These plans have emerged despite the universities minister saying “we have no plans to change” the terms of repayments last June. The government was probably hoping to keep the plans under wraps – but now we’ve got a golden opportunity to stop them in their tracks.

A huge public outcry could force the government to abandon their plans. If thousands of us sign a petition to the business secretary Vince Cable, we can show him how deeply unpopular the plans are.

To win we need to make this big – and quickly! Please urgently sign the petition to Vince Cable, then share it with your friends.

The government has already increased the cost of education to £9,000 a year for new students. Now they might try and impose a big increase in the amount that past students, who took out loans since 1998, have to pay too.

We could stop this. Intervening now before the government commits to the plans makes it much easier to get them scrapped. Vince Cable will be watching the reaction to these revelations. If he sees a big public backlash, he’s more likely to abandon the idea.

We’ve proved before that we can stop ideas like this in their tracks. Just weeks ago, our huge outcry forced the government to abandon its plans to limit how many times we can visit our GPs.

The last thing they want is another big story about unpopular proposals. If we act now and unleash a wave of public opposition, we could convince them to give the idea up.

Sign the petition here then share with your friends.

Local people, doctors and nurses in Lewisham were outraged when they heard Hunt wanted to sever their hospital services. Lewisham hospital is well-performing, but crazily it’s because it’s a successful hospital that it has been targeted. Hunt wants to move money-making services away from Lewisham to bail out hospitals making losses in the area next door.

Expert lawyers said he wasn’t allowed to do this and a judge agreed that there was a case to answer, and capped costs at £20,000. Local campaigners had raised £5,000 on their own towards this but desperately needed more funds. So together, 38 Degrees members raised enough to get them to £20,000. Now they are able to hire in a top legal team and make the most of their chance to challenge the closure.

If the campaigners in Lewisham win their court case, it would be a huge boost for battles to protect A&E services up and down the country. Shutting A&E departments can cost lives. Recent reports showed that when an A&E in Newark closed, there was a 37% jump in patient deaths. Yet across the country A&Es are being cut. If Lewisham’s A&E department is closed, 750,000 people will be left with just one casualty department between them.

This isn’t happening because of clinical need, but to meet unrealistic financial demands made by the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt. Now, with the money that 38 Degrees members helped raise, we have a real chance of getting Jeremy Hunt’s closure plan overturned. This court case will ramp up the pressure on Jeremy Hunt and will make him think twice about overruling patients, doctors and local health chiefs.

The Save Lewisham Hospital campaign is an inspiring example of ordinary people working to protect the NHS. Many of them are 38 Degrees members. They are campaigning for the same thing as the rest of us – a decent NHS we can all rely on. The court case is scheduled to start in a couple of weeks – we’ll keep you updated with how it goes.

Hopefully a successful legal challenge to save Lewisham hospital will help protect other hospitals which are under threat. If your local hospital or NHS services is under threat and you are interested in launching a local campaign in your area (or have details of a campaign that already exists) please email the office team at ccgsupport@38degrees.org.uk

In just three weeks over 9,000 38 Degrees members signed a petition opposing council plans to cut an astounding 75% from the libraries budget and 100% from local museums.  Hundreds took to the streets in protests, campaign videos were filmed in local libraries and councillors were left in no doubt how strongly people felt about the issue. This public pressure forced the council to hold an extraordinary meeting to debate the issue and to give over the floor to 38 Degrees petitioner John Perkins to make the case to keep libraries and museums open which he did to loud cheers.

What is interesting about the campaign is that it goes well beyond books.  It champions the huge role libraries and museums play in bringing people together for cultural events, for day to day company, in providing public access to computers and even tourist information.

Whilst cuts have been shelved for now, Herefordshire still has an £8.4 million deficit to fill. Local campaigners are preparing to fight council attempts to make the cuts through the back door: whether it’s cutting opening hours, replacing staff with volunteers or selling off assets like the three Turner paintings the county owns.

38 Degrees members will be watching closely as the Herefordshire campaign enters this new phase.  What started as a petition and a facebook page has become a local movement bringing diverse groups of people together.  Watch this space to see how things develop.

