Hallo Readers,
You only had to look at Iain Duncan-Smith, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, last Wednesday to know that there was something wrong with the Budget – the first pure Tory budget (if that is not an oxymoron) in 20 years. There is a new Living Wage of £7 20, increasing to £9 by 2020 (but only for those over 25) whilst at the same time £12bn was to be cut from the Welfare Budget by 2020. Student maintenance grants were also to be cut, hammering more nails into the coffin of social mobility. IDS, a man who induces IBS in WTF and many others, was pumping his fists and shouting “get in!!” like Andy Murray at match point. Of course, if you have a house worth £1m, possibly decorated with wallpaper and fabric from the Chancellor’s family firm Osborne & Little, your heirs can now inherit it without paying tax. But there are many people whose house is not worth a tenth of that. There are many other people who cannot and never will afford a house at all. Osborne and IBS say those people are also better off because the Government has introduced the living wage so that the Tories are the party of B&Q, not just of O&L. Yes, we really are all in it together. But by Thursday lunchtime, the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies had punched the numbers and the verdict was damning. 13m families will each lose £260 a year because of the freeze on working-age benefits. Families receiving tax credits will be significantly worse off – IFS estimates that the reforms will cost 3m families £5,000 a year each. Its director Paul Johnson told the BBC “Given the array of benefit cuts, it is not surprising that the changes overall are regressive – taking much more from poorer households than richer ones. Looking over the period of the consolidation as a whole, poorer households have done worse than those in the middle and upper middle parts of the income distribution though it remains the case that the some of the biggest losers have been those right at the very top of the income distribution.”
The “Living Wage” is just an statutory increase in the National Minimum Wage introduced by the Labour Government in 1998 and in effect since 1999. At the time it was vigorously opposed by the Tories and one David Cameron, then the prospective Tory candidate in Stafford, said that the NMW would “send unemployment straight back up”. It is commendable that Cameron changed his tune but it is hard enough to live on £7 20 an hour without someone removing your tax credits. By all means get layabouts off their arses and into work but do not penalise further those who actually want to work or study. WTF is having trouble deciding what is the more offensive – the sight of a Government Minister yelping with delight or that of our bloodless Chancellor once again plundering society’s worst-off and having the effrontery to pretend that he is actually doing them a favour.
Now Readers, be warned. There is a lot of tittage and flimsy, floppy fashion about in this week’s sartorial post-mortem and the joke is that most of it comes from the World’s most famous fashion houses. We start with model Suki Waterhouse wearing Valentino to the Serpentine Gallery party in Hyde Park.
The side view is even worse.
To Paris Fashion Week (Haute Couture) where a variety of models and actresses floated from front row to cocktails to charity balls wearing their borrowed finery. We begin with fashionista and socialite supreme Olivia Palermo wearing Dior.
This vomit-yellow silk thing is so crumpled that Olivia seems to have slept in it on the plane to Paris. The bag is terrible. The Miss Haversham hair is terrible. The accessories are terrible. It is all just terribly, terribly terrible.
Next we encounter Dutch supermodel Doutzen Kroes wearing Versace at the amFAR Gala.
Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones meets The Queen of the May. There is an inordinate amount of tit and you can see her undies, although at least she is wearing some.
Here is Rita Ora wearing Chanel. Almost…. 
This is heiress Nicky Hilton attending the Versace show wearing Versace.
Nicky is wearing a white Emmenthal cheese. And here is the back.
Nicky has let it be known that her wedding dress (she marries James Rothschild today) will be very traditional. We can but hope that everything will remain under wraps, at least until the wedding night.
And then there was actress Lily Collins (daughter of soporific singer Phil) wearing Chanel at Chanel.
Oh this is bad. Not just bad as in bad but bad as in fuck-me-that’s-bad bad, a grubby net curtain worn Ali-Baba style over black Bridget Jones granny-pants and bra and weirdly sensible courts. The poor girl is clearly mortified and with reason.
Mariah Carey was, as ever, wearing something frightful whilst holidaying with her new beau, squillionaire James Packer (left), on his yacht.
You are supposed to glow when newly in love but Mariah is positively nuclear. As for the frock, the seams look as if she is wearing her stockings back to front. Sadly, the rear view (sic) is no better.
Clock the Alaia sandals, yours for only £545. But they do not compensate for those thighs and Spanx Power Panties paraded coram publico through Cannes. It is time for Mariah to rethink her wardrobe choices.
Finally we are in LA to meet Sports Illustrated model Samantha Hoopes at the premiere of Magic Mike 2, which she isn’t even in, wearing Charbel Zoe.
This really falls into the category identified by WTF aficionado Sian as “That’s Not Even Clothes”, just strips of tinfoil and Sellotape over the gauzy stuff you use to wrap cakes at one of those Midsomer Summer Fetes where someone gets hit on the head with a hammer behind the hot dog stall just as DI Barnaby is chatting with the locals in the tea tent. Those tits are distinctly improbable, like a couple of basketballs from the Sports Illustrated stock cupboard. Tits are not supposed to be spherical. Why do plastic surgeons not know this?
WTF is triumphant that having excoriated the BBC’s putrid tennis highlights programme Wimbledon 2day in last week’s It’s Got To Go, it then disappeared to the consternation of absolutely no-one. So now she is going for the double in calling for the demise of those shrieking women players whose every exertion is met with screams you would hear were Freddy Krueger to gatecrash an orgy. Maria Sharapova and Viktoria Azarenka are the worst offenders, emitting sounds that make you want to do a Van Gogh and cut off your ear. In fact, both ears. Of course players are going to grunt but this racket, like one of Yvonne Ridley’s peacocks undergoing an appendectomy sans anaesthetic, is another thing altogether and It’s Got To Go.
OK Readers, that’s your lot for this week. Keep those comments coming in and don’t neglect your excellent suggestions for It’s Got to Go. WTF is taking a break and will be back with you on Friday 31 July. Be good x
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