Show Hide image Politics 6 January 2015 Let this be the year that we say goodbye to the secret lesbian It’s 2015. Let’s just let women do stuff. Print HTML Have you ever noticed that no one’s ever rumoured to be nice? Or rumoured to be an accomplished Scrabble player, or rumoured to smell like tulips and pie? People are rumoured to be fart fetishists, UKIP supporters and, as of last year in particular: lesbians. In 2014, everyone who was anyone was a secret lesbian. But just the right amount of secret. I.e. not too secret to stop the rumours from seeping into public consciousness. While the most noteworthy secret lesbian couple of last year was undoubtedly Taylor Swift and someone I’m supposed to have heard of called Karlie Kloss, I was told by at least seven stoked lesbians that the likes of Cheryl Cole and Mel B are “one of us, one of us”. But I find it hard to believe that this secret lesbianism isn’t at least a little bit contrived. Let me explain. A lesbian is a woman who is only sexually attracted to other women. A secret lesbian is a (famous) woman who has been papped in some moderately adult situations with another woman, while vehemently denying that she’s into anything other than dicks. Many, many dicks. For this reason, I’m hoping that 2015 will be the year that we say goodbye to the secret lesbian. This wouldn’t have to mean an end to adult situations between experimental/bi-curious/sexually fluid women. Those things are all lovely. What I’d like to see banished to the realm of UGG boots and burgers served on pieces of wood is all the speculation. Admittedly, this will involve some effort on my part. There are two rather different groups of people interested in lesbian rumours: lesbians and homophobes. While former are cheering, “One of us”, the latter are sneering, “One of them”. In the middle is a sizeable chunk of the population who could not give less of a shit, and I think they have the right idea. There’s a Hebrew phrase, loshon hora, which basically means nasty gossip. It’s the exact loshon hora-ness of lesbian rumours that I think we badly need to ditch. If there are rumours about a thing, that thing is most likely sordid or at least a tiny bit gross. If you think lesbianism is either of those things, I’m not sure why you’re reading this. There’s a huge difference between lesbian visibility (something we could do with some more of) and smirk-forming headlines about clandestine boob-fondles between women who “seem” straight. When anyone is outed by the media, the overriding message should be, “I’m L, G, B or T and that’s great”, rather than, “Those pictures of me touching my friend’s butt mean nothing… or maybe they don’t.... what are you trying to say? Hm? Hmmm?” So, if I believed in new year’s resolutions, maybe mine would be to stop feeding into loshon hora about supposed girl-on-girl action. I don’t think I’ll ever stop having a residual interest in who is and isn’t a lesbian. But it’s 2015, guys, let’s just let women do stuff. › Dominant China, India back on track, and creative artificial intelligence: 10 predictions for 2015 Eleanor Margolis is a freelance journalist, whose "Lez Miserable" column appears weekly on the New Statesman website. More
Show Hide image The Staggers 23 November 2016 Philip Hammond's modest break with George Osborne could become more radical The new Chancellor softened, rather than abandoned, austerity. But Brexit could change his course. Print HTML The age of the imperial Chancellor is over. Gordon Brown and George Osborne relished in the theatricality of the Autumn Statement, springing policy surprises and roaming across departments. Philip Hammond today drew the curtain on this era. As he paid tribute to a watching Osborne, he added: "My style will, of course, be different from his." He would "prove no more adept at pulling rabbits from hats" than "[the] Foreign Secretary has been at retrieving balls from the back of scrums" (a jibe which visibly unsettled Boris Johnson). The new Chancellor was true to his word. His only surprise announcement was an anti-rabbit: the abolition of the Autumn Statement. Hammond has ended what was a second Budget in all but name. The effect was slightly undermined by the announcement of a Spring Statement (responding to the OBR's forecasts). But the change in style was unmistakeable. Hammond promised to avoid "a long list of individual projects being supported", casting himself as the nation's accountant, rather than an aspirant prime minister. But what of the substance? Osborne vowed in 2015 to deliver a budget surplus by the end of this parliament. Since then, as Hammond understatedly remarked, "times have moved on." The Leave vote, and the £59bn hit anticipated from Brexit, has ended what little hope there was of eliminating the deficit. The dry Hammond is no Keynesian but he recognises that the facts have changed. The ambition of a surplus has been postponed until the next parliament, with cyclically-adjusted borrowing only required to fall below 2 per cent by the end of this one (a looser target than Labour's). The national debt, which will peak at 90.2 per cent in 2017-18, is similarly not due to decline until 2020. In an age of uncertainty, Hammond has insured himself against economic calamity. But he deployed little of his potential firepower today. Though he explicitly borrowed to invest (as Ed Balls, rather than Osborne, proposed in 2015), he did so modestly: £23bn over five years. Austerity, Hammond made clear, has been modified, rather than abandoned. The departmental spending cuts announced last autumn remain in place and planned welfare reducations were softened, not scrapped. There was no new money for the NHS despite an ever-greater funding crisis. Osborne is gone, but Osbornomics endures. At Prime Minister's Questions, immediately before the Autumn Statement, Theresa May declared: "Austerity is about us living within our means". Yet Brexit, and all that could follow from it, could force its abandonment. If the "just managing" can manage no more, it would take a brave government to impose further deprivation. The sober Hammond is hoping for the best but preparing for the worst. George Eaton is political editor of the New Statesman. More Related articles Theresa May's government will do well to do more than just manage Don't believe the letting agents - banning fees is good for renters Hey, Philip Hammond, where's that £350m for the NHS?
