Due to the new sugar tax, the government is set to make £250 million a year. The very most female sanitary products could make from VAT is £130 million a year, and that's if every woman in the UK needed them, which clearly isn't possible, but it shows the maximum amount they could possibly make. It's clear sugar tax will make up this difference and making money wasn't even its primary reason for it being implemented. It's obvious female sanitary products are not a luxury item, and women all over the globe need them. Being charged VAT on them is simply ludicrous. There is simply no excuse now for VAT being on female sanitary products anymore even at a reduced rate. Periods aren't a choice, and female sanitary products are necessary to deal with it. Women shouldn't be charged on a product they NEED - not WANT, NEED. It doesn't make sense, its obvious it doesn't make sense and now it doesn't make sense financially either.

A Tight Spot The big news this week on the BBC news channel, is that Meghan Markle has started wearing tights to prepare for joining the royal family, who don’t go bare legged, for unexplained reasons of protocol. This reminds me of having to wear tights as part of my school uniform. Never mind the gender pay gap I was a child and had no income, yet I was obliged to buy a product that had built in obsolesces. My tights didn’t last long before they laddered, especially on splintery school chairs and under desks where gum had been secreted. Nail varnish only halted a ladder for so long. I was lucky if I could wear a pair of tights more than five times before throwing them out. That’s a total of a week’s wear per pair. In today’s prices Marks and Spencer sell three pairs of thick black tights for £5. There are about 40 weeks of term time in the school year, and no one wears socks in summer, or those sheer tights that tear when you are taking them out of the packet, so I spent £66 on tights each year. Or rather my parents spent £66 on tights per daughter per school year, and I have two sisters, so my parents were spending £200 per year on tights. They might have done this buy giving their daughters pocket money and hoping we learnt budgeting skills, but there was no way of saving or scheming that avoided the need for their daughters to buy 40 pairs of tights each. According to government statistics, in Britain today there are 1,564,819 girls of secondary school age in state schools, and many will attend schools where trousers are not part of the uniform for girls. So at the end of each school year British school girls have spent about £104,321,267 on 62,592,760 pairs of tights all of which are slowly decomposing on landfill sites. And I mean slowly, tights have the wondrous ability to ladder like greased lightening and decompose at a snails pace. It strikes me that this is not a great use of the earth’s resources and is good neither for the environment or the wealth of Britain’s school girls and their parents. I never liked wearing tights. I didn’t like that they failed to keep me warm in winter, and were sweaty all year round, and sweaty means fungal infections. So I say that protocol needs to move in the other direction. Wearing tights does not equate with decency. I am proud not to be royal and bare legs are fine by me. I just wish the people who design school uniform weren’t influenced by the royal family as much as they seem to be. There are better thing that Britain’s school, girls could buy with £104,321,267. Heck if all girls could wear trousers to school up-skirting and environmental disaster would both suffer a body blow. Others have campaigned on the cost of tampons for school girls, I say there’s more work for feminists to do. Ask Damian Hinds to make wearing trousers and option for all Britain’s school girls.

Homelessness due to domestic violence is an issue which women are unable to control, these women often have nowhere else to go which is why they are resorted to living on the streets. Women on the streets are vulnerable, especially if they are pregnant or have dependent children, consequently, it is crucial for the government and local authorities to help eliminate this and recognise more women as homeless.

Resolving this issue is one which the government should prioritize as gender inequality is an issue which should not be prevalent in 21st century Britain.

If you walk into a chain Bookstore like WHSmith, Waterstones, The Works etc. you will almost inevitably never find Gay, Lesbian and Trans related fictional material that is clearly and obviously available for purchase and Non-fiction is often hidden away among Feminist and activist books which for many is highly inaccessible or is culturally shunned. This places young people and indeed older members of the Queer community in a truly difficult position. LBGTQA+ fiction is notoriously hard to get hold of in Highstreet chains and is often hidden among books about Hetrosexual people where you have to physically ask staff to find it for your which for some LBGTQA+ people puts them at risk. There needs to be at least a shelf or two dedicated to LBGTQA+ fiction and non fiction so that LBGTQA+ people can access cultural resources that involve them and their identities. It will also help to normalise the existence of LBGTQA+ people and grant educational resources to those who aren't that are accessible to all ages. Granting LBGTQA+ Fiction and Non Fiction their own dedicated section will display the historical literary achievements of people within those minorities in a way that no other place does.

