UK self reliance and security. Climate change mitigation.

A lot of over 60's are on very little income and struggle to meet dental costs, therefore being unable to have proper dental care. Let's get things changed to enable fairness in health across the board.

Children can freely walk to school without adult supervision. This would provide them with exercise and fresh air and cut down on parents transporting children to school, less congestion and pollution and healthier more alert confident children.

Bake Off is a British institution, just like the BBC. It's an immersive escape from commercials and moving it to Channel 4 will lose everything that's special about it. For my generation, it's part of our lives. Bake Off allows us to recognise the wonderful diversity of the UK, and sets the tone for our country. Now Mel and Sue have announced that they're "not going to go with the dough" to Channel 4. They're the brilliant essence of the show! We want this programme to remain on the BBC. A full hour, not 45 mins with 15 mins of adverts! Each segment will be cut up with those 'flashback to what happened before the break" segements, instead of giving us a full hour of Bake Off. I'm no baker, but the show makes me feel like I could be. Let's not lose this iconic British institution to commercialism.

Despite closing some time ago for refurbishment, East Barnet Health Centre has reopened and reestablished it's surgery. This however hasn't seen the reopening of the baby clinic, meaning that local parents /carers are left without the access to monitor their children's health closely and seekany advice or guidance they may need. The nearest open clinic is at Vale Drive Health Centre in High Barnet, meaning several of us find it difficult and are unable to travel to an already busy clinic. The health visitors say that they hope the clinic will reopen soon, however we hope to assist and show that the clinic being reopened is of importance to us within the local area. Our children are denied the chance to easily access the checks these clinics provide and parents / carers cannot access any information or advice they may need as easily as they should be able to. We miss out the chance to have our children weighed, measured, get advice on weining , breast feeding and so on. It is not always possible or realistic to travel and use the already over used clinic on a Monday at Vale Drive. Please please sign and share to show this clinic is needed and important to us local users.

Regarding the current public consultation on the proposed closure of 4 community hospitals (Paignton, Dartmouth, Ashburton/Buckfastleigh and Bovey Tracey) by the S Devon & Torbay Clinical Commissioning Group and their replacement with more care at home and in local care homes. The consultation questionnaire makes it clear that the changes proposed by CCG are a cost-saving exercise and not led by a pursuit of clinical excellence and the best interest of patients. Sale of the hospital sites for development will undoubtedly produce a quick, one-off financial gain but our concern is that any funding freed up for more community and home-based care will be less high-profile and therefore easier to target in future rounds of cuts... We recall the 'care in the community' initiative many years ago that led to the closure of specialised mental health units - since then there has been a gradual erosion of out-patient mental health services, until now, here in Devon, we have no long-term services for people with chronic mental health problems remaining - just 'acute' services which only provide short-term support - after this patients are on their own to sink or swim. Is this to be the future for our elderly and chronically ill too? The suggestion is that that many services currently provided by the highly professional staff at community hospitals could be provided by private care homes instead, at lower cost and that this would help 'stimulate the care home market'. This is privatisation of the NHS 'by the back door', which we believe is politically-motivated. Presumably these cost-savings could be achieved because private care homes have lower rates of pay, few medically trained staff and little in the way of long-term job security. Unfortunately, despite these savings, or perhaps because of them, the care-home sector in this country is in a state of crisis and is, in our opinion, in no fit state to take on more responsibility for the care of our chronically sick and elderly. We do not think that it is an appropriate use of tax-payers money to 'stimulate' profits for this sector and those that benefit from these, at the expense of our hospitals and their patients. In addition, this 'race-to-the-bottom' - the cost-saving privatisation of the NHS and other public sector services - is extremely short-sighted in our view. It does not take into account the long-term effects on individuals and the community of the loss of decently paid, secure local jobs. These are already few and far between here and the loss of decent, long-term employment in our communities is a surely a major contributing factor to increasing physical and emotional ill-health... Finally, we object strongly to the form of the consultation questionnaire provided on paper and online at www.communityconsultation.co.uk consultation feedback mechanism promoted by the CCG. We were shocked by the manipulative design of this form and felt that the respondent is being co-erced into answering in such a way as would support the CCG's proposals. We feel that the questions are leading and loaded and the structure of the form constrains and restricts free expression and doesn't encourage or support the communication of the thoughts and opinions of the respondent. We therefore consider it not fit for purpose and thereby challenge the validity of any results obtained from this during the consultation process. We expect the health service and the local CCG to champion the case for maintaining the standards necessary for good quality patient care and to elicit the public's opinions and thoughts about such an important issue, not to try and coax us into accepting a reduction in provision. We would not dispute that we need better care for chronically ill and older people locally and at home, but this should surely be in addition to, not at the expense of, the wonderful, caring and professional service that we already receive from our hospitals - within our communities and close to the support of family and friends.

