It has felt that the last six years have seen the NHS in perpetual crisis but there is now a real sense that the service is being irreversibly damaged, most importantly the impact on our patients is becoming painfully clear. As healthcare workers our priority is the patients we serve and we must ensure it is their care and their priorities that directs how the service is run, but this is not just a fight that concerns NHS staff. The NHS belongs to us all and we all have a responsibility to safeguard it.
The imminent sale of the GIB to Macquarie, labelled as an asset stripper, is so troubling that not only are urgent questions being raised but there is strong cross-party support to pause the sale. We stand to lose an institution with a proven record of fighting climate change, enabling green innovation and creating a return for the taxpayer.
President-elect Donald Trump has announced his intention to cease, immediately, the apparently dreadful Obama policy of releasing Guantanamo Bay detainees... The next four years promise to be a fairly dictatorial era in human rights terms. At Reprieve, we believe it is all the more important that we protect the most powerless against the powerful.
The Tory government is breaking one if its key manifesto pledges and is completely failing to increase support for victims of crime. Parliament is currently deliberating the Policing and Crime Bill. Colleagues in both the Lords and the Commons have put forward a series of amendments which would increase the rights of victims and make the public sector more responsive to their needs. The government rejected them all.
I rarely vocalise this. That's not to say I'm an outwardly gloomy person - I'd like to think I'm cheerful enough most of the time. I just don't ever feel that it's appropriate to bang on to my friends or colleagues about the great things in my life.
There's something more important going on, and you don't need unsourced reports to see it. It was hiding in plain sight when, in a bizarre intermezzo, Trump interrupted his own press conference for a legal presentation from the Washington law firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP.
Today those same bedrooms are filled with technology connected to the world wide web, and chances are that one's moment of quiet catharsis is interrupted by a notification alerting you to the latest "selfie from paradise" posted by a classmate or colleague and adorned with requisite amount of hashtags.
I am one of the people who didn't find that news shocking at all. In fact, in an odd way I was pleased that it had happened to someone in the public eye, someone who was brave enough to come forward and tell the media about it so that finally our voices have a chance of being heard.
You will suddenly realise that, you never knew what it feels like to really be touched and touch: the top of your baby's head, their tiny little hands wrapped around your finger. The tickle of your child's breath as they whisper into your ear. When they want to be lifted and carried all around town.
Scoff and smirk away. When I tell you I have online friends, I'm talking about my sisterhood, my village, my inspirations. I'm talking about two groups of women I don't know what I'd do without, because in every sense of the word, they're real friends.
The models that monopolise magazines and billboards are no longer remotely representative of the women that we see in everyday life, resulting in an influx of body-dissatisfaction, eating disorders and appearance preoccupation among young women.
Yesterday, my almost five-year-old asked me about Donald Trump. Used to hearing me muttering to the radio and amused by his surname (come on, whether you're 5 or 45 you've got to laugh at his surname) she wanted to know exactly who he was.
Jonny Benjamin, the award-winning mental health campaigner, vlogs on what it felt like when he found out he was getting an MBE, his achievements over the last year and what he wants 2017 to bring - including mental health education in schools.
The Women's March is an attempt to create the conditions for different sorts of conversations than the ones that exploit fear and uncertainty and lead to division and social turbulence. It is an attempt towards opening up a space where we can come together, think together, act together for the benefit of us all.
With 2016 the hottest year on record, a climate-sceptic in the White House, and our (far from perfect) national climate targets in real danger, now is not the time to break up one of the UK most significant investors in clean, renewable energy.
Barack Obama has reached out to the American family in his final speech as President of the United States. From the outset, he echoed the words, ideas, and values of his wife Michelle... Above all as they say goodbye, despite some malaise, the Obamas leave behind the echo of one word that sums up everything they have stood for - HOPE.
Once the production team started to research the series what they found was things we'd never seen before - the extent of cancelled ops, the failing targets, outsourcing of some procedures and 'health tourism'. But they also found extraordinary resilience, remarkably understanding patients and an ability to perform some of the best care and surgery in the world.
We know that permitting asylum seekers to work would allow them to integrate better into society, develop their English and make friends in what can often be a lonely and new environment. Many are professionals with skills they would love to put to use and which would benefit our economy. It makes complete sense to make this modest change to the immigration rules in line with other European countries. By changing the restrictions on working, we can restore asylum seekers dignity and self-confidence, whilst saving money for the public purse in the long-run.
Contrary to what the Home Office thinks, most likely it would in fact improve the UK's negotiating capital were it to guarantee the right of EU citizens to stay unilaterally, if for no other reason than that it would create some much-needed goodwill. The EU may be less tempted to drive a hard bargain if it already knows its citizens' rights are safe.
When I am at a gig or a club sometimes people make fun of me, they laugh at me when I am dancing or they call me names and stare. I get anxious about this happening. I've been bullied before, and I don't want it to happen to me again. I feared this would be even worse at a festival.
Last year I realised that life is too short not to be doing something that you're passionate about and so with that I left a flourishing career in venture capital to move out to Uganda, East Africa. Rather than packing up my belongings and spending a fortune on storage I decided to sell everything instead.
Is it possible to turn the virtual into reality? This is the theme we drew on for the Virtually Real project which will open to the public at the Royal Academy on 12th January. Faramawy, a Royal Academy Schools alumni and Jetpacks, a current student reveal our experiences creating the world's first 3D printed artwork, made in virtual reality: