Our high streets are being taken over by betting companies whose business model is to create and exploit gambling addictions. This isn’t about placing the odd bet on a football match or horse race. Bookies use their electronic gambling machines to filter out that casual crowd: they’re looking for people with the potential for a serious gambling addiction. Fixed-odds betting terminals feed a dependency just as powerful as drugs or alcohol. Their high speed games, with stakes as high as £100 every twenty seconds, mean you can easily lose a month’s wages in under an hour. Eventually you realise you’re not doing it for the money – you’re doing it because you’re physically addicted to the rush. I’ve lost numerous jobs because of electronic gambling. I’ve lost two properties through failure to keep up with mortage payments, I've amassed £100,000s in debt, I’m separated from my wife and children, and I’m trapped in a situation where I can’t rent accommodation because my credit score is so low and I haven’t enough money for a deposit. Now I’ve got special blocks on my computer that stop me straying onto a betting site – I even had to disable them to set up this petition. We can do something to change the tide of misery and reclaim our high streets. We can sign this petition.

It can not be right in a civilised and fair society that children should be placed in poverty and disadvantaged because of the failure by successive governments to effectively manage the British economy.

Good nutrition is essential to patients recovering in hospital. We believe that fruit and vegetables should be free to people in hospital. We are fully aware that the funding for such a idea is not there, however we are also aware that supermarkets throw away millions of pounds worth of perfectly healthy fresh fruit and vegetables every year and we want to stop this waste. We want supermarkets to deliver the fresh fruit and vegetables to local hospitals, where it will be available to patients. We want the hospital sweet trolley to be replaced by a free fruit trolley. Help us stop this waste and bring essential healing nutrition to the people that need it the most.

In 2007 consultation on mental health facilities in north Essex gave rise to lively public meetings which resulted in the ward being saved, but in 2016 there was NO consultation because apparently moving a ward to another hospital in another town so long as it bears the same name is NOT a closure!!! At the very least, N.E.P.T. (North Essex Partnership Trust predecessors along with S.E.P.T. South Essex Partnership Trust, to E.P.U.T. Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust) should have held a new consultation process, but our feeling is still, along with the views and sentiments expressed by many eleven years ago, that nothing has changed, except that the facilities in Clacton needed revising including to allow for NHS single sex privacy and dignity accommodation, for which there was ample space available by using the adjacent and connected former Freeland Court. While people are often sent many miles away to find an available bed, we contended that mental health services could ill afford to lose beds in Clacton, though we would have welcomed extra beds in Colchester, but in addition, not instead of! As we were protesting the Colchester move we learnt from a whistleblower that the trust intended to downgrade the ward to an assessment centre, making a mockery of their assertion that the ward would be exactly the same in it's new location and if true, this would be a very definite change of service demanding thorough consultation! This was vehemently denied at the time but now we learn, not even 18 months later that service changes are being considered and this time, unlike the move, they do intend to consult! If after a wide consultation among all stakeholders including professionals, staff and public it can be demonstrated that the consulted changes would be in the best interest of patients, we shall be content, though we do not believe it will. If, as we are led to believe, the plans are indeed to downgrade Peter Bruff from an acute ward to an assessment centre this will amount to a de facto loss of 17 beds at a time of continuing high occupancy and the likelihood exists that patients needing continuing acute care may not find a bed within Colchester hospital and maybe forced to travel many miles away to find one. Two years ago we raised concerns over the difficulties many living in Clacton would face accessing Colchester. "With Colchester being about 15 miles away from Clacton concern was raised for patients who when discharged would face an expensive taxi bill or the prospect of at least two buses, train, long walk or combination! This distance would also likely make it difficult for many reasons, perhaps financial, for friends and families of patients to visit. Day visits and weekend visits home, for those recovering all made that more difficult when recovery itself is difficult enough!" 15 miles may soon seem like wishful thinking! And all this mainly on the pretext of saving the money spent on rent at Clacton!. Here's what we found out about that! " N.E.P.T. did not own the Clacton Peter Bruff Ward, but RENTED it from NHS Properties!! This was one of their excuses for wishing to CLOSE, I mean, MOVE the ward so as to save money on rent, but a freedom of information request revealed that N.E.P.T. were in fact only paying a "PEPPERCORN RENT!" https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/346733/response/855134/attach/2/FOI%20190716%2001%20reply%2018.8.16.pdf?cookie_passthrough=1 Safeguarding the service as it is may well be within our gift. It is doubtless thanks to everyone's efforts that E.P.U.T. are contemplating any consultation whatsoever because our first notification from a whistleblower indicated a fait d'compli. Well done everyone! I still dream that the day will come when we can "Keep Peter Bruff Ward Open In CLACTON!

