This campaign is now calling for the present owner of Castle Toward, Argyll & Bute Council, to protect this treasured Scottish icon from development. We want and seek to work together to restore the Castle, to be the flourishing hub for youth arts and sport that it once was. This campaign will demonstrate that within the ethos of Culture for Life, this project can attract funding from Scotland, the UK and further afield. From renowned conductor Sir Simon Rattle to Andy Scott, sculptor of the world famous Kelpies, our campaign has united more than 100 artists, musicians, and actors to tell personal stories of how their time at Castle Toward proved career defining. This new and independent campaign is not aligned with any political interest or previous activity. Its aims are simply to bring prosperity, increased visitor footfall, credit and artistic prominence to Argyll and Bute. Please visit our website for further information: www.iheartcastletoward.com

We're going to see Iain Duncan Smith next month and we want to take this petition with us with as many names as possible. You may not get why we're so wound up about it. Let me share a few stories (all real, local people). Before I do, lets just remember what tax credits are for. They are contributions from the government towards the cost of ofsted registered childcare so that work is possible. Many users of tax credits are single parents but many are also in couples. They are for people for whom work would not be possible without assistance towards childcare (which by the way has to be paid one month in arrears and is subject to fines for late payment). One woman was told that her tax credits would stop because her daughter doesn't exist. The fact that said daughter was crying in the background whilst her stressed and bewildered mother was trying to sort it out whilst wondering how she was going to pay for childcare was irrelevant. Another woman was told that her tax credits would be cut to £85 a month (a contribution towards an £800 childcare bill for 2 children representing well over half of the whole family's take home pay.)This was because concentrix concluded that a previous childcare provider had not been ofsted registered and therefore this lady was in debt to them for falsely claiming help towards childcare that year. Of course the provider had been ofsted registered, we may never know what information concentrix used to reach their conclusion but our member had to shoulder the full responsibility of proving her case, all the while on reduced tax credits and even had to arrange a meeting with her employer to explain that work would not be feasible if she couldn't prove her case. The member is now vindicated but the stress she was wrongly put under was extremely serious and unnecessary. Another member was subject to a thorough investigation of her circumstances after which concentrix reached the bizarre conclusion that her total childcare costs for 2 children were £4 a week....totally validates any claim that the government and their agencies are out of touch with real life...if such a cheap provider exists I want their details! I could go on....case after case, story after story - already vulnerable people being made to feel desperate, hopeless and quite frankly criminalised. Please, if you agree with us, sign and share to say this is not OK. Perhaps there's a case to be made for people to be investigated as benefit fraud happens - but the way it is being done is unnecessarily negatively impacting people who could do without it!

You know when it's lunch time and you are walking down the street, wondering what to eat, and you stumble across either a McDonalds or a freshly made falafel from the market? What is your gut instinct? Which one do you choose? Falafel, right...? Because McDonalds is pumped full of pesticides, chemicals & toxins and NOBODY wants that inside their body... again, am I right? Well luckily you had a choice here. You could have chose either the toxic waste or the delicious, freshly made, goodness. You had a choice. Well the Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership (TTIP) is taking away our freedom of choice. What this agreement means is that the standard of food quality in our supermarkets will degrade. Meat, Vegetables, Fruit - the essentials - will be GM'd, pumped full of chemicals & injected with antibiotics. The British Government want to lower its standard of food by creating an agreement with the US to implement their standards. So remember that choice between McDonalds and Falafel? Well, now it's tea time and you have no choice other than to eat McDonalds for dinner. We want Bristol to be free from this hell, do you? If so, Stand Here for Change. https://www.facebook.com/Standhereforchange?fref=ts http://www.iatp.org/documents/10-reasons-ttip-is-bad-for-good-food-and-farming

In my experience, my partner of the age of 31 started to have irregular bowel movements and having pains in his legs. So my partner visited the GP numerous times, GP taking varies blood samples and nothing came from it.... so after a few more visits to the GP and A&E, my partner was finally admitted to hospital, after a few tests and scans, my partner was diagnosed with stage 4 Bowel cancer in Oct 2014. All the symptoms of Bowel cancer started a few months before diagnosis. After a few months after a procedure to remove the primary cancer, my partner started chemo to help reduce or stop the spread of the cancer. Unfortunately my partner passed away in June 2015. As the cancer was very aggressive after chemo have finished, the chemo was used to give my partner the best quality of life. And extend my partner life for 8/9 months. If the GP recognised the symptoms earlier, my partner would had a greater chance of survival. But our GP just ignored it.. I feel disappointed and shocked that his happened and I don't want to see this happening to another else. So we need to persuade the NHS to reduce the age of the free screening test to ANY age and for over 60's. Thank you for reading why this is important to me. Keendy Chan

