Warning: unabashed sexism ahead

Last week saw a couple of days of glorious summer, the kind for sitting out in the garden, maybe doing a little bit of mowing but mostly getting sunburned; I now have a nice tan, and even the notoriously pasty Special One is a healthy shade of light pink. However, since last Friday, it's been gray, gray, gray. It appears I celebrated Tit Monday a little too soon.

Tit Monday, for those not in the know, is a herald of the seasons, just like snowbells, falling leaves, etc (very in touch with nature, me). It signifies the moment when spring turns into summer and women start wandering round in short skirts, light shirts and skimpy tops, and while it has been postponed a little this year, it's inevitable. Four months of looking at breasts, huzzah!

Women are stupid

At least, that's what the editorial staff of First, Emap's new magazine, seem to believe.

Emap, who publish Q, FHM and 400 other products, as well as the ubiquitous Heat magazine, the half a million-selling sign that the end is nigh, are launching a new weekly woman's magazine which aims to present the week's news in bite-size pieces for 30-something women who, for whatever reason, can't read a newspaper. "We felt that news in terms of newspaper coverage wasn't very feminine in its approach," says Louise Matthews, Emap Entertainment's managing director.

She adds: "The broadsheets were a bit too arch and assumed too much full knowledge of the subject for some women, and the tabloids were too trashy, too sport-dominated and too male-dominated." Let's see that again: the broadsheets assume too much knowledge for some women. The broadsheets are too hard for women to read, is what Emap seem to be saying. (I'm spelling it out just in case Emap are right and I'm wrong.)

Instead, First intends to deliver picture-led news stories of interest to women. The dummy issue shows, amongst other things, double-spread pictures of George Clooney to illustrate a story about an anti-war march, and a pink flamingo to illustrate a story about bird flu. While it promises to dispense with the 'Britney eats a burger' palaver of other slag mags, First's cover features include 'Stars' fertility crisis', explaining how Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Aniston are desperate to conceive, and a piece on women who stand by their cheating men, featuring Charlotte Church's mother. There will be a 'nostalgia page' and a column written by children.

So, is this what a publishing giant has learned from women's news stand habits over the last 10 years? That they consider charming movie stars, pink wildlife and opinions from kids to be news? Emap is a smart business with a great record - five successful launches in five years - so they're not going to launch a magazine they think nobody will buy. I never thought my opinion of women would fall any further than it did when the Special One made me go and see Bridget Jones - I came out muttering that women deserved to be discriminated against - but this is a new low, and I'm beginning to think that there's a grain of truth in the old wife-beater's adage - they really are bringing it on themselves.

I got into a row last weekend with two of the Special One's friends about plastic surgery. One wanted a boob job, the other wanted cosmetic surgery to make her calves more shapely; meanwhile, I was peddling the old line that as long as women are obsessed with their bodies, they won't be taken seriously as minds. I was getting bored - one of them had just told me, complete with sassy mmm-hmm hand gestures, that it was her body and that's what feminism was about - so I told them that women are still second-class citizens. Ooh, the fireworks. The sistahs don't like it when you tell them there's still struggle ahead. They'd much rather read Heat magazine and have their boob jobs, safe in the knowledge that they're not obliged to make sacrifices. But when women are still paid 80% of what men are paid, for doing the same job, then that means, over a five-day working week, they're working one day for no pay. And what do we call someone who works for no pay?

No, not a volunteer.

Hooray for Hettie

It was a night bus night last night (it had ticked past midnight, so it was the first day of summer - of course it was lashing rain and freezing cold) and I was on the last leg, the N16 from Victoria, when we pulled up behind this open-top bus from which droned over either a PA system or a megaphone: 'Please keep the noise down, you're annoying the neighbours. Please be quiet, you're being very naughty.' The bus carried about 30 guys, in their late teens or early 20s, in hoodies, baseball caps and other Daily Hate red rags, and while they were all cheering and waving to pedestrians, bus passengers and passing cars, not one seemed to have a drink, no-one swore. The bus was emblazoned with legends such as 'Hettie for Hackney', 'Hooray for Hettie', etc, and would occasionally slow down to let someone off or a few people on; I was tempted to swap buses myself. It looked like they were having fun.

A bit of internet hunting today revealed that Hettie is Hettie Peters, a former Lib Dem, former Labour and now Independent councilor for Hackney (there are local elections on Friday). As well as 13 years in local politics, she's active in Hackney's youth centre and swimming pool, the local Baptist church and gives lectures on crime, drug rehabilitation and 'African women and single-parent families'. She's a 65-year-old local matriarch, and is nicknamed 'the Hettasauras' by opponents on Hackney council. Two questions remain. One: what are all these young men, who look like they'd have no interest in local politics, doing campaigning, and so politely too, for her at 1am on a wet May morning, and two: what's their party bus doing on Edgeware Road when she's standing in Hackney?

It's just one of those incredibly random London things, I guess. Still, I've always said British politics is far more interesting than the long-maintained status quo that is Irish politics. The only thing that comes close to rocking the boat back home is when Mary Harney briefly considers leaning to the left, and then changes her mind. Here, there's the ongoing intrigue of the Blair-Brown succession, and, in the last week, Charles Clarke, Patricia Hewitt and John 'Two-Shags' Prescott have all dropped monster clangers. There's going to be a Blairite blood-letting, huzzah.

Round our way, the only choice to make in the local elections is whether to vote along party or candidate lines. Many people will be using the local elections to send the message of dissatisfaction to Labour that they didn't dare with last year's general election, for fear of letting the Tories in, and I'm tempted to do the same. Brent council has been a Labour stronghold since its inception in 1960, only once going over to the Tories, and in the last election, 2002, held a 34% to 18% lead over them. However, polls in our ward, Mapesbury, show that support for the local Tory (more police on the street, more Asbos, more streetlights) is approaching that of the Labour candidate (back-to-work scheme, expanding local creche). The Lib Dems, as befits the 'crumbs-from-the-ideas-table' party, are nowhere in the poll, even as a protest vote. I think I might have to forego the luxury of a protest vote (in fact, it's a very lassaiz-faire, middle-class liberal concept anyways) and vote straight down the line. Especially since the Tory doesn't seem to know the difference between cause and effect: 'Conservative councils have less crime', reads her campaign literature. Well, duh...