Charlotte Gill

There was much fanfare last week when Holly Willoughby's apparent 'huge £200k pay rise' meant she'd finally be earning the same as her This Morning co-host, Phillip Schofield. The closing of this pay gap was hailed by some as a victory for womankind, but it seemed a travesty to me. After all, why had there been such a mighty imbalance to begin with? What's worse, though, was that the whole saga highlighted a bigger problem with feminism: its obsession with equality. The reality is that Willoughby isn’t equal to Schofield. She's better than him – in a commercial sense – and therefore deserves to earn more. If you doubt me, just take a look at the numbers on their respective social media accounts.

Recent figures around the UK’s credit and debit card debt are startling indeed, with the number of transactions rising to its highest annual rate since 2008. This, paired with the fact that household income has barely changed over the last decade, has left financiers scared that the UK is on the verge of another recession. Some politicians will blame the government for the current situation. They will say that years of ‘austerity’ forced the British public to buy things with money they didn’t have. Though it is true to an extent that cuts have pushed many towards credit, it is not the whole picture. Relaxed attitudes towards lending have to be blamed, too, particularly among the young.

There’s a real whiff of hypocrisy about Emma Watson’s latest shoot for Vanity Fair, in which she poses semi-nude. Women’s magazines will tell you it’s stunning, artistic, so feminist, and the rest, but the lady doth pose too much, methinks. This is, after all, the gal who’s spent the last three years lecturing others about breaking away from the limitations of gender; who once said 'with airbrushing and digital manipulation, fashion can be an unobtainable image that’s dangerously unhealthy.' Yeah, yeah.

There are lots of problems with Warhammer fans. Bad haircuts, terrible dress sense, to name just two. These aren’t even stereotypes; as a little girl I went to the Games Workshop multiple times with my brothers, so have first-hand experience. Still, I feel strangely defensive over Warhammer because it has been the victim of a vicious smear campaign. PETA has launched the most bemusing of attacks on the brand after spotting that some of its characters wear fur clothing. The Viking-style 'space wolves' have caused particular offence. I should emphasise at this stage that the fur isn’t actually real.

I always knew security agencies were missing a trick with the ladies. Currently, less than four in ten workers in MI5, MI6 and GCHQ are female, which isn’t just embarrassing, but bad for national security; because women have the potential to be great spies.  But things are about to change. Since 2015, intelligence services have been on a massive drive to get more women into the ranks, scouting around Mumsnet for older, patriotic would-be agents. GCHQ has even announced a competition to find 13 to 15-year-old girls for the industry, having realised the worth of social-media savvy young girls.

At my local carol concert this week, I couldn’t help but despair at the state of the singing. It was just so dire. And it got me thinking: is the same dreadful crooning taking place at churches and carol concerts up and down the country? Are the tone-deaf spoiling age-old songs elsewhere too? If so, it's a worrying indictment of just how bad British singing has become. Fortunately, when I was growing up I was always in choirs. Being in the Gluck glitterati, I lived a sheltered life, hidden from the tone deaf and silent myriad. There was never a sermon too dull, or wedding too icky, when I was exposed to the hymn belters.

Can you be a Disney princess and the feminist messiah? I wondered this earlier this week, upon seeing new images released for the new Beauty and the Beast film. It stars She Almighty - Emma Watson - the woman who hates female subjugation, gender stereotypes and all-round sexism, yet will be in a franchise that romanticises all three. In fact, Watson’s career choice confirms my suspicions that she is not the militant campaigner the world has taken her for, but mushy and romantic. As I saw her in Belle’s yellow gown - which I had myself aged four - I tried to imagine Germaine Greer and Camille Paglia doing the same, and failed. No wonder, of course, because they’re big, bad feminists. They are a forgotten breed in this watered-down age.

Many of my friends are terrified of having babies. It’s the childbirth process that frightens them. And once upon a time I would laugh at their concerns and say something, like: 'yeah, but it’s all worth it.' Because I love babies. But now I’m terrified of them too, for different reasons. I was recently asked to prepare a talk on the gender pay gap. With an open mind, I spent hours combing over research - to find out if my sex is really underpaid, and - if so - why this is. I came to the conclusion that babies aren't a good idea for any woman who values her career. Indeed, not the cutest one in the world can distract me from what I saw over those weeks; evidence upon evidence that they’re going to destroy my career.

'You’ve got to stop eating those croissants,' my parents tell me. I know they’re right, but have they seen the croissants? As crisp as a Hilton bed sheet and golden like the sun. They caution that they’re a waste of money, and I get it. In the early stages of my addiction I forked out £1.50 apiece; then the coffee shop grew hungry for more. £1.75 they demanded. That’s £8.75 a working week. Think of a month’s worth. (You do the maths - because I can’t). I try not to think about the cost. I stuff the pastry into my mouth and close my eyes, the pain crumbling away. Just like all the things I spend money on. I purchase stuff I don’t need all the time.

London’s nightlife is under attack. That became obvious this morning with the news that the popular club Fabric has closed for good. After a series of drug-related deaths at the venue, Islington Borough Council has decided the risk of keeping it open is too great. It’s come as a shock to many that Fabric is finished. Indeed, a petition to keep it alive reached over 148,000 signatures - and many celebrity backers, such as Annie Mac and the Chemical Brothers pleaded with the public: save the rave. But it was too little, too late. Another London nightclub has been forced to close. Fabric is just a small part of a much bigger problem; our party scene is in crisis, with clubs in the city declining by a third between 2005 and 2015.

I felt rather sorry for Chinese Olympian He Zi yesterday. Having picked up the silver gong in a women’s diving competition, her boyfriend decided then was the perfect time to propose. Without a thought for Ms Gold and Bronze, he jumped onto the podium and professed his love to his tearful girlfriend. The media claimed Zi was crying out of happiness, but part of me wondered if she was thinking: 'Darling, couldn’t this have waited for an Italian restaurant?' The diver is not the first woman to be proposed to at the Olympics - and she won't be the last. On Tuesday it was the turn of Brazilian rugby player Isadora Cerullo, whose girlfriend popped the question after her match. It's understandable why people want to propose at the Olympics.

Pokémon Go makes me wonder about Generation Y, which will surely be remembered as one of the most childish collectives of all time. I am part of this contingent of people born in the 1980s and 1990s - the offspring of the baby boomers - characterised as a digitally-savvy cohort, among other things. We have been an incredibly lucky lot, thrust into a technological renaissance of sorts - where computing breakthroughs take place all the time. But in spite of this evolution, young people have slowed down. We have become self-indulgent, silly and reluctant to grow up. We are the Peter Pan Generation. At least, that’s what the mobile game Pokémon Go suggests to me, which invites people to trawl the streets with their phones for imaginary characters.

I’ve always been slightly jealous of people with unusual names. It’s the sort of envy that happens when you miss out. Which I did, in 1989 when my parents decided to call me Charlotte. Little did they know it would become the most common name for girls that year. Even in 2016, Charlotte is the third most popular choice, no thanks to the arrival of the latest royal. You wouldn’t think this would be a problem, but this title has caused ample confusion in my life, particularly as I must compete with two other writers called Charlotte Gill. One sometimes gets my emails and, in such moments, I resent that I was not called Apple, or Princess, or had Frank Zappa for a dad.