So many people in the UK are either suffering or know someone that is. Mental health is just as important as physical health, but we never hear about it until it's happening to us or around us. Why hasn't this been raised before? In 2013/14 there were 51,000 referrals of 15–19-year-olds to psychological therapies, with referrals for young women double the number of referrals for young men. And, Ten per cent of children and young people (aged 5-16 years) have a clinically diagnosable mental problem, yet 70% of children and adolescents who experience mental health problems have not had appropriate interventions at a sufficiently early age I didn't know what depression was until I was diagnosed, sometimes that is too late. By educating people, opening their minds to it all, we are enabling a much better stigma free nation for those who do suffer.

I've suffered with chronic back and leg pain for 16 years and have to rely on morphine based pain relief which has many bad side effects which control my life. I've been told lots of times to try cannabis and how good it is for pain, but I no longer smoke and do not know how to use it in food or where to get hold of a good quality product. Sativex is legally prescribed in Wales and is cannabis based. After years of testing it has been proven to give pain relief to people with MS, ME, Fybromyalgia,and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome all of which are terribly dibilitating illnesses. All l would ask for myself is a trial period just to see if it offers help with my pain so that I could get some of my life back and get off morphine which is in so many ways a poison to my body after being on it for over 10 years.

Dear Council Member, We are writing to you as junior doctors who are concerned that there have been attempts by some portions of the membership to lobby Council to withdraw support for the proposed strikes action We would like to assure you that, although striking is something no doctor ever wants to contemplate, that we feel discounting further strike action at this point would be a grave error. A significant majority of junior doctors rejected the proposed contract offered by the Department of Health earlier this year, for a variety of reasons. Therefore, it is important that the BMA continues to fight against the contract, and particularly against the principle that a contract can be enforced on any group of free people without consent. Although some may say that the BMA hasn’t always made the correct choices at every stage of this dispute, the union has been both professional and temperate in the way it has gradually escalated expressions of displeasure with this discriminatory and unjust contract. This in spite of a bullying, dishonest and hard line attitude by the Department of Health. If we are unwilling to escalate strike action at this point then the BMA is left in an impasse; they have a clear mandate from the membership to fight the imposition of this contract, but have run out of tools with which to achieve this. There has been the suggestion that we should cancel the proposed strikes as junior doctors are no longer united and no longer have the appetite for taking strike action. There is a grain of truth in this; we have remained remarkably unified over the past year and this has shifted slightly in recent weeks. However, one must look at it objectively. Although, relative to the past year, we are no longer as closely united as before, in absolute terms we are still speaking with one voice in opposition to the contract and opposition to the contract being forced upon us. The BMA was right to suspend the September strikes in order to promote patient safety. Also, there was not the desire to take action at this point. However, we now have nearly a month until the next proposed action, and this is easily sufficient time for junior doctors to organise on a local level to reunite the local membership behind taking action to fight for junior doctors and patients. There have been repeated slurs from the Department of Health and popular press that the BMA has been infiltrated by the extreme left, and that these actions are simply a ruse to try and bring down the government. We are sure that we don’t need to tell you that this is not true, and that this is not the purpose of this letter. Many of the initial signatories of this letter voted to accept the contract. This is about the principle of following the democratic will of the membership, and giving the BMA the tools with which to do that. The work of the leadership of the BMA is often criticised by the wider membership without appreciating the challenges and competing demands of the role. We would like to say that, although no large group always agrees on every decision, we appreciate all your hard work particularly over the past year. Yours faithfully,

The Save Rothbury Hospital Campaign believe that the suspension of in-patient services at Rothbury is having significant adverse consequences for our local population. We want to protect this precious and valuable resource. We ask the NHSCCG and NHS Foundation Trust to think with their hearts - not with their wallets. The immediate effects the sudden closure are: 1. Patients are not being admitted to a low tech facility close to home. This will cause a higher rate of acute admissions to the new Cramlington hospital. 2. Patients are unable to return to a low tech facility for rehabilitation, and discharge planning, close to home after an acute admission elsewhere. 3. Most crucially of all - we are left with no facility to provide end of life care for patients close to home, if circumstances, including patient choice, mean they cannot be cared for in their own homes. The people who are suffering (and will continue to suffer) as a result of this heartless decision are our frail and vulnerable residents of Rothbury and Coquetdale. We refuse to allow this to happen - we care about all of our people.

People who have planned sensibly for their retirement on the assumption they will be entitled to a pension, to which they have usually contributed, should not lose out to rich banks if their employer goes bust.

The Financial Times reports that the Korea Electric Power Corporation, KEPCO, wants to build nuclear reactors in Britain. It hopes to start by installing a Toshiba/Westinghouse reactor at Moorside near Sellafield, and then build more with its own technology. (Ref 1) Nearly four years ago South Korea’s nuclear watchdog said that, over the past nine years, safety certificates for more than 7600 items procured for reactors were forged. Several Korean reactors malfunctioned and two were closed for months. (Ref 2) Ref 1 Koreans near investment in new Cumbrian nuclear plant by: Jim Pickard and Andrew Ward Financial Times web site 11 September 2016 Ref 2 South Korea to investigate nuclear plants by: Song Jung-a and Simon Mundy Financial Times web site 7 November 2012