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How to live in Londonon a budget

ONE WORD: OYSTER. Get your-self an Oyster card, it’s without a doubt the cheapest way to travel. You can buy them at any London underground station or train station and they cost £5. Load it up with as much money as you like and London really is your oyster. Just remember to bleep in and out, otherwise it’s a £20 fine. I narrowly avoided one last week and I only got out of it by flirting with the male barrier guard. It was difficult though, I don’t recommend it.

TRAVEL

EAT OUT DURING THE WEEK if you can, there are many more deals to take advantage of. On Mondays try Maxwells for Monday Madness where loads of cocktails and meals are half price all day. Also worth a nod is Blue Mondays at YO! Sushi where you can pick from a huge range of dishes all priced at £2.30. Wetherspoons has its Curry Club on Thursdays: pick up a curry and a drink from noon til 10pm for a combo deal price. Beer and a burger for around £6 is a daily offer.

Food

GET YOURSELF A YOUNG PERSONS RAILCARD if you are aged 16-25. You can buy them online and a year pass costs just £26. With it save a third on rail fares. Load it onto your Oyster card and the daily cap is lower. But avoid peak time on the mainline trains as you won’t get any fare reduction. Peak time can differ between rail companies so check on the internet to find out when peak travel time is for your local train line.

WALK! London may be big but walking really does save cash. If you don’t know your way around use Google Maps. Or an actual map.

HIT VOUCHERCODES.CO.UK for coupons to save at restaurants, shops and events.

DO A WEEKLY SHOP AT A BIG SUPERMARKET instead of a daily shop at a local. There are better deals and greater savings to make at superstores and they often charge less for the same items.

GET A TESCO CLUBCARD/SAINSBURYS NECTAR CARD: collect points and get free stuff!

Guardian.co.uk

HIT LONDONS MOST FAMOUS LESBIAN BAR, Candy Bar, from Sun-Thurs and get free entry. Sign up and get a membership card which gives you reduced entry, £3 as opposed to £5, on Friday or Saturday nights.

TAKE A TRIP TO THE CINEMA on a Wednesday. If you have an Or-ange phone then you’re sorted, if not, get a cheap pay as you go mobile to take advantage of 2 for 1 tickets at the movies every Wednesday. All you have to do is text FILM to 241 for your code.

DRINK COCKTAILS AT HAPPY HOUR. Some places we recommend are FIFTY-FIVE BAR in Camden (happy hour is Mon-Sat 6-8pm, Friday 5-8pm and Sunday all night from 6pm), ADVENTURE BAR in Covent Garden (happy hour is 5-7pm Mon-Sat where 2 of the same cocktails costs £10 and on Mon-Thurs one drink on the menu is at happy hour price all night) and THE LOFT in Clapham (241 cock-tails all night Monday and Tuesday, til 8pm Wed-Saturday and all night from 5pm on Sundays)

HEAD TO THE DALSTON SUPERSTORE club in Dalston every first Thursday of the month for TWAT Boutique, a new -wave disco club night for lesbians. Fun and free entry!

GO TO SPECSAVERS. Seriously. Anyone with rub-bish vision like me will be pleased to hear that at Specsavers you can get both your frames and lenses for just £25.

NIGHTLIFE

MISCellaneous

SUBSCRIBE TO YOUR FAVOURITE MAGAZINE: get it sent to your day and you could save lots of money. A yearly sub-scription to National Geographic costs just £19 whereas a monthly issue alone sells for £4.99 . You do the math.

CHECK THAT YOUR PHONE CONTRACT IS THE CHEAPEST AROUND, rival compa-nies are trying to win new customers by offereing big packages for small prices. Check out the brochures or the websites.

Specsavers.co.uk

By Holly Richardson

NO OTHER WOMAN IN BRITISH HISTORY has caused as much of a stir as Margaret Thatcher. Probably one of the most hated women in British political history, she was also loved and admired by her Conserva-tive supporters and was the longest Wserving Prime Minister of the 20th Century.

With the release of The Iron Lady, women’s maga-zines and websites have been gushing over the chance to write about a woman who, for a period of eleven years, was the most powerful woman in the world. AfterEllen has been telling lesbians eve-rywhere to look forward to the release of out film-maker Phyllida Lloyd’s new film and Glamour has done a feature of the real ‘Mrs T’.

However, lots of this has been met with anger. The comment boxes on AfterEllen seem to be constant-ly filled with a stream of criticism and hate. Similar-ly, there are women all over the UK swearing they will never see the film on principle; their hatred of Thatcherite policies still strong more than twenty years down the line.

