• Change Highways laws to permit personal mobility devices
    There have been multiple inventions across the world in the last few years that would alleviate congestion and aid the restricted movement public in this country, if the law were modified. Currently these PMD's do not fit into our highways act simply because they aren't disabled carriages, are motorised and so cannot be driven on the pavements and are too slow for the road networks. I propose that room should be made in the highways act and by extension in the Cyclist part of the Highway code for the use of properly registered and maintained "safe" Personal Mobility Devices. These devices are growing in popularity across the world (I believe at the last count the Segway for example was a legal form of transportation in 30 different countries now) and simply sticking our head in the sand and quoting legislation based on an act that was made in 1835 is putting us at risk of missing the boat on properly regulating the safe and controlled use of these devices. If we were to open the doors on this issue, we could provide laws and rules to do things like prohibit the use of these PMDs inside so that people do not injure themselves riding around the office as I have seen in one Youtube video, but also we can regulate the types of PMD allowed on Cycle lanes for example. Most of these PMDs are limited to 10mph the equivalent of a fast run, so could legitimately use cycle lanes and pavements where it is safe to do so, if the law were changed to allow these vehicles to be treated similarly to bicycles. Furthermore, if these PMDs were treated like a stage between a bicycle and motorbike, they could be taxed and regulated like a discount motorbike. Allowing for further regulation and control, perhaps even licensing to promote safe usage of them too (which is more than is required for Disability "buggies"). Currently Disability "buggies" have 2 classes -4mph they are allowed unrestricted access to public areas, +4mph these vehicles have to have a tax registration and have road legal lighting on them. There is a section in the Highway code for the correct use of these devices, most of them are electric and most of them are often used in public areas with little or no danger to the public. All I am asking, is for a similar allowance for Safe Personal Mobility Devices to be given a fair chance to be used by a public who are crying out for an alternative to sitting in traffic jams all day, whether using public transport or not, or having to get all hot and sweaty cycling to work through fume and traffic clogged streets. Providing a section in the Highways act to classify PMDs would allow for this development. To further my argument, most of these PMDs are also electric and so would be far less polluting than even the most eco-friendly hybrid bus that Boris can sponsor. You ride your electric PMD in to the office in the morning, charge it back up using the company solar panels, then ride it home and plug it back into your solar panels at home, much better than riding a hybrid bus that uses a diesel generator to charge its batteries when it's outside of the congestion zones.
    2 of 100 Signatures
    Created by Simon Macmanus
  • Make Honours independent of the Prime Minister
    Every year we have a tawdry process of the Prime Minister using honours for influence and to reward friends and donors to their party. Celebrating people who do important work for others in public service, the business/charity sectors and popular figures in the arts, sport and media is important and the main purpose of having an honours system. Political interference devalues the reason for having honours. There is no reason why an independent committee could not ensure appropriate balance in the awarding of peerages where the recipient has a declared political allegiance.
    11 of 100 Signatures
    Created by Martin McCrea
  • Better mental health provision in the UK
    I lost my husband to mental health just before Christmas. This has ripped apart and devastated our family. As a family we were failed. We were given very little support and information. Basically left to cope on our own. More needs to be done. Mental illness can be a killer like cancer and heart disease but it has a very low profile and funding. This needs to change and it needs to change NOW! More and more people are suffering. Mental health wards are full yet run on minimal staff. Patient care is lacking and community follow up is so stretched that the support just isn't there. We need to change this for now and future generations. As a nation we need to do something. Stand together and fight for more help. Everyone knows someone affected. Please sign and support me in this campaign so we can hopefully change the lives of those suffering. Its what my husband would want us to do...he wasn't happy with the care he had.
    578 of 600 Signatures
    Created by Cath Fletcher
  • Encourage farmers to plant trees in river uplands to prevent flooding
    UK farmers are subsidised millions of pounds by the British taxpayer. Despite this there is no effective regulation or carrot-and-stick approach to prevent soil erosion, plant trees and manage rivers to properly manage river uplands and prevent downstream flooding. Promoting natural flood defences and flood plains is more cost-effective. The Govt needs to stop focusing only on last resort man-made flood defences and tackle the root causes of devastating flooding, addressing its own contradictory policies.
    17 of 100 Signatures
    Created by N Cooper
  • Government interference with councils
    Locally elected councillors should be free to reflect the views of their local voters, to whom they are accountable, on how council money should be spent - or where it should not go. To prevent local councils from making decisions to reflect the views of their voters is profoundly anti-democratic and Un-British. Compelling councils to invest in the arms trade, or industries supportive of law-breaking foreign regimes, is high-handed and centralising. It makes a mockery of previous government statements about local democracy.
    36 of 100 Signatures
    Created by Dave Bradley
  • Think tanks, Foundations, Institues, disclousure of sponserships
    When on the news the broadcaster says something like ' The latest research by the Foundation for Better Health and Future shows that there is no relationship between fracking and high levels of toxic material found nearby water drinking wells.' this sounds very impressive. We can all rest assured now. Fracking very safe. But if we knew that the Foundation for Better Health and Future is sponsored by the fracking industry - we may think twice about these results before we take them as true. This will make us more aware of the forces that are playing with us and try to influence public policies.
    4 of 100 Signatures
    Created by daniel rosenberg
  • What the Frack! Regular referendums. Let the UK public vote for their future.
