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Catherine Bennett

Catherine Bennett

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Our rarely apologise, never resign bishops don’t deserve comfortable lives in the Lords

sunday 10

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

Sorry, archbishop, you need to do a bit more work on your ritual contrition skills

08.12.2024 20

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

Given the sharenting, let’s hope the little Rees-Moggs inherit papa’s exhibitionism

When UK fertility rates have fallen to below replacement levels, extended exposure to the home life of Jacob Rees-Mogg and his six children may not...

01.12.2024 10

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

There is a moral in Jamie Oliver’s story of stereotypical folk, just not one he intended

Share the adventure of a lifetime in this incredible addition to the popular series, Reading with the Stars! It’s almost Christmas and Jamie and his...

17.11.2024 40

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

How long will we stomach sermons from royals made rich by their own charities?

The British public remains immensely forgiving of royal failings, understandably when the family is fragile and struggling with serious illness. Huge...

10.11.2024 80

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

Cadbury’s ‘snack right’ slogan is hard to swallow when the company is a ‘sponsor of war’

On its bicentenary the chocolate maker Cadbury is keener than ever to remind consumers of its deep connection with the British public: “Yours for...

03.11.2024 100

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

The BBC has rehabilitated Michael Gove from Brexit hysteric into genial radio jock

No worries if you haven’t felt quite up to it: thanks to BBC Sounds, its recent Michael Gove festival, Surviving Politics, should be available for a...

27.10.2024 10

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

How many more children like Sara Sharif will be killed before smacking is banned?

Broadcasters have, understandably enough, been adding content warnings to reports about Sara Sharif, the 10-year-old girl who allegedly died at the...

19.10.2024 6

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

Has Boris Johnson new respect for women? Let’s ask the one he calls ‘old grumpy knickers’

Women can’t – surely – be the only ones curious to know how, after his well-documented career in sexual incontinence, Boris Johnson has managed...

13.10.2024 20

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

Any ice-age telepaths out there? Please explain why Netflix is revisiting Ancient Apocalypse

Diary note: it may seem a while off, but the end of the world is still scheduled for 2030, precise date TBC. After once suggesting that nameless...

29.09.2024 80

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

The lenience of Huw Edwards’s sentence is bad enough, but the explanation is worse

Considering how often their profession is associated with venality, it seems only fair to record occasions when lawyers go out of their way, entirely...

22.09.2024 30

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

Unappealing as some life peers are, entitled lords are defending the indefensible

Say what you like about Charlotte Owen, Boris Johnson’s pet baroness, but for an accepted nonentity she is doing valuable work. Valuable, that is,...

15.09.2024 10

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

If only other cancer patients could wish it all away, just like heroic Elle Macpherson

Elle Macpherson’s gratitude journal must have written itself last week. Most days, any leader in the wellness industry is right to feel gratitude...

08.09.2024 60

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

Is the Taliban-friendly Imran Khan really the best choice as Oxford’s next chancellor?

News that Jemima Khan’s ex-husband, Imran Khan, has applied to be chancellor of Oxford University will have caused consternation in some quarters,...

01.09.2024 100

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

How to lose weight and influence no one – the Robert Jenrick diet for party leadership

Four stone in a year! No disrespect to earlier weight influencers Rishi Sunak, George Osborne, Boris Johnson and the late Nigel Lawson, but even if...

24.08.2024 10

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

Tom Cruise pulled off the best Scientology stunt ever. If only he could really levitate

Around 75m years since a mighty intergalactic leader somehow triggered the existence of today’s Scientologists, the interests of their religion and...

18.08.2024 30

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

There’s big money in IVF – but not for the women who hand over their eggs

Considering how long the cost of living has been a crisis, it’s taken a while to affect the price of one sought-after commodity: home-produced human...

11.08.2024 10

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

We know Trump is weird – it’s time for the Democrats to get creative with the insults

Weird? As contemporary insults go, it feels fairly survivable. In fact, when compared with boomer, bigot, karen, gammon and hag – key concepts in...

04.08.2024 9

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

Reducing Labour women to the sum of their outfits is suddenly all the rage

After their first full week as national style influencers, some senior Labour women may be wondering what, if anything, could get them recognised as...

14.07.2024 10

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

Great for parties, useless for governing: grace-and-favour homes are the spoils of power

At the start of the last Conservative era, David Cameron had something “terribly awkward” to ask his deputy, Nick Clegg. “George has for so long...

07.07.2024 40

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

Is a slimmed-down monarchy really such a ‘foolish idea’? We subjects seem to be surviving just fine

Even before Princess Anne’s head injury, with a king and princess both on long-term sick leave, royal family experts were arguing that its...

30.06.2024 10

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

The Observer view on Vladimir Putin’s reckless visit to Asia

Vladimir Putin’s visits to North Korea and Vietnam last week caused great consternation among the western powers, which was undoubtedly his...

23.06.2024 20

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

An amnesty for Covid lockdown breakers? Robert Buckland plays the rest of us for fools

When he looks back at his catastrophic campaign, Rishi Sunak should be able to console himself with at least one thing: people didn’t publicly...

23.06.2024 50

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

The Observer view on the French election: Emmanuel Macron is playing a dangerous game

Those complaining about the tedium and predictability of the UK’s general election must gaze with envy across the Channel to France, a country...

16.06.2024 10

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

Victoria Starmer isn’t playing ball with the rightwing press. Good for her

It’s probably not coming up on the doorstep, but with limited material and time the opponents of Keir Starmer were bound, eventually, to alight on...

