Godfrey Bloom

UKIP MEP for Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire

How can we arrest this economic and moral decline with an electoral system which gives a vote to anybody and everybody, who happens to be over eighteen years old. The system must reform, we need a complete reappraisal to reflect, as we did in the 1840s, more electoral power for those who create the revenue so disappointingly squandered by a bloated administration.

David Rutley

MP for Macclesfield, Parliamentary Private Secretary to Damian Green MP, Minister of State for Policing and Criminal Justice

Around one in seven Brits are now their own boss. First-time entrepreneurs abound, and the opportunity for them to become first-time employers is being improved with such initiatives as the new annual £2,000 Employers National Insurance Allowance. But how can we encourage more of them to become first-time exporters?

Nash Riggins

American journalist and politics geek based in Scotland

It's not hard to see why the Tories are frantically shoving their new shared equity scheme down the nation's throat. After all, the tagline is fantastic: 'cheap mortgages for hard-working people'. At first glance, Help to Buy comes off as some sort of humongous victory for the common man... As always, it only takes a tiny sprinkle of historical context to kill the dream.

Sammy Sultan

Social Commentator, Comedian & Aspiring Chat-Show Host

Immigration is a subject that polarizes opinion, and rightly so, for there are really obvious pros and cons behind this deeply divisive political discussion. Whatever the answer is, whichever end of the political spectrum you abide to, there are thousands of Brits like me, who have immigration to thank.

John Wight

Writer

The Lib Dems were given the opportunity to go some way to salvaging some political credibility this week by voting for a Labour motion against one of the most vile policies ever visited on the poor and economically disadvantaged in many a year. They chose not to and hopefully now political oblivion awaits.

Matt Wrack

General Secretary of the Fire Brigades Union

Over the past few months, the government has repeatedly claimed that their proposed pension scheme for firefighters will be "one of the most generous" in the public sector. However, firefighters argue that they will be priced out by a scheme that will be far more expensive, but worth much less... Here are five myths about firefighter pensions that can be easily busted.

Emma Reynolds

Shadow Housing Minister and Labour MP for Wolverhampton North East

Not only is the bedroom tax an attack on those currently living in social housing, it also hits the five million people on the waiting list because it has led to fewer houses being built... These funds should be being used to build homes and carry out much needed repairs - but instead they're being used to protect the most vulnerable from this government's Bedroom Tax.

The Conversation UK

An independent source of news and views, sourced from the academic and research community and delivered direct to the public

We are seeing old tensions and new combine, pushing Iraq once again to the edge of a very steep cliff. In 2008, sectarian violence was at a high level, but the trend was downward from the heights of the civil war that started in earnest in 2006; now the trend is, if anything, upwards...

Ben Acheson

Energy and Environment Policy Adviser and Parliamentary Assistant at the European Parliament in Brussels

Anyone who grasps the issues knows that the adopters are not (normally) the cause of the child's trauma. The most devastating trauma stems from the splitting of parent and child. Adoptees are afflicted by separation trauma. There is no such thing as 'given-to-gays' trauma.

Daniel Wood

Blogger

Sir John is fulfilling his new, self-appointed role of Conservative Social Conscience-in-chief with a devastating efficiency and much aplomb. Indeed, he's sending shock waves through Westminster, which can never be a bad thing if it keeps a government on its toes.

Nick Stephenson

UnemployedNet founder and writer

The separation between government and civil service is a vital one. Governments come and go, but the civil service is permanent, and only works when it stands apart and acts as a bulwark against the worst excesses of politicians. So a press release that found on the Department of Work and Pensions website on Monday tips over an invisible but vital line of trust.

Mike Judge

Head of Communications at The Christian Institute

You might also think I'm a bit of a nuisance. But surely annoyance and nuisance isn't a police matter. Well, it's about to be. The Government is introducing a sweeping new anti-social behaviour law, with a very low threshold indeed. It's one of those threats to free speech which unites fierce opponents (even you and me).

Monika Juneja

Guildford Borough councillor for Burpham, and lead councillor for Planning and Governance

'Housing crisis' - it's a phrase that has been bandied around rather a lot in recent weeks, and one that we would be foolish to ignore... If we are to find a way out of the conundrum, it is crucial that their concerns don't fall on deaf ears.

Professor Brian Cathcart

Director of Hacked Off

In 2009 newspapers were arguing to MPs that the existence of a no-win-no-fee system giving some ordinary people the ability to sue papers for breaching their rights was an unacceptable constraint on press freedom. The talk of 300 years of press freedom is not based on the facts but is an argument of convenience. Today these papers declare that the press has been free for centuries, but tomorrow, if it suits them, the same papers will insist with equal ardour that the press has never been free.

Jason Holmes

London-based writer

As a member of parliament for Bolsover in Derbyshire since 1970, Dennis Skinner - the man once dubbed The Beast of Bolsover - continues to hold fast to his socialist ideals, while his presence in the House of Commons serves as a reminder of the need for more open political debate.

Alastair Roderick

Research Fellow at the Schumacher Institute for Sustainable Systems

Neither left, nor right, confronts the reality of an economic system built on the assumption that certain inputs, notably energy and minerals such as phosphorus and copper, are limitless and always easy to access...

Christopher Jackson

London-based freelance journalist, communications expert and former writer at The Socialist International

Britons lionise their Second World War veterans more than other veterans because they fought for what Britain and what the world is today, including its neighbour, Ireland. We, the Irish, live in a better world because of them, and it's about time that we acknowledged this as so.