People who save lives everyday shouldn't have to pay to go to work. NHS employees work so hard and are national superheroes. Why should they save someone's life then find they got a parking ticket? The money from the parking fees doesn't always go to the patient care or the NHS, it goes to private companies such as access and Vinci that 'run' the car parks. All these private companies do is check tickets and hand out fines, they may not grit in icy weather of provide any upkeep on the state of the roads. It's disgraceful. Most NHS staff are not paid a great deal and this extra cost is a strain on their wages and added stress for them. They have enough stress, they don't need parking tickets to add to it.

The UK screen for a third of the diseases other progressive countries screen for during the heel prick test offered to all UK babies. Increasing the amount of diseases screened for is very important for treating or curing diseases before symptoms appear. The issue was brought to my attention through a family having a child born with Krabbe's disease. Krabbe's disease can effect anyone. The disease is not recognised immediately and can often be mistaken for colic by parents and doctors, once diagnosed (typically between 2 and 6 months in infants) there is nothing that can be done medically to save the infant. The body's nerves degenerate until the child loses the ability to hear, to see, to feel, to swallow and then to breath. Typically an infant with Krabbe's disease will die before the age of two. This, along with many other diseases, is currently screened for in the USA, but not in the UK. So many diseases / disorders can be treated, or even cured, if recognised before the symptoms appear. From asthma to Krabbes - these could all be screened for during the heel prick test. Why is the UK only recently screening for 9 areas during the heel prick test? As a progressive country we are so far behind. We are not asking for miracle cures or favouritism, just the same chances for our children as others in progressive countries get.

I have been a registered psychiatric nurse for more than twenty years. I am gravely concerned regarding the situation unfolding within our communities and mental health services as a whole. Times are difficult and I appreciate the need for financial constraint but fear we have gone too far down this road. Following the suspension of our local psychiatric inpatient unit in 2012 our area has been without sufficient inpatient beds to meet the needs of its community. Consequently people are being placed in intolerably difficult and potentially life threatening situations, as people are discharged prematurely to free up beds, increasing pressure on dwindling community resources. Similarly people are becoming unnecessarily acute symptomatically, prior to admission, necessitating Mental Health Act Assessment, where timely intervention would minimise the need for such measures. Services are at breaking point and I fear a significant rise in untoward and avoidable incidents were sufficient resources in place. The lack of adequate inpatient beds is resulting in many of our most vulnerable being hospitalised in an untimely manner, hundreds of miles away from family, friends and the familiarity of local support and services, exacerbating difficulties arising from already fragmented care and a lack of continuity and seamlessness within service provision. Waiting times for care co-ordination are in excess of 3 months. Something I have never before encountered, leaving people in the community unsupported and without service provision. Timely intervention at the point of referral is critical to recovery, promoting well-being and optimising the efficacy of community based solutions, as alternatives to hospital admission. My purpose in writing to you is as advocate to those I serve. They are amongst the most vulnerable and I fear, increasingly neglected members of society. I respectfully petition you to bring their plight to the attention of government and support my plea to you, to support the urgent need for adequate inpatient beds, per head of the population. Services are in collapse and otherwise avoidable tragedies are going to become common place. In the last two years 1291 acute inpatient beds have been c!osed. Below is a list of individuals within my local authority, who at the time of writing are being accommodated in inpatient wards a great distance away from local facilities. There are 60 such local authorities in England alone: 19 year old hospitalised 85.2 miles away from home. 20 year old hospitalised 83.1 miles away from home. 23 year old hospitalised 48.2 miles away from home. 27 year old hospitalised 75.6 miles away from home. 27 year old hospitalised 76.8 miles away from home. 30 year old hospitalised 105.5 miles away from home. 34 year old hospitalised 222.6miles away from home. 47 year old hospitalised 82.7 miles away from home. 54 year old hospitalised 316.3 miles away from home. 58 year old hospitalised 237.8 miles away from home. 68 year old hospitalised 81.5 miles away from home. 73 year old hospitalised 69 Miles away from home. 93 year old hospitalised 81.2 miles away from home. My greatest fear is these difficulties are not locally based but reflect a national crisis within the provision of services for those in need of acute psychiatric care.

