What is David Cameron on about? At the weekend, he told the editor of GQ, Dylan Jones, that government departments face "a very big haircut" if the Tories come to power later this year. The phrase was apparently coined by City brokers to describe a sharp loss of income. But does the introduction of the term "hair" really convey the swingeing reductions in public expenditure necessary if we aren't to make our children, our children's children and probably their children livid about recent stewardship of the economy?
I don't know how much Notting Hill-living, ex-Etonian plutocrats and male-style gurus such as Jones pay for their rug rethinks, but the sums involved would have to be huge for the allusion to make any sense at all. But I write as someone who shaved his head with Remington clippers the other night. So let's consider history's biggest haircuts:
• The legendary de-mulleting of Michael Bolton (how many cushions could that fill? 250? 260?)
• Samson's locks being forcibly severed, symbolically castrating the one-time Biblical hard man.
• Britney Spears shaving her head like a latter-day GI Jane and then losing it.
Nope, none of these conveys Cameron's determination to get to grips with the vastness of British public debt. Instead, the "very big haircut" joins the Lexicon of Slightly Baffling Expressions such as "early doors", coined (legend has it) by football manager Ron Atkinson and used ever since, even though it doesn't make sense. Unless of course "doors" is a misspelling of the old English "dawes", meaning day. But, as with Cameron's haircut, we probably shouldn't think about it that much.