The extensive resources and experienced staff within Enfield Local Studies Centre and Archives are the heritage jewel in the crown for the Borough of Enfield. The Council is keen to use them to publicise themselves yet with no forethought of true costs plans to render these services virtually unusable. Other archives have tried digitalisation at great expense. This is discrimination against older people and others who do not have access to and cannot afford the internet. Ancestry.co.uk will not provide free access, apart from their free library edition when accessed in a library, certainly NOT at home which would have to be subscription based. This centre also obtains grants to interview local people about their pasts - specifically WW1 and WW2. These intergenerational projects involve the whole community and provides a historical resource for future generations. I have undertaken some of the interviewing so I have witnessed the value of information given and the pleasure local residents have experienced in telling their stories. Please also take part in the council consultation which closes on 18 October 2015. Forms available in local libraries or online at http://www.enfield.gov.uk/info/867/current_consultations/3896/enfield_local_studies_centre_and_museum

Oxfordshire County Council is proposing to shut down all 44 of the County’s Children’s Centres, and halve the current Early Years budget of £16m. Instead the council will replace them with just eight Children and Family Centres, which would only be accessible to the most vulnerable by referral. Our well used and much loved centres in communities across Oxfordshire currently provide a wide range of early intervention support including parenting courses, support for postnatal depression and mental health, young parent groups, breastfeeding support, mobile libraries, maths and English classes for adults, midwife support, baby groups, health visitor drop-in clinics, Freedom programmes for victims of domestic abuse and much more. If current proposals go ahead, most of this support would either disappear entirely or only be available to families who are already in difficulties. An end to universal provision of support for families of under-fives will only increase the stigma associated with seeking out help, and may put people off using these essential services at a time when they feel vulnerable and isolated. It is a false economy to close Children’s Centres. Universal access to the early intervention services they provide has numerous economic and other long-term benefits for the health and wellbeing of parents, children and the wider community. The cuts will result in a higher workload for other health professionals (health visitors, GPs), higher future costs and an increased risk of postnatal difficulties (breastfeeding difficulties, postnatal depression) with potentially serious and long-term consequences for parents and babies. We have started a community-led campaign asking the council to reconsider these plans urgently. The children’s centres are well regarded, well established and their staff are highly experienced professionals. Many families across Oxfordshire can and do readily access support at a time when they need it most. The testimonies of families who have used the centres make it clear how much of a lifeline they are. Together, we must protect them.

The future of the very first inter-city passenger railway, which opened on 15th September 1830, is under threat. The Manchester Liverpool Road railway station is where it all began: from the railways of old, which made our modern civilisation possible, to the railways of the today, which provide the sustainable transport needed to combat climate change. This incredible part of our international history, with its grade 1 and 2* listed buildings, is in essence, a working station, though it is cared for by the Museum of Science and Industry. It is still connected to the National Rail Network: you can visit the station today, on a real steam train, just as people have done for the past 185 years. Network rail want to change that: as part of an otherwise welcome scheme to connect Manchester Victoria to Manchester Piccadilly, they plan to sever the line. The very first railway will no longer BE a railway: just a museum piece, nothing more. Part of a depressing wider trend of poor strategy and planning, slow obliteration of Northern history and culture and legal wrangling over common sense issues at the tax payers expense, this case involves a 3 million pound "deal" with the Museum of Science and Industry who have abandoned their responsibility to protect this site and a crass lack of respect by National Rail for the history of their own raison d'etre.

This is important as there are so many displaced refugees and ex-service men who have NOTHING. People give clothes to charity shops as donations and I do not believe they shoud be sold on to make profit especially when it is the textile traders making the money. The trade is also undermining local traders and clothing manufacturers and affecting the livelihoods of those who depend on producing and selling clothing in poverty stricken countries. This will also affect the economy. Consideration should also be given the environmental impact of shipping all these clothes. Some charities I believe have cut the middle men but I think all should do the same and prioritise the greater need or crisis at the time.

Herefordshire Council has proposed the closure of Leominster Public Library and Services. We, the undersigned, hereby call on Herefordshire Council to allow Leominster Public Library and Services to remain open to the public and managed by a professional librarian.

Aylan, the toddler who drowned fleeing Syria, was just three years old. His town was under attack by Isis. His five year old brother and his mum also died trying to reach safety. Yet our prime minister said ‘we won't take any more refugees’. He thinks that most of us don't care. But 38 Degrees members do care. We don't want Britain to be the kind of country that turns its back as people drown in their desperation to flee places like Syria. So let's stand up for Britain's long tradition of helping refugees fleeing war. Let's show the Prime Minister that we, the people of the UK, are proud to do our part and provide refuge to people in their hour of need. Please sign and share, or start your own petition for your town or city here: https://you.38degrees.org.uk/efforts/refugees-welcome

Young women under 25 are dying and leaving their families behind

A truly civilised society recognises need and seeks to meet it without punishing the people in need. The NHS Constitution clearly states that the NHS belongs to us all. It doesn’t belong to an insurance company, or any other kind of co-payment organisations. The NHS is affordable without a charging regime that would stop many poor people and those in poor health from accessing essential services.