We need our hospital services back. Maternity and paediatric services at Eastbourne District General Hospital (DGH) were downgraded a year ago. The local NHS Trust said it was a temporary measure. Now we are facing a bleak future with these core services likely to be lost forever in Eastbourne. Why? In May 2013, the local NHS Trust centralised consultant-led maternity services for the area at the Conquest Hospital in Hastings leaving only a midwifery unit at the DGH. At the same time it stopped overnight care for children at the Eastbourne hospital. We were assured these changes were temporary for 18 months only. In the meantime, the East Sussex Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), the organisation which commissions NHS services, launched a review of permanent services for maternity, paediatrics and emergency gynaecology in East Sussex. It drew up six options, none of which include a two-site option for consultant- delivered services. Option 6 (selected by the CCGs) will keep consultant-led services for maternity and paediatrics at the Conquest Hospital. So people in Eastbourne will have to travel to Hastings for this care with an average total transfer time of 1 hour 34 minutes from the DGH to the Conquest. This far exceeds acceptable safety limits for many interventions such as emergency Caesarean sections. What is our alternative? Save the DGH launched an alternative proposal for the CCGs to consider alongside its six options. Option 7 keeps consultant-led maternity services, emergency gynaecology and in-patient paediatrics at both hospitals. Our proposal also maintains a level one special care baby unit and a short stay paediatric assessment unit at the DGH and the Conquest. It also goes further by stating that all core services, like emergency general surgery and emergency orthopaedics which have recently been removed, are needed and should be provided at the DGH. Option 7 maintains all of the services that the IRP stated must remain. Why do we need Jeremy Hunt's help? The CCGs made a ruling on permanent changes to services in June and selected Option 6. Then HOSC met on the 28th July and failed to refer the decision back to the Secretary of State. The IRP ruling states that these Consultant-led services must remain in Eastbourne and Hastings and therefore we ask Jeremy Hunt to intervene and enforce the IRP ruling. People living in Eastbourne deserve a hospital in the town that provides them with the care they need. If maternity and paediatrics are permanently downgraded at the DGH, we will have the most disadvantaged town in the UK for the population size. Please support us by signing. We need your help! For more information visit www.savethedgh.org.uk

UPDATE 17/10/14: Please join us for the public meeting about Good Hope Hospital at Sutton Town Hall on Thursday, October 23rd at 7pm: https://you.38degrees.org.uk/events/save-good-hope-public-meeting We'll meet beforehand at The Royal Hotel, Sutton Coldfield at 6pm. Our Campaign Group, `Save Good Hope's Local Services', is a group of local people who use and care very much about our local Hospital, Good Hope in Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands. We are independent of any political Party. Our aims are simply to ensure i) the Heart Of England Trust hold a Public Meeting to explain to their very worried patients from all areas covered by the Hospital what the proposals for change are in detail and so to also enable the patients to voice their concerns and maybe even be reassured; ii) Saying NO to any closures of key departments within the Hospital, as some of the proposals for change allegedly involve the transference of certain key services from Good Hope to other Hospitals within the Trust, Heartlands and Solihull; both great distances to travel for many people and particularly difficult for Carers and those they care for; the elderly, very young and disabled. We were very close to achieving the first aim earlier this year, when the previous Chair of the Trust (who is apparently leaving this month!) along with another Trust official, asked some of our Campaign Group who attended meeting with them in January of this year, to jointly organise such a Public Meeting with the Trust in March. That meeting was suddenly stopped after local MP's met with Trust leaders. Since then, we continued campaigning. However many people are very anxious about the future of their local Hospital, particularly after today's Newspaper headlines, stating the axing of 1000 beds in Hospitals under this Trust across the city (of Birmingham). The Trust have stated several times in the media that they would consult with the public, but so far have refused to name a date for any such consultation/meeting. Therefore, we are asking for one asap, because of the great anxiety regarding details about the Trust's proposals. We and many others feel that now openness and transparency from this Trust towards the huge number of patients it serves, is urgently needed. It is greatly lacking at present and we are asking the Trust to start to `think like a patient' and honour their promise.

All children deserve to be treated equally, if this is deemed a necessary public health measure, then it should apply to all. Children unable to have dairy milk are just as in need of the calcium etc if not more.

