Lets Talk Periods: The Tampon Tax

Lets talk about one of the ancient taboos. Periods.  More specifically the sanitary products that women are required to purchase at some point of every month, so they can go out and function as a member of society. 

If you ask any women these products are essential, so why are women forced to pay the additional 5% "luxury tax" for items which are sanitary and are no way a luxury. I wasn't aware that my painful monthly periods are a luxury?

Then why did the House of Commons reject the motion of abolishing the 5% tax, (305 votes to 287 if you want to know) on women's health products. However, while women are taxed for having a uterus, male "essential" items such as razors remain untaxed? If men were cursed with the burden of periods I wouldn't be writing this article. 

David Cameron has attempted to defend this rejection by stating that, this tax is not enforced by the UK and is by the EU which is difficult to "overthrow". Which just sounds like an half-assed excuse from a teenager who didn't want to clean their room, or is this part of Cameron's wider plan get disgruntled women to vote against staying in the EU so they don't have to pay extra for tampons.

While this topic screams inequality towards women, on the 15th October French MP's voted against overthrowing the tax on sanitary products purely because the french government didn't want to lose the tax revenue which is €55 Million (£40 Million). Which is something to think about, if a woman is on minimum wage she will have to work 38 days to pay for a years supply of sanitary products. 

So do the government consider a lack of female voice as an opportunity to treat us as bloody cash cows? But what about women who can't afford a meal let alone a 'luxury item' to help prevent them getting hazardous infections. 

But what do I know? I'm probably on my period, right? 

Life review: Staying in bed all day did me some good.

Because life is so weird and wonderful, it can all be a bit too much; and the human beings we are, we don't always get it right and it leaves us thinking, "What the fuck was that?"  "Why did I do that?" "I'm a terrible human being." 

This generally happens to me the morning after i've been out drinking. Hangovers tend to give me existential crises, which makes me go into meltdown mode. With having questions ranging from, what is my purpose in life? To, do I really need to be a functioning member of society? Which usually finally concludes with, if currency is mere bits of paper why am I striving so hard in life for paper to make up my self worth?

But, none of this happened yesterday. 

Instead of my usual gloomy, stereotypical hangover thoughts mixed with a quarter life crisis, my head space was completely blank. 

I did spend my entire day in bed, but not because I felt like a piece of shit having a shitty little crisis, but it was the complete opposite, it was because I didn't feel like shit. Sure, I was definitely hungover, I felt like Satan himself had eaten me alive and shit me back out. 

So I decided to take the day as a personal day off from life. All responsibilities I had for that day got my middle finger rammed in its face. I wasn't doing anything for anyone, that day was Rosie's Day.  

So I binged on Netflix, I watched 'funny' people try to be funny and documentaries on the most bizarre things. I took the day as to relieve all the sudden stress I had been put under pressure with (and nursing the hangover). I ate shitty food and I laughed with each housemate who decided to pop into my room to make sure I was alive. 

As life passes us by, work stress and other things keeping us up at night. We forget to take a day off for ourselves, sure, sometimes we take a day off under the duvet watching shitty films. Why do we always feel bad about that day, as soon as we wake up the next day as we didn't do anything 'productive'? But, what about taking care of yourself by doing nothing, isn't that a productive part of life? 

We all need some good quality TLC sometimes, and that day was just what I needed, I got a proper nights sleep and when I awoke the next morning I was the happiest and motivated I had been in weeks. (and hangover free, hoorah!)

So even though I had spent an entire day festering under my duvet watching shit on Netflix that in no way shape or form will enlighten my life, I took care of myself. I stopped stressing and enjoyed a rare euphoric bliss that comes with not stressing about anything. 

NHS(ex Change.)

While I was at home for the easter break I had the unfortunate pleasure of coming across The Sun newspaper. After lecturing whoever brought it into my house, I gave it a read myself.

I came across an interesting article of a 65 year old man wanted the NHS to pay for his sex change so he could become the woman he knew he was; Roxanne.

The ex-solider, father of four, formerly known as 'Doug'  has been currently having feminisation lessons. This is where she has been learning to walk, talk and act like a woman. She has also been having lessons where she is learning to pitch her voice like singer Cher's.

Despite having these lessons paid for her by the NHS and receiving benefits Roxanne Yeatman wants the NHS (or to really hammer the nail into the coffin, you, the tax payer.) to pay £20,000 for her to have her surgery and carry on with her counselling (lessons) so then she can be truly happy, after claiming that she was 'born in the wrong body.' Roxanne was previously married for 21 and states that she felt 'that the grass was greener on the other side.'

I'm all for these types of surgeries, you can't help if you feel as if you were born the wrong gender. But my issue is with the rise of vanity surgeries and putting extra stress on an already stretched NHS. I've read and heard countless stories of people having their surgeries pushed back to lack of staff or lack of time, and having to wait another 6 weeks in pain etc. So why allow vanity operations like this to happen if we can't even look after our sick properly?

I googled NHS boob job in search of counting how many articles I could find of girls having their boobs done on the NHS but the first link I came across was a genuine link questioning if you were eligible for a free boob job on the NHS. The website briefly outlines that the NHS is for illness and gives you a brief criteria of the standards you'd have to meet if you wanted the tax payer to pay for you to get your boobs done. Don't believe me? Check it out here.

So while i'm sat here writing this at 20 to 2 in the morning I'm sat here in disbelief. Is society really going to promote vanity over health and give people free boob jobs and sex changes, and go "Aw no buddy you don't have to pay a single penny, we just need to tell this sick person we can't afford to employ enough staff to look after them."

Oh no! Not another blog post about cats and the internet!

Help me I sound like every other blogger out there moaning about people finding cats looking silly funny. Nope.  I actually enjoy this internet cat culture we've created for ourselves.

The Egyptians had their worshipping of cats, and now we've got ours. Ours is just funnier, cuter (or whatever you wanna call it.) Regardless, we're worshipping cats in our own way.

Maybe thats what the cats want, maybe the cats created the internet with the knowledge that they will be celebrated by the millions of internet users, and i'm not even talking about the obvious cat owner users.

You think i'm wrong? We have cat celebrities on the internet now. I can name three of these celebricats right now without even having to open google to research some. Grumpy cat, Nyan Cat & Lil Bub (I don't even open google for those, honest.)
Close your eyes now and test yourself to see how many cats you can name without having to google them. Theres hundreds of these celebricats and even more 'upcoming' celebricats. Just like normal celebrities, but these have two more legs, a lot more furrier and damn straight a lot more cuter.

I admit I am part of this online cat culture and i've bought into it. Grumpy cat for me is probably one of the best things ever. I have countless photos of her saved onto my laptop and I even have the official grumpy cat book and a t-shirt. Best part is, I don't even care if you're judging me about it right now. I just find it too damn funny. 

Grumpy cat came into the spotlight in 2012 through a post on reddit. The internet exploded with photos of this cat and funny captions to accompany the image. The cat looks grumpy due to feline dwarfism, and has been featured on the front page of The Wall Street Journal, and on the cover of New York Magazine.