A bee-friendly seed packet should be making its way to the door of thousands of 38 Degrees members as we write. In fact some may have arrived already. Unfortunately it seems that the company who packed the seeds have forgotten to pop the planting instructions in the envelope with the them.

If you received one of the packets, the instructions you need to plant the seeds are as follows:

“Red Campion, Selfheal, White Clover – A collection of wildflower seeds to attract bees to your garden

Sow in a sunny spot where you would like the seeds to flower, after first clearing the area of weeds etc. Simply sprinkle on the seeds and press into the soil. Water in. Alternatively, you can sow in trays of compost – sprinkle the seeds on top of the compost and press into the compost. Water in and place somewhere light to germinate. When seedlings are big enough to handle, pot on into small pots and grow on until ready to plant out in a sunny spot. “

We’re very sorry for any confusion.

Do let us know how you get on with growing your flowers. It would be lovely if you sent in a picture to the 38 Degrees office once they have bloomed, so that we can see them in all their glory.

There are a number of forums – across our Facebook page, Twitter feed, blog and campaigns forum Uservoice – where 38 Degrees members discuss what we should campaign on. Every week a group of randomly selected 38 Degrees members has the chance to vote on what issues we should campaign on via a poll. The questions included are based on current campaigns as well as the thousands of daily discussions between 38 Degrees members (well, the ones that the office team here are privy to!).

The 38 Degrees office team use these results every Monday morning to decide what campaigns to work on in the week ahead. And here are the results this week. NHS and tax dodging have topped the priority list, with petrol price fixing and tackling climate change coming in third and fourth.

When we campaign on the issues we choose together, we get things done! In the past few weeks we’ve exposed tax dodging Npower and hit them where it hurts by thousands of us switching suppliers. Nearly 200,000 of us campaigned against proposals to limit GP visits. Within just 48 hours the plans were off the table. And hundreds of thousands of us pushed the government for clean energy targets in the Energy Bill.

Do you have a campaign suggestion? Email us on emailtheteam@38degrees.org.uk or join the discussion on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/peoplepowerchange

Despite all the pressure we put on them to keep badgers part of our countryside, in the end the vote came down to politics. The government put pressure on MPs to vote with them – they didn’t want to be as embarrassed as they were last time.

Many MPs are saying that they had to vote against their conscience because of the party line.

It’s sad when we lose, especially when it’s on something as important as protecting our planet. But we fought valiantly and gave it our all, and today we can be proud as well as disappointed. A year ago, the prospect of so many MPs voting for a clean energy target was inconceivable. Our work, alongside our friends at Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, changed that.

Together we sent tens of thousands of emails, phone calls and tweets to our MPs. We also ramped up the pressure targeting wavering MPs with adverts in local newspapers, leaflets and meetings. It’s thanks to all we did together that so many MPs switched their votes, and turned out on Tuesday in support.

Undeniably, this is not where we wanted to be today. But there’s still hope that we’ll secure the target we need. The Energy Bill will now go to the House of Lords to be debated again. They have the power to include a clean energy target. They are much more likely to do so because it was such a close vote in the House of Commons.

Photograph by Sally Longstaff

It’s begun. The barbaric pilot cull of thousands of badgers started on Saturday. But there’s a spark of hope.

Mary Creagh MP has called a vote in parliament on Wednesday. Although not legally binding, it could be our last chance. If we cause a big enough backlash by MPs across all political parties, it might be enough to halt the cull and make sure our badgers are safe.

We’ve only got 24 hours to persuade our MPs to vote to stop the cull. MPs from the Conservatives, Lib Dems and Labour have all vowed to vote to stop the cull. Can you email your MP now to make sure they turn up and vote to stop the cull too?

Every day, up to 70 badgers could die because the government says it’s necessary to stop the increase of TB in cattle. But scientists say that the policy will have “unimpressive results” in reducing TB, and the evidence in support of a cull is shaky.

The last thing the government wants now is for us to ramp up the attention around this vote. If we’re going to stop the cull, thousands of us have to email our MP and persuade them to vote against the cull on Wednesday.