The NHS is prided on being free at the point of delivery, in Northern Ireland we deliver our health service under the banner of the NHS and the ethos of free at the point of delivery should never be changed. GP's deal with up to 90% of face to face contact of patients within the NHS, their contribution cannot be measured with a contact fee. As potential patients we have already received directions not to attend A&E's and to first consider vising a GP, GP waiting lists are in the extreme and practices are already struggling to meet the demand placed on them on top of having to cover unfilled doctor posts in Hospitals as well as their own general Practice. Some GP surgeries are beginning to to look like our crowed A&E waiting rooms with patients queuing up for appoints in the mornings due to the limited capacity of GP practices. Growing waiting lists for outpatient and day case procedures are leading to more patients visiting their GP to ensure that their illness has not got worse while waiting for treatment. In a recent poll by doctors in the British Medical Association, BMA, doctors overwhelmingly voted not to introduce a GP charge at its 2014 annual GP conference in York. "Dr Laurence Buckman, a GP from London, added the idea was "unethical, dangerous and disingenuous". Dr Chaand Nagpaul said general practice was becoming "conveyor belt medicine". "Add to this the sheer volume of phone calls, visits, repeat prescriptions, results, reports and hospital correspondence and we have an unmanageable, exhausting and unsustainable workload that puts safety and quality at risk,"

My husband has an advanced prostate cancer. He wants to die at home, but he may not get what he wants, because there are inadequate services and support in the community; and if he runs into any medical problems there is little or no communication between the Hospital and those who work in the community. Whether you want to die in a hospital, a hospice or at home, you need the services to link together and support you. And you need seven days a week services. Research carried out ten years ago found that 2/3 of people want to die in their own homes, but only 1/3 do. Let's all work together to change this! It will be too late for my husband, but it will benefit everyone else. There needs to be an overall plan for each individual, as put forward in the End of Life Care Strategy. This is important for every one of us. Whilst there have been three pilot studies in Lincolnshire, Leeds and Somerset, the majority of Hospital Trusts and Clinical Commissioning Groups have failed to get their act together. Please sign my petition and show the NHS that people want action and they want it NOW!

North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust is the largest ambulance service in the country covering 5,400 square miles and serving a population of more than seven million people. It is already extremely challenging for an ambulance service to provide excellent response and clinical care in a timely manner. As part of a cost improvement plan the Trust Board and Management is proposing to reduce day and night time cover across the whole of the North West. This action without doubt will have a detrimental impact on patient care and safety as a reduction in resources will mean that patients may have to wait longer than they do now on some occasions. It will affect residents from Carlisle to Crewe. The proposed cuts in resources will mean that Ambulances that cover outlying rural towns and villages will be pulled into urban areas to respond to 999 calls. The public everywhere will have a lower level of service whether they live in large urban areas, towns or villages. The North West Ambulance Service is a unique service with its mixture of large urban cities and vast rural areas. The North West should not suffer any detriment in the provision of patient care provided by the Ambulance Service just because of its size. We are campaigning to keep the Ambulance resources that we currently provide for our patients within the North West. To make these cuts will have an impact on patients and could ultimately cost lives. Please support our campaign

In 2004 the government changed the funding formula for GP surgeries and didn't take account of the fact that in deprived areas people have higher health needs. Many practices would have gone bankrupt, so they introduced something called the 'minimum practice income guarantee' (MPIG) to stop practices falling below their previous level of income. Now the government is taking away the MPIG and many practices are threatened with bankruptcy again. Good quality surgeries (who spend the most, employing more staff to provide the best possible service to patients) will be the first to go. This will open the door for more GP surgeries run by large private firms on the cheap. The government is targeting poor areas to push it's agenda of increasing privatisation of the health service.

Mental health deserves equality with physical health. Service user involvement in the form of tokenism is unacceptable but none at all is shameful in 2014. Health And Social Care Act 2001 ''Section 11: Public involvement and consultation. 66. Section 11 confers on each Health Authority, Primary Care Trust and NHS trust a new statutory duty to make arrangements with the aim of involving patients and the public in the planning and decision making processes of that body, in so far as they affect the operation of the health services for which the body is responsible. In relation to Health Authorities, this would cover both the hospital and community health services for which they are responsible and the family health services provided by practitioners in their area'' Mental health must have parity with physical health services and the same legal entitlement to user involvement .Cornwall's complete absence of a meaningful independent voice for service users and carers is putting lives at risk, causing a huge rise in self harm and needless loss of lives.

In April 2013 a weedkiller (this was the heavily toxic Glymark) was sprayed around the circumference of Camden Square. All visible wildlife immediately disappeared. No birds, no squirrels - absolutely nothing. For three months no birds flew through the square. Even the ravens, hardy carrion crow, were nowhere to be seen. Local councillors and environmentalists came down to the square to witness the devastation. It was agreed that no chemicals would be used on Camden Square for a period of a year and the wildlife monitored. We have actually succeeded in keeping Camden Square pesticide free for two and a half years. But the Councillors want to change that now....... On Thursday 12th November this year, at a meeting about the “improvement and maintenance” of the Square, the big guns were wheeled out with the attendance of no less than THREE Camden Councillors! The decision was reversed, without giving the community a chance to martial the numerous local opponents of the spraying of glyphosate. Councillor Phil Jones stated that there is a HUGE BUDGET to be spent on the square and yet he cannot afford the expense of a little hand weeding? He claimed that our petition had only 200 signatures to date (seriously untrue!) and that there was a lack of support for keeping the Square chemical free. Angela Mason denied even attending the meeting in April 2013 where she observed the absence of wildlife and that birds had stopped flying through the Square. Her tune has now changed. As we know, London is heavily polluted. Camden Square is a sanctuary hidden right in the heart of it all that still remains. It is a valuable and ancient lung. The attendees at this “Camden Square Community Meeting” showed no resistance to proposals to tear up all beautiful rose bushes and axe the central horse chestnut tree, as they find it “ugly”. It took a whole year for the square to be repopulated with wildlife. It is of the utmost urgency that Camden Council enforces a total ban of the use of ALL chemicals on the square. The current threat is Glymark, which contains Glyphosate. Glymark/Round Up/Glyphosate is created and distributed by corporate giant Monsanto, the inventors of the deadly weapon Agent Orange, which devastated Vietnam and its people during the Vietnam War. Monsanto sadly has huge respectability, with high-level supporters and even an American law, which states they can never be held responsible if their products are proved to be harmful to humans or animals. http://www.globalresearch.ca/monsanto-protection-act-signed-by-obama-gmo-bill-written-by-monsanto-signed-into-law/5329388 Monsanto are leaders of the GM revolution, which means that 90% of US crops are now genetically modified. According to e-newsletter “Sustainable Pulse” and many other studies, “For the past 35 years Monsanto has known of the link between glyphosate and cancer, but has systematically worked to cover it up through scientifically fraudulent methods in its safety testing research programme.….. For the first time the authors, Dr. Anthony Samsel and Dr. Stephanie Seneff, presented in tabulated form the data contained in secret Monsanto studies conducted in the period 1980 – 1990, which showed unequivocally that animals exposed to different quantities of glyphosate in their food supply developed tumorigenic growth in multiple organs.” “Monsanto Stunned – California Confirms ‘Roundup’ Will Be Labeled “Cancer Causing”. American news sources declared in September 2015: Holland is the latest European country to forbid the use of glyphosates in eg. residential areas. These chemicals are toxic, not only to the environment, but also to human beings and pets, causing permanent damage to eyesight and respiratory disorders. Toddlers and children frequent the square and will be at severe risk. Please sign with urgency to stop the destruction of Camden Square wildlife. An ultimate ban on such toxic chemicals in Camden, London and further is the ultimate goal. Here's the article from Camden New Journal in 2014: http://www.camdennewjournal.com/news/2014/may/councils-chemical-weedkiller-burned-pet-dogs-and-killed-squirrels-campaigners-claim. Digging Camden Square all up, chemicalising it, re-sculpting it just to qualify the spending of a budget, plus pandering to some deeply un-naturalistic homeowners who want to feel that they are presiding as in Hampton Court, is a crime against our ancient and beautiful Square.