Second, stealing is not OK. And if they put pads and/or tampons in toilets they'll disappear in a matter of minutes. If you think only a dirt poor woman would steal them, you are wrong.
I have no experience with pads and tampons and I don't know if they belong in this category, but when I buy bread, I leave it in my bike while I buy other groceries. If someone were to steal my bread (hasn't happened yet), I'd assume they probably need it more than I do.
Okay. I am not. We could have a national referendum, "are you okay with people stealing your stuff?". Let's see what happens.
The day the bread disappears from your bike, I can assure the chances that someone is going to eat it are slim. He'll probably just throw it away for laughs.
It's not "OK" to steal anything, but you risk toilet paper being stolen by having it in a public place. The loss of a roll (or 2) of toilet papers is very low compared to the convenience of not having to bring your own toilet roll everywhere.
We live in a society and that involves a certain level of (policed) trust, if the cost of having a great convenience is that it sometimes gets stolen then if the cost is low enough and the convenience is high enough it's worth it.
If you wanted to be slightly more "evil" you could easily make it so removal of the pads would pull away part of the plastic seal; making them impossible to sell and harder to hoard.
https://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/H-1018/Bathroom-Supplie...
The problem with allowing a "certain amount of crime" is that it's inherently a bright-line issue. What level is acceptable? What dollar amount? Bread is okay but a laptop is wrong; where in between those does the line fall?
It's pretty obvious what was being said. I don't think nit picking technical objections based on exaggerations and then extending from minor tampon pilferage to robbery with violence is constructive.
And I'm not the only one who thinks this way. A Dutch bishop has said something similar a decade or so ago. To some controversy, because condoning crime, but if your life is at stake, you've got to do what you've got to do. Of course society has some responsibility to ensure nobody ever gets that desperate, and seems to be doing a reasonable job at that, since nobody has stolen my bread yet. But if they did, I'd be fine with it.
To get back to the original topic: I don't think sanitary pads and tampons are quite on the same level of bread, but I still don't see theft from public toilets as a serious source of concern.
> The day the bread disappears from your bike, I can assure the chances that someone
> is going to eat it are slim. He'll probably just throw it away for laughs.
If you think destroying someone's property is funny, then throwing the entire bike into the canal, or destroying a car, is probably far more laughs. And indeed there are people who do that, sadly. But it's fairly rare, and nobody seems to care much about bread.
What does happen is people using the crate on my bike as a trash can. I hate that. That's not something I'm okay with.
If you are OK with someone taking something then by definition it cannot be stolen. The kids on Halloween aren't stealing candy. Another example would be if we were best friends and I borrowed your lawnmower without asking: it would be stealing if you didn't want me to do that but if I knew you were fine with it that would be just fine.
If you want to put something in public bathrooms and if you want it to be fine for people to take it out with them, what you're proposing is not even slightly comparable to "legalized stealing," you're just proposing that we should give away free stuff. (Hey, it works fine with water.)
The issue is easy when both sides agree on what it is, but there's grey area in between.
In Germany they aren't. Tampons are "luxury articles" here, which was questioned a lot in the past, yet nothing happened.
Why? If every single bathroom everywhere had them why would you bother to steal them? They are free.
2. People steal toilet paper all the time. It's not considered a big deal, probably because every loo has toilet paper - I'm sure you see the point here. If someone steals it from a cafe for their house (which happens, if you've worked in the service industry) nobody really cares.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/6657416/period-poverty-uk-tax...
> Then-Chancellor George Osborne said he was not allowed to lower the VAT rate because of EU rules that class sanitary products as "luxury" or "non-essential".
> Equalities minister Victoria Atkins also said VAT would be scrapped as soon as Britain leaves the EU.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-35834142
If the Government haven't addressed it, it's entirely down to their own instransigence, no?
That was only 3 months prior to the vote to leave.
> If the Government haven't addressed it, it's entirely down to their own instransigence, no?
I suspect the UK government has been, you know, busy since then.
For a similar comparison, imagine if toilet paper costed $20 a roll in the US. Suddenly, it's being stolen everywhere from public places. Businesses can't afford to stock it in their toilets, as they can easily lose hundreds of dollars a day from theft. People also have trouble affording it at home, so it's not common in households. People are stealing entire rolls or filling their pockets with sheets because they can't afford to buy it. There's also suddenly a market for stolen toilet paper. People start stealing it from public toilets, and selling it for half price, $10 a roll on the street. Now we're in a situation like developing countries. This is why toilet paper is never provided, or you pay for a few sheets.
For the same reason, you can't stock pads and tampons in these countries. You said it yourself, stock them like toilet paper. Well, free toilet paper doesn't work in these places.
I don't know the solution. I would assume you need to give people ID numbers or stamps, and they can freely pickup N pads or tampons per month from a secure building.