This petition was started on International Women's Day 2018. It is on days like this when we can reflect on the mistakes of the past and look at ways of avoiding those mistakes in the future. During the first modern Olympic games in 1896, women were excluded completely on the grounds that their inclusion would be, "impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic and incorrect". It wasn't until 1900 that women were actually allowed to compete. 118 years later, women are still segregated from men in Olympic sports and there are still several disciplines where women are excluded completely. It is time for this to end and by signing this petition we are sending a strong message to the Olympic Committee that it is time for all segregation to stop, for all athletes to be allowed to compete together and for athletic ability to be judged and awarded equally regardless of gender.

It is inhumane to imprison people indefinitely, without being convicted of a crime, often with no legal representation. As one of the detainees has said "We want the Home Office to listen to us and stop the injustice of indefinite detention..It is the uncertainty that is most difficult, I can deal with imprisonment if I know my sentence. But here, there’s no criminal record, and no clarity about what's going to happen to me. It's a pain that we all bear on a daily basis." (Al Jazeera 28.2.18 - https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/02/women-detained-yarl-wood-hunger-strike-180228195926024.html)

In 2015 BBC and ITV banded together to ensure terrestrial coverage of all Men's Six Nations matches until 2021. However, no commitment has been made for equal coverage for women's matches, which are currently only shown on Sky TV in England and Scotland. We believe the women's matches should be equally accessible to the public.

I signed up to make my GP surgery, the new NHS pilot called GP at Hand. There are adverts for the service all over the tube. As a woman over 25, we need smear tests to prevent cervical cancer. It's a 10 minute test that GP practices offer, often administered by a nurse. 'GP at Hand' only have one nurse for smear tests in the whole of London. They're based in far west London (Fulham), more than an hours' journey for most of us registered on the service. It's outrageous that NHS England have given them a contract when their provision for women is dangerously low. Just last week a woman died from cervical cancer when she was 36 having never had a smear test. Around 3,000 cases of cervical cancer are diagnosed each year in the UK and the simple 10-minute test could save lives. A GP service only offering this service a 2 hour journey away is insane. Please sign the petition demanding NHS England cancel the contract unless GP at Hand add more options for smear tests in London.

There is no viable reason why women cannot race the same duration as men, and the practice is perpetuating problems that cascade through to cycling's national governing bodies and their affiliated race-organising clubs. Women and girls are capable of racing for as long as men and boys, and currently women's races are often shorter, sometimes almost a half of the men's events, depending on the lap distances. If the reason is one of timetable or daylight-availability, then men's races and women's races should both be set to 50 minutes, or similar. There can be no convincing reason for such inequality and cyclocross in particular, along with cycling in general, should be leading the way in setting a sensible standard for gender equality.

This is hugely important because through blood donation we can save many people’s lives. It seems that gay men are only not allowed to give blood because of highly alarming rates of HIV within the community. However, this is awfully discriminative, considering thousands of heterosexual people give blood, even though they may also have sex with someone who has an STI. This means therefore that people should be inspected through a case-by-case basis, rather than categorised into not being allowed to give blood just because they simply identify as a homosexual man. I find this outrageous, that the current law states gay men have to not have sex for a whole 12 months in order to give blood. It is said to be reduced to 3 months, however, I deeply believe this is still unfair, as heterosexual men do not have to abstain from having sex if they want to donate at all. I am sure homosexual men want to donate blood just as much as any other man in this world and they should be given the right to do so. We see adverts all over the place saying that someone with a rare blood group needs a blood donation and enlarging the group by including homosexual men (after checkup for any serious STIs) could also help this, as they surely also have rare blood groups that may not be found in anyone else in the population.

Other countries had advanced industrialists, inventors and scientists but did not have the labour to match Britain's economy. In addition, the Irish in Britain played a pivotal role in politics in order to ensure social justice and improving our level of equality! The Irish, also, had a prominent role in the British Trade Union movement and it is the very reason to educate society on the role of Migrant Workers and Refugees within Britain, today! It is, also, important to ensure that the British public has a greater understanding of Irish culture and our own neighbouring country, Ireland. Through education, we can achieve a far greater peaceful relationship at grassroots level for both the isles of Britain and Ireland.