It is majorly important as suicide and other issues regarding mental health has effected each and everyone of us in some way. Suicide rates are increasing, self harm is becoming normal especially among teenagers. As a teenager myself who has seen the effects mental health has on others, I strongly feel that funding is needed. In this day and age a lot of young people feel like there is little or no help out there and I feel that education from young age will help teenagers to take care of their mental health and in turn, prevent things such as depression and suicide.

Brief summary of the NHS Bill In short, the Bill proposes to fully restore the NHS as an accountable public service by reversing 25 years of marketization in the NHS, by abolishing the purchaser-provider split, ending contracting and re-establishing public bodies and public services accountable to local communities. This is necessary to stop the dismantling of the NHS under the Health and Social Care Act 2012. It is driven by the needs of local communities. Scotland and Wales have already reversed marketization and restored their NHS without massive upheaval. England can too. The Bill gives flexibility in how it would be implemented, led by local authorities and current bodies. It would: 1.) Reinstate the government’s duty to provide the key NHS services throughout England, including hospitals, medical and nursing services, primary care, mental health and community services, 2.) Integrate health and social care services, 3.) Declare the NHS to be a “non-economic service of general interest” and “a service supplied in the exercise of governmental authority” so asserting the full competence of Parliament and the devolved bodies to legislate for the NHS without being trumped by EU competition law and the World Trade Organization’s General Agreement on Trade in Services, 4.) Abolish the NHS Commissioning Board (NHS England) and re-establish it as a Special Health Authority with regional committees, 5.) Plan and provide services without contracts through Health Boards, which could cover more than one local authority area if there was local support, 6.) Allow local authorities to lead a ‘bottom up’ process with the assistance of clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), NHS trusts, NHS foundation trusts and NHS England to transfer functions to Health Boards, 7.) Abolish NHS trusts, NHS foundation trusts and CCGs after the transfer by 1st January 2018, 8.) Abolish Monitor – the regulator of NHS foundation trusts, commercial companies and voluntary organisations – and repeal the competition and core marketization provisions of the 2012 Act, 9.) Integrate public health services, and the duty to reduce inequalities, into the NHS, 10.) Re-establish Community Health Councils to represent the interest of the public in the NHS, 11.) Stop licence conditions taking effect which have been imposed by Monitor on NHS foundation trusts and that will have the effect of reducing by April 2016 the number of services that they currently have to provide, 12.) Require national terms and conditions under the NHS Staff Council and Agenda for Change system for relevant NHS staff, 13.) Centralise NHS debts under the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) in the Treasury, require publication of PFI contracts and also require the Treasury to report to Parliament on reducing NHS PFI debts, 14.) Abolish the legal provisions passed in 2014 requiring certain immigrants to pay for NHS services 15.) Declare the UK’s agreement to the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and other international treaties affecting the NHS to require the prior approval of Parliament and the devolved legislatures, 16.) Require the government to report annually to Parliament on the effect of treaties on the NHS.

The Practice Group plc (a private company) has been running The Willows Surgery in Lower Bevendean along with four other GP surgeries in Brighton and Hove. At the beginning of this year they announced that they would no longer be running their Brighton and Hove surgeries after June (this already follows the closure of two of the city's GP surgeries last year). This announcement has left a huge hole and The Willows is now threatened with closure. Lower Bevendean is in a somewhat isolated area on the outskirts of Brighton. It is an area of mostly low income households and is made up of largely council and ex-council housing. The surgery has just under 2,000 patients and all have been feeling extremely anxious since the news. No-one wants to see their GP surgery close down! If The Willows were to close patients would have to travel outside their local area to see a doctor. The nearest GP to Lower Bevendean would be a long trek up and down a hilly area and as a large number of The Willows patients are elderly or disabled or in poor health they would not be able to manage the extra travel to see a Doctor. Even if travelling wasn't a problem, the nearest GP surgery simply has not got the capacity to take on an extra 2,000 patients. So realistically patients would have to travel a lot further to register with a new GP. As there seems to be no 'highest priority' scheme in place, the elderly and the less able bodied will be the last in the race to find a new GP and will find themselves having to travel the furthest. We've heard reports of elderly patients in tears as they are so worried about what will happen if their doctor disappears from their community. The less frail residents are angry. Why must they travel across the city to see a doctor? How is it possible that an NHS GP will vanish from the neighbourhood because the private company who were running the surgery decided that they wanted to earn more profit from us? In order to keep our NHS public we need to fight the 'behind our backs' privatisation of our health services! We need to make sure that our health service is about people and not profits! The community in Lower Bevendean need your support in their fight to stop the closure of The Willows GP Surgery. The community of Lower Bevendean needs to have local access to a GP and they require NHS England, along with Brighton and Hove CCG to ensure that a GP service will continue at the Willows Surgery !

