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.

About two years ago, shortly after giving birth to my own baby, I came across the story of a mother in Gaza named Samah Matar. As a new mother, I found it impossible not to see my own child in her sons. I reached out, and we have stayed in contact ever since. Samah's two boys suffer from complete cerebral palsy, requiring specialist neurological care and advanced nutrition unavailable anywhere in Gaza. Since the siege and blockade of aid, both boys deteriorated rapidly. Italy has airlifted over 180 children to safety across 14+ operations. The UK has a scheme, but it depends on an Egypt route that no longer works, and the government has not updated it. Over 18,000 people are waiting for evacuation from Gaza, including thousands of children. One of them is Amir, a young child with cerebral palsy whose brother Yousef died this year, unable to receive the treatment he needed. The UK has the capacity to act but chooses not to. This is a political choice.

Many residents including myself are concerned how the surrounding areas around Formby Beach are being used by visitors to the area that are using the beach.  Today on the 25th May 2026, the amount of people and vehicles visiting the beach reached an unsafe level.  Vehicles were parked on pavements, grassed verges, across residents driveways and double parked.  This caused major issues for emergency services who where called to the beach making it unable for these services to attend any incidents.  This has now become a dangerous environment when not even emergency services can get to or from the beach and surrounding areas for emergency response due to the enormous amount of vehicles and people visiting.

Parents who cannot work because they care for their children should not be left struggling despite paying taxes and following the law. We ask the government to review the “No Recourse to Public Funds” policy for working families and create fair support systems for temporary visa holders with children. My wife works full-time and pays taxes in the UK. I also work as an Uber driver and pay taxes honestly. We are contributing to this country legally and trying our best to build a stable future for our child. We have a young child who will turn 4 years old in July. Because we have no family in the UK, I often have to stay home to take care of our child, which makes it difficult for me to work full-time and support my family properly. We are not asking for financial benefits or free money. We are only asking for fair childcare support for working families like ours. If our child could receive free full-time childcare, I would also be able to work properly, contribute more, and continue paying taxes. Families who work hard, follow the law, and pay taxes should not be left without support simply because of their immigration status. We ask the UK Government and local councils to provide fair childcare access for temporary visa holders with children.

Many companies are developing AI powered recording devices that record and process everything they see and hear. The most popular are Metas AI glasses, which are designed to look like sunglasses. These devices use the recordings to train AI, where humans review and annotate what is being seen and heard. Meta are currently being sued for privacy breaches after sending recordings of people in their own homes without clothing, on the toilet or having sex. https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/meta-sued-over-ai-smart-glasses-privacy-concerns-after-workers-at-a-kenyan-based-contractor-reviewed-nudity-sex-and-other-footage/ A UK man was sentenced to one year and eight months for using AI glasses to secretly record and make indecent images of children.  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cv2gk4npm03o Many of these companies are now working on facial recognition, which could be used by sexual predators and fraudsters to befriend women and children as the user would be able to access things like where they lived, who their family and friends were, where they went to school etc. How would you feel if someone was wearing these glasses and recording your conversations in the pub, at work or in the gym changing room? 

Women and girls in Afghanistan are not allowed to talk to each other not allowed to show their face, not allowed to go to school. If they need to go to a hospital they need a man to go in with them. I think it’s time we speak up.