16.06.2024 30

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

Your sermons on integrity are a bit rich, archbishop, given your faith in Paula Vennells

The archbishop of Canterbury moved with impressive speed when the general election was announced, to remind everyone to behave nicely. He urged...

09.06.2024 100

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

The Observer view on the social care crisis: whoever wins the election, it needs addressing urgently

There is one pressing issue affecting millions of people that has been conspicuous in its absence from the general election campaign so far. The...

02.06.2024 50

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

Must we pity put-upon parents sacrificing all to send their offspring to private school?

Given that the overwhelming majority of people are state educated and receive zero, or less, benefit from private schools, there is something almost...

02.06.2024 60

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

Hiring Nick Kyrgios to fill its vacant toxic male slot is an unforced error on BBC’s part

recalls councillor Pat Karney about informal meetings with Barcelona’s leader, Pasqual Maragall, the charismatic socialist mayor who declared at the...

25.05.2024 60

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

Faith groups want more say in secular Britain. Labour should tell them to go to hell

An organisation called “The Muslim Vote” has invited Labour to satisfy 18 “demands” if the party wants to win back UK Muslim support it has...

12.05.2024 70

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

With a bit of Saudi topspin, tennis fans can overlook its brutal repression of women

If a record of sexual apartheid is not the ideal look for a nation that must still, occasionally, placate progressives, news of an extreme example –...

05.05.2024 100

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

Jacob Rees-Mogg is just posing as a GB News anchor, but Ofcom doesn’t care if we’re confused

‘Tonight I’ll be asking the most important question of all – who was St George and why do we celebrate him?” Supposing a UK channel wanted to...

28.04.2024 30

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

David Cameron is making great strides. No, he really is, you can watch them on video

Trotters up, or down? Even if you once admired Danny Dyer’s immortal summary of post-Brexit David Cameron – “He’s in Europe, in Nice, with his...

21.04.2024 10

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

Secret’s out, Harold Wilson had another affair. There’s nothing sweet about that, boys

How have we managed without the expression “sunshine at sunset”? As in, when an older married man is granted sex with a much younger colleague and...

14.04.2024 30

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

Skiing holidays, school fees, second homes… the rich are truly deserving of our pity

Perhaps it’s down to upbringing, maybe it’s a fault in their education: for whatever reason, struggling high earners are apt to be their own worst...

07.04.2024 30

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

Jeremy Hunt and Gen Z are clearly of a mind on Shein. They’d rather skirt the issues

At a time when more responsible politicians are finally pushing back against expansion by the fast fashion monster, Shein, it feels inevitable that...

31.03.2024 10

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

Thanks, chaps, for trying to reform the Garrick from within. We’re OK without

How are they taking it at the Garrick? Does tradition still mute responses to revelations about its membership by my Guardian colleague Amelia...

24.03.2024 10

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

In the name of anti-elitism, Arts Council England has declared war on opera and excellence

For an organisation so full of surprises – one day on funding, another on restricting free speech – Arts Council England remains remarkably...

17.03.2024 90

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

Prince William has pontificated about Gaza, but was David Cameron the right person to plagiarise?

For an heir to the throne wanting to secure his future perhaps the first rule should be: do not associate with David Cameron. Last week the foreign...

25.02.2024 9

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

An all-male byelection ballot in Rochdale? That’s hardly taking the Suffragette line

When you receive a gift like London’s newly named Suffragette line, perhaps it’s ungrateful to cavil. For as long as trains run between Gospel Oak...

18.02.2024 70

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

Pity SUV drivers, fast being priced out of their badges of contempt for the planet

If you have tears – that is, any not used up on MPs struggling to get by, parents forced to choose between skiing and private schools, second...

11.02.2024 40

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

I found out the hard way the secret of Sunak’s Monday blunders – a 36-hour fast

God knows how Rishi Sunak feels on mornings when he’s not eaten for 16 hours and there’s still over half a 36-hour fast to go. Better than I did,...

04.02.2024 30

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

A bracing dip will cure us of the menopause, will it? Remind me to steer clear of the sewage

In a climate that often feels hostile to middle-aged women, maybe it’s a sign of progress that an only faintly convincing contribution on menopause...

28.01.2024 20

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

Sexual abuse in sport A few lines of poetry can propel a career misogynist like Joey Barton into a league of his own

A career in misogyny might look like easy work for any man with qualifying levels of resentment. But in an increasingly competitive profession, with...

21.01.2024 7

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

So Michelle Mone’s lies were to spare her family from press intrusion? Knickers to that

Ending a lifetime’s rewarding collaboration, Lady Michelle Mone OBE is done with the media. Or its “ridiculous obsession with every tiny detail of...

07.01.2024 20

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

How many daughters does a man need to see date rape jokes as a sackable offence?

In his time in office, Rishi Sunak has done much to popularise an intensifier favoured by men wanting to advertise their commitment to women’s...

31.12.2023 10

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

In a surrogacy deal between a rich and poor woman, only one is acting as a free agent

Considering how quickly “too posh to push” once took off as a way of rebuking mothers who planned to cheat nature with a C-section, current...

17.12.2023 20

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

Nigel Farage has been careful to bare nothing but his arse in I’m a Celebrity

Ant and Dec, the hosts of I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!, have some frustrating news for demagogues. Dec (the shorter one): “I think we do...

10.12.2023 10

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

The Tories happily overlooked the UAE’s human rights record – until it came for the Telegraph

Dominic Johnson? Any bells? Nothing? And yet we find Johnson, a party donor now in use as an “investment minister”, playing what he intended to be...

03.12.2023 100

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

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