Late last night, RBS chief Stephen Hester said he would not take his £1 million bonus after all. That’s a huge turnaround – and we helped make it happen.

When we launched the petition on Friday calling on Hester to refuse his giant bonus, it looked an uphill struggle. David Cameron and George Osborne were both claiming their hands were tied. Many thought it was a done deal.

But in 48 hours over 80,000 38 Degrees members signed the petition. The public outcry grew in volume across the internet and in the press. More and more politicians started to join in. By the end of the weekend, we’d got Hester to back down.

This latest breakthrough is yet more proof that people power matters. When enough of us speak up together, we can help change things for the better – even when politicians claim there is no alternative.

Remember when the government said there was nothing they could do to stop Rupert Murdoch taking over BSkyB? Or that selling off England’s forests was essential? Or that the NHS changes would be done and dusted by the middle of 2011? Time and again 38 Degrees members work together to prove there are alternatives.

Is the more we could be doing together to tackle the scandal of bankers bonuses and skyrocketing executive pay? You can share your thoughts on this  on our Facebook page or by commenting below.

Here’s what some other 38 Degrees members are saying so far:

Deborah: “Way to go! 82K people signed in 48 hours! Well done 38 Degrees!”

Shaun: “This is great news, i like to think that our petition and facebook protest on here and on the RBS facebook page had a hand in making him change his mind on the bonus”

John: “A small enough victory but I hope a significant one. On to chasing tax dodgers and saving our NHS”

Anthony: “We need to remember this was not brought about by any pressure whatsoever by the government or the board. Both backed the bonus, the board siding with him and the government limp in their glaring lack of condemnation. The more we speak up the louder our voice.”

Wendy: “The arguments in favour of high salaries for bankers are as obscene as the salaries and bonuses themselves.”

Sylvia: “We pestered Hester – and he crumbled!”

What do you think?

The YouGov poll published a few hours ago shows that NHS staff are very unhappy with Andrew Lansley’s plans for our NHS. They think it’ll mean patient care gets worse, the NHS will become less efficient and more bureaucratic. They also think the changes could lead to charges being introduced.

But what can you do if you work for the NHS and are worried?

If you haven’t already don’t forget to sign the Save our NHS petition here. Then why not write to your royal college or professional body and let them know your views.

It’s quick and easy to do. Below is a long list of Associations, Academies, Societies and Colleges. If you’re a member of any of them please write to them now and ask them to highlight the huge opposition within the NHS to Andrew Lansley’s plans.

• Association of Clinical Scientists (ACS) – Contact: Magali Fontaine, President c/o admin@assclinsci.org
• British Academy of Audiology – Contact: Mr Gareth Smith, President c/o admin@baaudiology.org
• British Society of Audiologists – Contact: Dr David Baguley, Chair c/o contactcouncil@thebsa.org.uk
• British Association of Prosthetists and Orthotists -Contact: Mr Peter Honeycombe, Chair, c/o enquiries@bapo.com
• British Psychological Society – Contact: Dr Carol Allan, President: thepresident@bps.org.uk
• British Association of Occupational Therapists and College of Occupational Therapists -Contact: Julia Scott, Chief Executive: CEO@cot.co.uk
• British Dietetic Association – Contact: Andy Burman, Chief Executive, a.burman@bda.uk.com
• British and Irish Orthoptic Society -Contact: Lesley-Anne Baxter, Chair: lesleyanne.baxter@btinternet.com
• Chartered Society of Physiotherapists – Contact: Phil Gray, Chief Executive: grayp@csp.org.uk
• College of Paramedics - Contact: David Hodge, Chief Executive c/o membership@collegeofparamedics.co.uk
• College of Operating Department Practitioners - Contact: Bill Kilvington, President: bill.kilvington@codp.org.uk
• Doctors – Contact your Royal Colleges via: http://callonyourcollege.blogspot.com/
• Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists -Contact: Kamini Gadhok, President: kamini.gadhok@rcslt.org
• Royal Pharmaceutical Society – Contact: Martin Astbury, President: president@rpharms.com
• Society for Chiropodists and Podiatrists -Contact: Joanna Brown, Chief Executive: jb@scpod.org
• Society of Radiographers – Contact: Richard Evans, Chief Exec c/o info@sor.org
• Institute of Biomedical Science - Contact: Derek Bishop, President c/o president@ibms.org
• Association for Perioperative Practice – Contact: Tracy Coates, President: president@afpp.org.uk

If you don’t see a college listed, or get a response from a college, do share it in the comments below.

38 Degrees teamed up with YouGov to find out what NHS workers think of Andrew Lansley’s plans for the NHS.

The results are in the infographic below – and they’re pretty shocking.

Once you’ve looked at the infographic please spread the word by Facebook or Twitter.

You can also join the campaign to protect the NHS here.

Poll details: All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from YouGov Plc. Total sample size was 1,601 adults. Fieldwork was undertaken between 17th – 26th January 2012. The survey was carried out online. Full results available as a Google Doc here.

Have you seen the news today? Stephen Hester, chief of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), has been awarded a bonus worth £1 million.