Getting enough of a backlash is a long-shot. But we know that people power works. In the last week alone we managed to force the government to pledge “never” to introduce a limit on the number of times we’re allowed to visit our GP.

Badgers have been part of the British countryside for generations,and we want to protect them for generations to come. If we’re going to stop the cull, numbers count. The more of us that email our MP, the more chance we have of persuading the government that they should change their minds.

We’ve got 24 hours. Email your MP now.

A 2030 clean energy target is crucial, and it’s crucial that we commit to it now. The government want to delay setting one til 2015 at the earliest, but they’re just ducking the responsibility. If the vote for a clean target passes tomorrow, we’ll be committing to £25 billion in savings, creating thousands of green jobs and saving the atmosphere from 400 million tonnes of damaging carbon emissions. Not only that, but we’ll be back on track to meet our climate change targets.

If the vote doesn’t go the right way, none of that will happen.

The choice is stark and immediate: either we stand up and tackle climate change head on, creating jobs and making savings along the way – or we duck the chance, and rush headlong towards gas and other dirty fuels.

17 wavering MPs have bowed to the pressure and said they’ll vote for clean energy after outcries in their constituencies – but for a majority to vote the right way tomorrow, we need 25 more Lib Dem and Conservative MPs to switch sides. If your MP is a Tory or a Lib Dem, you can email them now by clicking here.

Alternatively, call your MP’s office or join in on Twitter. The hashtag is #vote4cleanpower – and the debate is hotting up.

One last time, here’s the link to email your MP: https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/urgent-clean-energy

Together, we can make sure that when MPs walk into the House of Commons tomorrow, they’re feeling the weight of expectation to vote the right way.

Here’s what he said on twitter in full. He couldn’t resist being rude about us, but it’s still positive news:

On Tuesday, this was a serious Conservative Party policy proposal, being reported in national newspapers.  Now, it’s “never” going to happen.

That’s pretty extraordinary. By working together in big enough numbers, we’ve forced a leading politician to change his tune in just 48 hours. No wonder he doesn’t like us – ordinary people, working together, are limiting his ability to damage our NHS.

This is what 38 Degrees is all about. Jeremy Hunt may grumble. But he knows he can’t afford to ignore us. We’re independent. We move fast. We stick to our principles. And most importantly of all, there are thousands and thousands of us, all over the country.

38 Degrees works because it belongs to all of us. An important part of that is how we’re funded. To stay independent, we will never take cash from government, political parties, or big business. Instead 38 Degrees relies on people-powered donations from thousands of us, contributing whatever we can afford. Our donations policy is available on our website.

Would you consider making a regular donation, to make sure we can keep running campaigns like this one? It’s probably the last thing Jeremy Hunt would like you to do today. But it could be one of the most effective ways of keeping him in check.

Just 2 or 3 pounds a week makes a massive difference. And it only takes a few minutes to set up a direct debit.

The 38 Degrees way of campaigning is extremely good value. We don’t have fancy offices, big bureaucracy, layers of management or marketing departments – just a small committed staff team, lots of volunteers, and an amazing network of over a million 38 Degrees members like you.

It’s good value, but it can’t be done for nothing. More donations would mean we could do even more together – including more work to investigate and tackle threats to our NHS. Whether it’s access to GPs, A&E closures, or privatisation, we need to stay on Jeremy Hunt’s case. So please consider celebrating today’s success by chipping in to fund more work in the future.

Your voices

By the way, here’s how some 38 Degrees members are responding to Jeremy Hunt on Facebook:

Christian Cook: They caused a leak to test the water and were overcome by a tidal wave.

Kit Whitfield Thomas: We believe you, boys. As long as you don’t actually do it, we’re happy to pretend it was all our fault for getting our silly little minds confused. I’ll take insults over expecting poor people to die any day.

Talis Kimberley: Shame he couldn’t set the record straight without a bit of graceless snarking. ‘Neutral’…

Pamela Brooke: “nipped in the bud” then … for me, this was always “just in case they’re serious”

You can also join in the conversation on Facebook.