Created: 16 Aug 2004
In the last few weeks I have read several newspaper articles about Peter Mandelson joining the European Commission. A lot of the tabloids have focussed on the fact that his boyfriend will collect a “spouses’s allowance” for relocating to Brussels. This is just thinly veiled homophobia. Have they pointed out that any other commissioners’ partners receive such allowances? Have they repeatedly referred to the nationality of their partners? If the size of the allowance seems inflated, then it is equally inflated for all partners of European Commissioners and it’s rather hypocritical for it to be plastered all over the papers because it is being received by a homosexual Brazillian.
I happen to think that Mandelson will be a useless, ineffectual commissioner, but that’s beside the point.