So in today's news the Daily Express front page cries out "AT LAST! TAX CUTS ON WAY!"
We
have had chunky tax cuts every year since 2010. It started thanks to the Lib
Dems (arguably thanks to one Liberal parliamentary candidate, who from what I recall didn't
even take first or second place in her seat) and after five years of
being grudgingly allowed by the Tories as part of the left-right
coalition deal it had proved so popular that Cameron and May carried on
with it in their starring roles as Prime Minister With A Plan To Properly Sink The Economy and Prime Minister Who Will Never Take A Walking Holiday In Wales Again.
Top journalism. I look forward to their upcoming feature on who the entrants might be in the 2011 Eurovision Song Contest. As it's the Express they'll probably even let us know which song Princess Diana will be voting for.
Wednesday, 14 March 2018
Friday, 9 March 2018
"Just a Phase"
This started as a comment on someone else's blog post but I feel like it's a big enough a Bi Thing to be worth a blog post of its own.
One of the things people say to us when we come out is "oh, you're just going through a phase". And it's a silencing thing, to get us to shut up about something they maybe don't like hearing or discussing. Or something they say just because it's the only thing they know as received wisdom about being bisexual and they haven't thought it through any further. Either way it's like being patted on the head and told to shush our silly little heads.
Now, one of the things we used to say and write on placards when I was first out and involved with my local bi youth group was "it's not a phase!"
Only I have to admit: sometimes it is. I've known people who for instance when I first met them were lesbians, had a time of identifying as bi, but these days if you asked them they'd most likely say they were straight. Other mixtures other ways round - straight to bi to straight again, or bi to lesbian to bi again, or all round the houses like the slow bus that stops everywhere in a loop round your town. For those of us who are trans that bus route can include identities as gay, bi and straight in several genders. Pokemon sexuality!
One of the things people say to us when we come out is "oh, you're just going through a phase". And it's a silencing thing, to get us to shut up about something they maybe don't like hearing or discussing. Or something they say just because it's the only thing they know as received wisdom about being bisexual and they haven't thought it through any further. Either way it's like being patted on the head and told to shush our silly little heads.
Now, one of the things we used to say and write on placards when I was first out and involved with my local bi youth group was "it's not a phase!"
Only I have to admit: sometimes it is. I've known people who for instance when I first met them were lesbians, had a time of identifying as bi, but these days if you asked them they'd most likely say they were straight. Other mixtures other ways round - straight to bi to straight again, or bi to lesbian to bi again, or all round the houses like the slow bus that stops everywhere in a loop round your town. For those of us who are trans that bus route can include identities as gay, bi and straight in several genders. Pokemon sexuality!
The thing is though: people who are bisexual for the whole of their lives are bisexual for the whole of their lives. People who are bisexual for only part of their lives are bisexual for that part of their life.
And if you're "only" bi for months or years or decades, where your head
and heart are at that time are totally real. Those crushes? Real
crushes. Those kisses? Real kisses. Those orgasms? Ho yus, And how.
Ahem. Where was I?
Dismissing it as "just a phase" so something that doesn't need to be taken as real? Well, being a teenager is a phase but it doesn't stop you being a mardy git for a few years. Being pregnant is a phase - a year from now you won't be! - but a plan of just ignoring it and pretending it's not happening isn't a good idea.
Some of us are bi the whole of our lives, while for some people it's a phase - yet if it's a phase so is whatever comes before and whatever comes after and no-one dismisses those as "just phases".
"It's just a phase"?
"Well, maybe it will turn out to be a phase, but it's the truth about who and where I am right now."
Dismissing it as "just a phase" so something that doesn't need to be taken as real? Well, being a teenager is a phase but it doesn't stop you being a mardy git for a few years. Being pregnant is a phase - a year from now you won't be! - but a plan of just ignoring it and pretending it's not happening isn't a good idea.
Some of us are bi the whole of our lives, while for some people it's a phase - yet if it's a phase so is whatever comes before and whatever comes after and no-one dismisses those as "just phases".
"It's just a phase"?
"Well, maybe it will turn out to be a phase, but it's the truth about who and where I am right now."
Saturday, 3 March 2018
#30
There'll be lots all over the internet today celebrating 30 years of the Lib Dems. I am struggling to use the computer just now so only a short blogpost to mark 30 years of the latest iteration of The Original Left Wing Party And Still The Best (copyright battle with Kelloggs' ongoing) to reflect on how I came to join.
Growing up where and when I did I got to see two things at once about politics growing up: the Tories are - collectively, with individual exception and all that - selfish venal people interested only in their own well-being and as a party with that of the people who bankroll them. Whereas Labour are - collectively, with individual exception and all that - selfish venal people interested only in their own well-being and as a party with that of the people who bankroll them.
The introduction of Section 28 - as supported by Labour and Tories alike and its repeal blocked repeatedly by both - made me move from "I am interested in politics" to "I will have to get involved then". Moving to England narrowed the choice down: having started to see the kneejerk transphobia in the Greens and with Plaid off the table both due to geography and my ongoing leftward drift, the Liberals were the only remaining option of note.
Then Paddy told Paxman to get the fuck out of here* on a Newsnight grilling about whether "lesbian and gay rights" was a popular cause ("we don't propose these things because they are popular, Jeremy, we do it because they are right") and - at last having just reached voting age - I was sold.
But it then took finding someone who gave me a bit of paper with how to join on for me to take that last vital step. It's much simpler these days, you just click here to get at the form.
I quit the party for a while in the mid 90s but had to come back in the end because - like in a cheap sci-fi alien invasion film with a wonky spaceship possessing an unreliable laser cannon and a steering column that wobbles all over the place at critical moments in the plot - for all of us at the bottom it's our last best hope against the relentless onslaught from above.
* he was a little more civil about it than that - though it would have made great telly...
Growing up where and when I did I got to see two things at once about politics growing up: the Tories are - collectively, with individual exception and all that - selfish venal people interested only in their own well-being and as a party with that of the people who bankroll them. Whereas Labour are - collectively, with individual exception and all that - selfish venal people interested only in their own well-being and as a party with that of the people who bankroll them.
The introduction of Section 28 - as supported by Labour and Tories alike and its repeal blocked repeatedly by both - made me move from "I am interested in politics" to "I will have to get involved then". Moving to England narrowed the choice down: having started to see the kneejerk transphobia in the Greens and with Plaid off the table both due to geography and my ongoing leftward drift, the Liberals were the only remaining option of note.
Then Paddy told Paxman to get the fuck out of here* on a Newsnight grilling about whether "lesbian and gay rights" was a popular cause ("we don't propose these things because they are popular, Jeremy, we do it because they are right") and - at last having just reached voting age - I was sold.
But it then took finding someone who gave me a bit of paper with how to join on for me to take that last vital step. It's much simpler these days, you just click here to get at the form.
I quit the party for a while in the mid 90s but had to come back in the end because - like in a cheap sci-fi alien invasion film with a wonky spaceship possessing an unreliable laser cannon and a steering column that wobbles all over the place at critical moments in the plot - for all of us at the bottom it's our last best hope against the relentless onslaught from above.
* he was a little more civil about it than that - though it would have made great telly...
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