism (Wales) Bill is not about adding another layer of bureaucracy; it is about saving and transforming lives by enforcing consistency and accountability in our public services. The Head: Why the Law Must Change The Welsh Government currently relies on a Code of Practice for Autism services. Unlike a Bill, a Code of Practice does not fully enforce public services to meet the specific needs of autistic people, often leaving adherence as discretionary rather than mandatory. The facts show this discretionary approach is failing: Crisis in Waiting Times: Diagnosis is the gateway to support. Yet, in Wales, thousands of children and young people are waiting for an ASD or ADHD assessment. In June 2023, 67.4% of children and young people waiting for an assessment had already been waiting for 26 weeks or longer. For adults seeking an autism diagnosis through the Integrated Autism Services (IAS), the average wait in late 2022-23 was 95.1 weeks (nearly two years). A "Needs-Led" Failure: The original purpose of the Autism Bill was to ensure a clear and consistent pathway to diagnosis and guarantee that local authorities and the NHS take necessary action to provide timely support. The current system leaves many autistic people and their families receiving "very little if any support" while they wait for assessment. The Mental Health Catastrophe: Autistic adults in Wales are six times more likely to report low life satisfaction and eight times more likely to report feeling chronically lonely compared to the general population. About 80% of autistic people are diagnosed with at least one mental illness in their lifetime, compared to 26% of the general population. When the system provides temporary, ill-informed responses, it exacerbates this crisis. A legally binding Bill would require the Welsh Government to publish an Autism Strategy and issue statutory guidance to the NHS and local authorities, placing mandatory duties on them to act and be held to account. The Heart: A Personal Plea for Change If I were talking to a friend, I would explain it simply: "This campaign is personal, and it’s urgent. I’ve just been through a harrowing family emergency where I had to fight to reinstate my elderly, disabled mother's care package while simultaneously trying to get crisis mental health support for my older sister. I watched as she was fobbed off with sleeping tablets after repeating distressing symptoms of a mental breakdown. She is facing years of waiting for an ASD assessment, despite the strong likelihood of a diagnosis that could finally unlock appropriate, specialist support." "This isn’t an isolated incident. I was diagnosed in 2018, and even with that diagnosis, the system is not a crisis service. The current Code of Practice means that when the system fails people like my sister—or those facing life-threatening mental health crises—there is no clear legal duty to step in and provide proper, specialist care. "We saw what happened with the original Bill: the government promised the Code would be enough, but my meeting with Mark Drakeford MS and his subsequent letter to the Minister prove that the promises have not been delivered in practice. "We need your voice to put the power of law behind this. We need a Bill that forces every health board and council to stop the two-year waits, provide mandatory autism training for staff, and offer specialist, lifelong support. It’s the difference between a life of isolation and crisis, and a life with dignity and support." Join us because this Bill is the only way to ensure the rights, safety, and well-being of all autistic people in Wales are protected by law, not just by hope.

This space is vital to our village.  Taking away the play equipment will be detrimental to the physical and mental well being of the children and the parents of the village. It’s a meeting place for the children after school and at weekends giving them somewhere to discover play and get some exercise outside of their school class groups. This is extremely important to their social skills development too. Children today play outside 50% less than their parents did. Removing our playground makes this crisis worse.   For the parents, it’s a chance to mix with other parents and sometimes the only opportunity to share advice and connect with other adults, especially if they don’t drive or don’t have a car. For the parents of the children that have just started at the local school, it’s a way of helping them and their children integrate into the community.  247 peer reviewed studies prove playgrounds increase children's physical activity by 28%. Removing ours will harm our children's health. Research shows that investment in quality play environments is linked with not only higher physical activity but improved social interaction and better mental health outcomes for children.