Free period products in Scotland

[james19]

FREE EVERY THING!

Discuss

Thank you to everyone who has campaigned for period dignity and to my MSP colleagues for backing the Bill tonight.

A proud day for Scotland and a signal to the world that free universal access to period products can be achieved. #freeperiodproducts 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 https://t.co/NC3e97jPuQ

— Monica Lennon MSP (@MonicaLennon7) November 24, 2020

• This topic was modified 4 years ago by james19.
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[Young Master Smeet]

It’s nice to see some good news on this forum: obviously, we’ll have to see which councils obstruct this or cut costs (administrative foot dragging is an art, much as with yesterday’s story about civil service obstruction of Freedom of information requests (https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/uk-government-running-orwellian-unit-to-block-release-of-sensitive-information/)).

But, nonetheless, there’s no need to be curmudgeonly about this, a genuine advance.

[alanjjohnstone]

The legislation is specific as my post on this explains if you scroll down 😛

It will be for the country’s 32 councils to decide what practical arrangements are put in place, but they must give “anyone who needs them” access to different types of period products “reasonably easily” and with “reasonable dignity”.

[Young Master Smeet]

There’s a law that councils must run an “efficient and comprehensive” library services, that the courts gutted by interpreting “efficient” as relative to the scale of the council’s spending.  The courts will have to decide “reasonable” here (and the councils will decide the quality).   The FOI law is quite clear as well…

[james19]

AJ I didn’t see your Forum post, oops. I think it was because I didn’t see something about this on SOYMB?

[alanjjohnstone]

 I didn’t see something about this on SOYMB?

Because it’s posted on the Scottish branch blog Socialist Courier

Socialist Courier: Everything free for everybody (socialist-courier.blogspot.com)

[james19]

As of midnight last night, (31/12/2020) the ‘sexiest’ (not my choice of words) tampon tax, in the UK, was abolished, in the so-called fight against ‘period poverty’. Meaning 7p less for a 20 pack of tampons, 5p off for a 12 pack.

I don’t know if I should raise this here? This has been reported in this month’s Socialist Standard, the back page.

The author (countercurrent.org) fails to address the obvious alternative of medically approved methods of menstrual suppression, where the need for pads, etc., is reduced or eliminated. Such alternatives are not free and do not register on the reformist radar.

“The plight of women in India, where 70% say they can’t afford sanitary pads…..”

————

Just throwing this out…? As India produces cheap generic drugs. Why not in this instance?

In Socialism it goes without saying whichever method is preferred i.e. a real freedom of choice, it would not be dependent on ability to pay, but available for free, free access!

Activists cheer as ‘sexist’ tampon tax is scrapped https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55502252

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