We’ve already had to bail out RBS to the tune of billions of pounds. Since then, it has failed to meet targets set by the government for lending to small businesses. And now we’re expected to cough up £1 million to reward the chief executive for good work.

Politicians have failed to stop RBS awarding this bonus to Stephen Hester. Today, lots of them are speaking out, asking him to refuse to accept the money. A Foreign Office minster, Jeremy Brown MP, said that Mr Hestor earned more in three days than a soldier fighting in Afghanistan earns in a year.

If we all add our names to a huge petition telling Stephen Hester to refuse his bonus, we can shame him into doing the right thing.

The gap between the have and have-nots in our society is getting bigger all the time. Many wealthy bankers, politicians and businessmen seem to live in a different world from the rest of us. In their world, it’s the done thing to make as much money as possible for yourself while watching others struggle to get by.

Government ministers have done nothing to stop this massive payout – so let’s tell Stephen Hester directly that tens of thousands of us are disgusted at his bonus and demand that he do the right thing.

We’ll deliver all the signatures to him at RBS offices. He might decide that the money means more to him than his sense of what’s right and wrong. Or he might bow to our pressure and refuse to accept the payout.

One way or the other, we can send this bank boss a clear message – tens of thousands of us believe that it is wrong for him to take this money.

“The Lords have told government to ditch plans that would leave people struggling financially if they became sick or disabled. Now 38 Degrees members can help make sure MPs listen.” Kathy Peach, Head of Campaigns & Social Change, Scope

In the next few days we could help stop some of the worst cuts to support for sick and disabled people. When the plans were debated in the House of Lords, Lords and Baronesses voted to stop some of the most unfair cuts – including support being ended after only a year for some people recovering from very serious illnesses, like cancer.

Now, the government is threatening to reverse these decisions and bring the cuts back. But they can only do that if they can persuade enough MPs to do what the government tells them. If we work together, we can push our MPs to stand up for what’s right and defend sick and disabled people.

All over the country, disabled people and their families are anxiously waiting to see what will happen. The decision could be the difference between a decent life and serious poverty. Becoming sick or disabled could happen to any of us. Now, we’ve got a chance to stop MPs making a tough package of cuts even worse.

Even with the changes the Lords have made, there are big worries about what these plans mean for disabled people. But if MPs don’t back the Lords’ changes, it could end up being even worse. Our voices will be joining hundreds of other groups, including Scope and Sense, who want MPs to protect these improvements.

Right now, many MPs could be on the verge of doing the right thing. A final, people-powered push from thousands of 38 Degrees members could convince them to back the Lords’ changes to the bill.

I thought it might be time to give a quick update on the NHS campaign. It’s been a bit quiet over the last few weeks, but things are about to hot up again.

Andrew Lansley is still trying to get his plan through parliament. It finally passed through the House of Commons last summer. It has been in the House of Lords for the last few months. Before Christmas thousands of 38 Degrees members contacted the Lords with concerns as the plan went through “committee stage”.

On February 8th the next stage in the House of Lords begins – “report stage“. Report stage will last a few weeks. This could be the final time that the House of Lords discuss the NHS plans in detail.

Before report stage starts, we can expect the government to announce if it will make any changes in response to our campaigning. Our people powered legal team is standing by to quickly analyse the proposed changes. They will cut through the spin and legal speak, so we are able to respond together.

Once report stage starts the Lords will have another chance to vote on changes to Lansley’s plan. They will be able to vote both on changes proposed by the government and changes proposed by other Lords. Some votes could be very close. We may have to pull together quickly to make sure the votes go the right way.

When we hear the government announcements and see what changes they are proposing, 38 Degrees members will have to vote together to decide what we should do next. This is likely to be within the next two weeks.

At the moment, we’re hearing a mixture of rumours on how much ground Andrew Lansley might have given. On the one hand, there are some encouraging signs that lords have secured important concessions on keeping the Secretary of State’s “duty to provide” a health service.

On the other hand, just  a few hours ago the Royal College Of Nurses and Royal College of Midwives announced that they thought Lansley’s plans were still very dangerous. They argue that the best thing would be for them to be scrapped altogether.

We will need to be ready to move fast and vote to decide together what we do next.

It’s amazing to think that when we first started to campaign to protect our NHS, people told us we were
wasting our time. They said the changes would be done and dusted by December 2010. But we didn’t give up. We kept up the pressure and defended our health service.

By working together we’ve formed the biggest campaign ever to protect the NHS. We are now half a million strong. We’ve signed petitions, delivered them to our MPs’ doorsteps and put pressure on key politicians. Over the last few months over 50,000 of us have contacted members of the House of Lords. On top of that we’ve funded a crack legal team to get to the truth of what’s on the table and expose the full extent of the government’s plans.

It’s nearly a year and a half since we started the campaign. Soon we’ll need to be ready for another big push. There will be more than a few politicians hoping that we’re worn out by now, or that we’ve got bored and decided to do something else. Time and again, 38 Degrees members have proven those who’ve doubted our commitment wrong. We know how important our NHS is, and that’s why we’ll keep working together to protect it.