The use of air fresheners in public spaces has become increasingly widespread. The health of the general public has been overlooked and it has become almost impossible to avoid contact with air fresheners and indoor pollutants as we go about our daily lives. Air fresheners have a detrimental affect on health, particularly on those suffering from migraine, asthma, respiratory problems and allergy. Around 5.4 million people in the UK are currently receiving treatment for asthma including 1.1 million children. Please join this campaign to help improve public awareness and urge the UK government, local councils and businesses to take action to safeguard public health.

The bus is the only link between Glossop and Stepping Hill Hospital (Stockport). Withdrawal of this service on the 28th March will result in the total removal of the only public transport link for residents on Glossop Road, Marple Bridge, Lane Ends and Chisworth. The link from the Charlesworth to the doctors surgeries, shops of Marple Bridge and Marple will be lost. Hawk Green will lose its link High Lane / Hazel Grove and its direct link to Stepping Hill Hospital. There are already problems with availability of car parking at Marple Bridge, Marple Station, Marple, Hazel Grove and Stepping Hill hospital. Withdrawal of the 394 service will exacerbate these problems. The service is used by students travelling to Marple Ridge College at various times of the day: withdrawal will restrict students to travel on the peak time college services only.

Please Read Carefully....Thanks :) I live with chronic depression, associated anxiety neurosis and constant suicidal ideation too, which is unbearable at times,however,these are just labels forced upon me by mainstream psychiatry. I despise being labelled,especially when I feel these are wrong,inappropriate or clinically incorrect,so I'm constantly up against 'the system' (ironically who I've worked for too,in a number of specialist mental health roles,hence my anger at being labelled so seemingly randomly,by a string of locum/passing through psychiatrists who barely know me as a real and wholesome person at all), but I do my best to get by daily with support from friends,former workmates and my army comrades too. I intend to petition Caroline Lucas of the Green Party,to simply realise how essential these services are.There are increasing numbers of suicides daily, particularly where people suffering with PTSD issues are concerned,including all forces veterans and equally as important,as many civilians too, that's a fact sadly. One suicide today is one too many, so let's all fight to stop this now!!

1. It undermines families: Introducing a state employed Named Person for every child in Scotland – by definition – undermines the role of parents and carers, the vast majority of whom do an excellent job raising their own children and have no need or desire for third party involvement of this sort. 2. It wastes resources and jeopardises child safety: It is almost inevitable that by stretching resources to police the wellbeing of all children, attention will be diverted away from genuine cases of child neglect or abuse. 3. There is a serious risk of the powers being mis-used: By granting the Named Person sweeping legal responsibility to monitor the wellbeing of all children, there is a very real danger of families being needlessly embroiled in ‘the system’ because a Named Person takes issue with a particular parent. 4. It may be in breach of European Convention rights to privacy and family life: Leading QC Aidan O’Neill says the policy: “may not be lawful on the basis that the blanket nature of this provision constitutes a disproportionate and unjustified interference with the right to respect for individual families’ private and family life and home.” 5. It may breach EU law on data confidentiality: The Named Person legislation lowers the threshold to make it easier for officials to pass around confidential data like children’s medical reports. This may breach EU law on data sharing. 6. A broad coalition of organisations, individuals and newspapers have raised very serious concerns about the Named Person including: The Scottish Parent Teacher Council, The Christian Institute, CARE for Scotland, The Tymes Trust (for young ME sufferers), Schoolhouse (representing families who home-school), The Faculty of Advocates, The Law Society of Scotland, The Scotsman, The Press & Journal, The Daily Mail and The Daily Express.

Currently our health service is in crisis and are failing to deliver a service that we, the tax payer are paying for. The mill stone of PFI is bringing the national health service closer and closer to the door marked private health service and this Government is pushing it closer and to closer to this door unless we stand up and be counted. Make no mistake the smoke and mirror of free at the point of delivery is just that smoke and mirrors and by tomorrow we will no longer have a national health service. Waiting times are through the roof, Junior doctor being victimised and bullied into accepting a new contract not fit for purpose by Jeremy Hunt. Ambulance services on their knees and patients are suffering and dying because of staff shortage and stretched resources to pay off the PFI bill and not because Junior Doctors do not work, which they do, on weekends. The PFI are forcing Health services to make cuts across the board and this is to reduce the wage bill so that share holders are paid there dividends at the end of the month. So if we want to save our health service then we need to nationalise the PFI dept and to this end we need to be patitioning our local MP's to suppor the nationalising of the PFI's