Carol-Anne McGinty, on behalf of Primary 7 pupil pressure group at Knowetop Primary School, launched an e-petition on 17 September 2009 on the Scottish Parliament's Web Site, to stop the Sweet Ban. They have a tuck shop that will no longer be able to sell Fairtrade sweets as a result of a ban imposed by North Lanarkshire Council. I am not going to say anymore as I feel the details of their petition which I have detailed below, says it all. To support their petition go to www/epetitions.scottish.parliament.uk. Any images here are kindly supplied by North Lanarkshire Council.

"As part of our Citizenship programme in school we were looking at the role of pressure groups in our society. We had been thinking that it was very unfair of North Lanarkshire Council to impose a ban on sweets in their schools and thought that we could form a pressure group of our own to let the council and the Scottish Parliament know what we thought of the policy and also, hopefully, to see some change.

The reasons we think it is a very unfair policy are the following:-

Our tuck shop, which was run by the pupils, sold Fairtrade sweets and drinks as part of our schools involvement in supporting the Fairtrade movement. Due to North Lanarkshire's policy we can no longer run this. We have been taught at school that sweets are a healthy part of a balanced diet and would like to be given the chance to develop a responsible attitude towards this. We think we have a right to keep our choice to have chocolate/sweets in our school. Buying sweets in our tuck shop is a more easily controlled and safer environment than our local shop. Parents know what is in our tuck shop but not what we would buy in shops."

(Article by Charles Litster)