So, please watch out for an email in the next couple of weeks asking you to help decide what we do next. In the meantime, if you’ve got any thoughts or ideas you’d like to share with other 38 Degrees members do share them in the comments below.

Tomorrow, we have the chance to persuade MPs to back a new law that would give voters the power to sack MPs who don’t do their job properly. It could be a massive step forward for people power: just imagine if we’d been able to fire the MPs who abused the expenses system.

This new law- proposed by Zac Goldsmith MP- would give voters in each constituency the power to call a fresh vote if 10% of them sign a petition. Most MPs will still be deciding what to do about the debate Friday. A well-attended, noisy debate about giving voters the right to sack MPs is just what’s needed to get the government to stick to their promises.

The government will be hoping that hardly any MPs bother to show up. That way, they can stick to their plan for a much weaker recall law that would end up giving MPs even more power. They might even try to quietly drop the idea altogether.

But if thousands of us email our MPs and ask them to back a new “recall” law, we can make sure loads of MPs turn up to the debate on Friday. Lots of us talking about plans for a powerful new recall law will build the pressure on the government to toughen up their own weak plans.

Back in May 2009, a recall law was the first thing 38 Degrees members decided to work on together. Even though there were just a few thousand of us back then, we helped to persuade key MPs to back the idea. Now we’ve teamed up with Unlock Democracy, who’ve been working with Zac Goldsmith MP to get the recall law back on the agenda.

Once you’ve got in touch with your MP, it would be great if you could share your MP’s reply in the comments section below, so that other 38 Degrees members can see where our MPs stand.

*UPDATE*  This morning, Scottish Power finally announced they too will drop their prices. They have announced a small gas price cut of 5%.

Are we finally starting to tackle the gas and electricity rip-off? A week ago, 38 Degrees members started asking the big gas and electricity companies an awkward question: how come global prices have dropped, but our bills are still sky high? Our 90,000-strong petition started making the news and suddenly the companies started to get jittery.

As the numbers on the petition grew, one after another, EDF, British Gas, Scottish & Southern Energy, npower and now E.ON have announced they will at last drop prices. But they’re still only offering to pass on less than half of the savings, with price cuts of around 5%. Meanwhile Scottish Power are still refusing to budge at all.

The companies are hoping we’ll settle for these small price cuts. Let’s show them we’ll keep the pressure building until they pass on all the savings. The heads of all these companies need to personally understand that after years of price hikes, we’ve finally had enough.

Can you take 2 mins to email one of these company bosses and ask them to stop ripping us off?

Phil Bentley, Tony Cocker, Ian Marchant, Vincent Derivaz, Volker Beckers and Keith Anderson. We’ve got the email addresses of each of these six highly-paid chief executives. They probably don’t understand what it’s like to struggle to cope with price hike after price hike – and they won’t be used to hearing directly from thousands of us who do.

When they see an avalanche of emails from fed-up customers and potential customers, alarm bells will start ringing at their company HQs. They’re the men in charge – and they’ll be the ones held responsible if customers start leaving in droves. They’ll be picking up the phone to board members and scheduling emergency meetings to decide what to do.

The more of us that email a company chief, the more they’ll feel the pressure to cut their prices, and fast. Can you join in?

We know that when we work together in big numbers we can win. It’s true for politicians, like when our half-a-million strong petition showed them they couldn’t sell off England’s woodlands. It’s even more true for big businesses who want our custom every day – not just our vote once every five years.

38 Degrees volunteers gathered in London this morning to hand in the 90,000-strong petition to the offices of E.ON. A few hours later, E.ON phoned the 38 Degrees office to tell us they’re dropping their prices too – but only by 6%.  Let’s make sure the men in charge of our nation’s biggest gas and electricity companies can’t miss us in their inboxes as well as outside their office windows.

Can you e-mail the chief of a big gas and electricity company today?

Two of Britain’s smaller gas companies – Co-operative Energy and Ovo Energy – cut their prices before any of the biggest six suppliers.  If E.ON, Scottish Power, British Gas, EDF, npower and Scottish & Southern don’t get their act together, they can expect to lose a flood of customers to their smaller rivals in 2012.

**UPDATE – After handing our huge people-powered petition this morning, E.ON called the office this afternoon to tell us they have just dropped their electricity prices by 6%! It’s a start, but we need to keep the pressure building for bigger cuts that reflect the global price drop.**

Within the last week British Gas, EDF, npower and Scottish & Southern have cut their gas or electricity prices by around 5% . E.on and Scottish Power are the last remaining big gas and electricity company yet to cut its prices. So this morning, some 38 Degrees staff and volunteers went to e.on’s headquarters at 100 Pall Mall in central London to step up the pressure.

We turned up outside e.on headquarters to greet their staff coming in to work with our 93,500 strong petition, placards, banner, and chants.

Some very uncomfortable e.on employees quickly shuffled passed us with heads down on their way into the building. There were press photographers waiting to capture the event and passing traffic kept beeping in support of our message!