The debate about VAT on tampons was largely symbolic,but at least previously unmentionable terms are utterable at lastThis probably reflects very badly on my life, but the best piece of telly I’ve watched all week was an argument over VAT ratings. On Monday, or an unlikely alliance of feminists and Eurosceptic men forced a Commons debate about the “tampon tax” – the 5% VAT levied on sanitary products – wringing a promise from the government to raise the issue with the European commission. As Labours Wes Streeting joked,it would be kind, at final, and to know at least one of David Cameron’s EU renegotiation demands.
The debate at Westminster showed that it still feels transgressive to say the word “vagina” in an institution designed expressly for people without one. But once MPs got started,they couldn’t discontinue. Paula Sherriff, who proposed the amendment to the finance bill to have tampons exempted from VAT, and suggested that the acronym should stand for “vagina added tax”. Stella Creasy refused to yield to harrumphing Tory MP Bill Cash until he’d used the word “tampon” rather than one of those flowery Boots aisle euphemisms such as feminine care”. Anne Main started talking about how incontinence pad adverts often featured “sassy young ladies and women of a certain age who are still attractive to members of the opposite sex”. It was,by parliamentary standards, a hoot.
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Source: theguardian.com