    Members of the public find it difficult to support a political party 100%. Our system is out of date, our MPs out of touch, the public go unheard. We agree with points made by the Lib Dems, the Conservatives, Labour, the Green Party, the SNP etc and sometimes we disagree with them all. Either way we can't communicate with the government effectively. The system needs to work for us all but instead it's dusty, nobody really understands it or cares to sort it out with any long term vision. We need to start again. Simplify. Direct questions, direct answers. If regular referendums were to take place, the public are truly part of the process, allowing us to demonstrate what we care about, that we're united and want to invest in the future of this land and it's people. Less moaning and more doing, having a proactive and fair say, feeling satisfied that the decisions are being made and supported by the majority of the UK. Let the UK public vote for their future. This Kingdom can then begin to feel proud and respected, and most importantly, united.
    27 of 100 Signatures
    Created by Tezia Perret
  • Inquiry Needed! Was Tony Blair complicit in the torture of Shaker Aamer in 2002?
    Several UK national and international newspapers have reported allegations by the Guantanamo Bay prison survivor that the UK Prime Minister at the time - Tony Blair - personally accompanied UK secret service officials on a visit to Bagram airbase, Afghanistan, during which Aamer claims that these officials were present at his interrogation and torture. Shaker Aamer was afterwards held at Guantanamo Bay detention center until 2015, despite the USA authorities deciding in 2007 not to press charges against him. If Tony Blair was aware that anyone was being, or was likely to be, tortured at Bagram during his visit, and failed to act against this, he committed Grave Breaches of the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions. Such breaches constitute a War Crime in international law, and would legally render Blair a War Criminal, subject to obligatory arrest and trial wherever he goes. In times of peace as well as war it is crucially important that issues related to torture should not be ignored or left ambiguous, however powerful or influential the alleged perpetrators may be. Peoples' perception of the behaviour of war-endorsing governments during this period is already tarnished around the world. The failure to properly address such issues promotes further conflict, and to ignore them, while the alleged perpetrators freely travel the globe, mocks the very values to which all nations and states claim to aspire.
    9 of 100 Signatures
    Created by Dinah Dayus
  • Stop giving funds for renewable clean energy to polluting high energy use companies
    In making these industries exempt, the funding has to come from elsewhere. The Conservative government has made it clear that it will not finance renewable energy off its own back, so funding will instead be passed on to regular households. The Government proposes to withdraw support for short-term funding (the next 4-5 years) of renewable technologies like solar panels and wind turbines as they are concerned it will add £ 7 p.a. to consumers energy bills which is unacceptable. Households will see their bills increase by £5 a year for the next four years to fund this exemption, at a total cost of £20 added to household bills. What has also been revealed is that projected savings from “reforming” (closing) the renewable obligation and feed-in tariff (renewable energy support schemes) will save households a total of £17 over the same period. Clearly, this action does not fit with the Governments intention to save consumers money on their energy bills as this action actually increases consumer energy bills. Renewable energy industries benefit communities, reduce wholesale future electrical energy costs and reduce pollution, making the environment a better place for current and future generations. Money used to support these schemes will now be passed as "Levy Control Framework Exemptions" (tax breaks) to high energy busines users - who pollute the planet and cause pollution related illnesses. The European Commission has aggregated a list of industries it considers intensive users of energy. That list, includes but is not limited to industries such as the mining of hard coal and the manufacture of refined petroleum products. On the face of it, it looks as if savings made from the feed-in tariff are being handed straight to large energy users to make sure they can survive the kind of difficult business environment the government is creating for domestic solar. It’s a galling prospect, and one that flies completely against any ‘the polluter pays’ principle put across in environmental law. “Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children” Please sign this petition to let George Osborne know we want a clean environment for our children and not to give money used to support clean energy industries away to support polluting fossil fuel companies. More details on the link below, but please read the quote below the link from Carl Sagan - a famous astronomer who was moved to write about the last image of our planet, taken as a Voyager satelite left our galaxy : http://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/editors_blog/fit_cut_savings_all_but_handed_to_potential_polluters_under_eii_2592 “From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.” ― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot:
    88 of 100 Signatures
    Created by Glenn Ashby
  • James Clerk Maxwell for RBS Banknote
    James Clerk Maxwell stands beside Einstein and Newton in the trinity of physicists who explained how the universe works. The other two are global superstars, but Maxwell is barely known in his own country, Scotland. To celebrate a great man and encourage future generations to take risks and think big, Maxwell should be the face on the next RBS banknote. The greatest Scotsman to ever live deserves to be a household name.
    41 of 100 Signatures
    Created by Rattle Magazine
  • Refugees Welcome in East Hoathly
    David Cameron announced we’ll welcome 20,000 more Syrian refugees. But there’s a catch. This will take 5 years, leaving thousands of refugees in limbo. It’s now up to us to show that in cities, towns and villages all across the country we’re ready to welcome people now. 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.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
    16 of 100 Signatures
    Created by Tom Serpell
  • A curriculum to prepare us all for life?
    We believe that the place of citizenship education and PSHE in the curriculum should be radically overhauled through a youth-led UK-wide review; they are really important for young people’s growth and development as they teach vital life skills and can be the first steps to engaging young people in political life. Teaching staff should be specifically trained to a national standard to deliver citizenship education following this review. A curriculum to prepare us for life is important to the many young people in the united Kingdom, during the UKYP national debate at the house of commons this came in as the top 5 priority to deal with and as a DMYP i will make sure that there education prepares them for life hence the title 'curriculum to prepare us for life' this will hopefully if successful allow students to gain access to an education that will include things such as: • Political Education • Sex and Relationships Education • Cultural Awareness Education • Community Cohesion Education • Finance Skills Education • Sustainable Living Education • Citizenship Education If you want to know more visit the link below: http://www.ukyouthparliament.org.uk/campaign/curriculum-life/
    6 of 100 Signatures
    Created by anton dobson