So who was Margaret Thatcher and why does she cause such division? Despite being Britain’s first (and only) female Prime Minister, many feminists re-fuse to see her as helping elevate women’s rights. In 2009 Harriet Harman, then Deputy Leader of the La-

bour Party, published Women In Power, which de-liberately omitted Thatcher from a list of sixteen fe-male politicians who had shaped British history. This snub is characteristic of many feminists who refuse to accept Thatcher as being any part of Women’s Lib or the British feminist movement as a whole. How-ever, this distain is definitely not one-sided. When

THATCHER: WHAT DID SHE DO FOR FEMINISM?

asked by a journalist whether she felt she owed a debt to Women’s Lib, Thatcher snapped: “Some of us were making it long before women’s lib was ever thought of.”

In the year of her election Margaret Thatcher announced that “the women of this country have never had a prime minister who knew the things they know, never, never. And the things that we know are very differ-ent from what men know.” Thatcher certainly used her power as a woman to push herself into power. Using her ‘different’ female knowledge, Thatcher won arguments and intimidated her male colleagues. However, despite her announcement at the beginning of her tenure, the Iron Lady Wnever attempted to use “the things that [women] know” to promote and advance women.

While in power, Thatcher did very little to improve women’s rights and largely ignored the pressures of feminist movements at the time. Furthermore, she rarely advanced women in her own government and, those who were given a chance, were put in junior positions.

Despite this, Thatcher’s achievements as a woman in government should not be undermined. Post-war Brit-ain was hardly an encouraging environment for the young Margaret Thatcher to enter politics and it was her determination to succeed which certainly paid off. She may not have directly helped feminism in Britain but her position as the most powerful person in the country expanded women’s horizons and destroyed the idea that women were unable to lead.

“Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”

“I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.”

“I usually make up my mind about a man in ten seconds, and I very rarely change it.”

“If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman.”

Thatcher was born in 1925 and was the daughter of a Lin-colnshire grocer who had a keen interest in politics.

Her cuts in higher education made Thatcher the first Ox-ford-educated post-war Prime Minister not to be awarded an honorary doctorate by the Uni-versity of Oxford.

Thatcher’s job approval rat-ing fell to 23% by December 1980, lower than recorded for any previous Prime Minister.

TOP ThATCHER QUOTES

Fact Box:

By Lotte Murphy-Johnson

TOP 40 VS GOLDEN OLDIEARTIST: RIZZLE KICKSSONG TITLE: MAMA DO THE HUMPCURRENT CHART POSITION: #5

ARTIST: DEVOSONG TITLE: WHIP ITRELEASED: 1980HIGHEST UK CHART POSITION: 62

WE ASKED WHAT ARE YOUR NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS?

YOU TWEETED US:

cwheeler7978 @BIDMagazine yeah to be happy and not let things get me down too much or worry so much.

Lomaxium@BIDMagazine to remove scene queens from my life!!!

SuChuBiz@BIDMagazine to manage my jealously over my girlfriends ex a little better.

DustyJns@BIDMagazine to do something significant for an LGBT group.

This week’s video is from Spanish director Vicente Bonet. Shown at the Notodo Film Festival, Love Wars tells the story of two soldier’ gay relation-ship on the Death Star. Enjoy!

VIDEO OF THE WEEK:

TheSEX PageThis week ANNA Benson reviews the G-Whizz Sev-en vibrator from Ann Summers.

G-Whizz Seven vibrator, £12, Ann Summers.

The G-Whizz Seven vibrator from Ann Summers is a powerful toy with a surprisingly small price tag. It retails for just £12 and in the often pricy vibrator market that is pretty cheap really. It has seven different speed and pulsation modes and it’s easy to swap be-tween them, requiring the push of the button on the base of the toy. It also takes just one AA battery, so no tiny batteries which are often nearly half the price of the original product and the battery life is impressive. Although the box states that it’s ‘for inside you’ don’t stick to just that, using it on your clitoris first and then seeking out your or your girlfriend’s G-spot is where this piece of kit excels. It works well when used externally and when used internally, a win win situation. The G-Whizz is also fully waterproof so you can take in the bath, the shower, whatever. And by being very quiet it earns itself some hefty bonus points; nobody wants a noisy vibrator. So if you are looking for a little something to spice up your sex life or simply something to give you some solo pleasure then consider this item recommended.

B.I.D ZINEIssue 4

With Thanks To:

Holly RichardsonLotte Murphy-Johnson

Anna Benson