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Martha Gill

Martha Gill

The Guardian

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The Observer view: In her pursuit of growth, Rachel Reeves must go green and go local

The Observer view: In her pursuit of growth, Rachel Reeves must go green and go local

It has been a tough beginning to the year for Rachel Reeves. The chancellor has found herself in the spotlight as debt interest costs spiralled, while...

sunday 20

The Guardian

Martha Gill

There’s a word for people who prefer phones to meeting friends: addicts

There’s a word for people who prefer phones to meeting friends: addicts

Over the decades, research has chipped away at our most cherished ideas about human specialness: it turns out that we share such things as theory of...

sunday 20

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Are you a traitor or a faithful? Just take your lead from everyone else

Are you a traitor or a faithful? Just take your lead from everyone else
19.01.2025 10

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Jane Austen’s plates or the woods near her home? I know which I’d rather save

Jane Austen’s plates or the woods near her home? I know which I’d rather save
11.01.2025 10

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Crime is falling, but heists that make headlines imply otherwise

Crime stories serve up a reliable set of emotions – shock, sympathy, horror, outrage, morbid curiosity and fear. But there is something different,...

04.01.2025 1

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Belief in a lottery curse is comforting, but winning lots of money does make you happy

Does winning the lottery wreck your life? When it was revealed earlier this week that an anonymous Briton had won £177m in the November...

21.12.2024 1

The Guardian

Martha Gill

We don’t tolerate prejudice at work. Why, pray, do we allow it in church?

I was struck by a conversation on LBC last week, which followed the news that several Premier League footballers refused to wear armbands...

08.12.2024 30

The Guardian

Martha Gill

The Good Doctor’s version of autism masks the reality of badly failed children

To the optimist, it may seem as though we are at last emerging from a dark age when it comes to children with neurological and learning disorders....

01.12.2024 40

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Not quite religion, not quite self-help: welcome to the Jordan Peterson age of nonsense

What links these two news stories? The first: “manifesting” has been declared Cambridge Dictionary’s word of the year. The self-help practice,...

24.11.2024 50

The Guardian

Martha Gill

So, it’s goodbye to Gary Lineker and to the costly, star-struck culture at the BBC

Is the age of the megastar fading at the BBC? It is possible to read too much into Gary Lineker’s retirement, which has dominated headlines. Some...

16.11.2024 2

The Guardian

Martha Gill

In the moral panic over vaping, we risk forgetting that cigarettes kill

Imagine we’d found a way to get millions of people to switch from alcohol, which in this country kills 10,000 people a year, to another kind of...

10.11.2024 10

The Guardian

Martha Gill

We are in danger of forgetting what the climate crisis means: extinction

You may have heard of Cop29, the global climate change conference that doesn’t start until 11 November but has already been generating headlines...

03.11.2024 100

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Britons are dying in a blizzard of cheap cocaine. Why is so little being done to save them?

Compared with the screaming scare campaigns of the 1990s, anti-drugs messaging is thin on the ground these days. So the casual observer may not...

27.10.2024 10

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Of course teenagers want to be pop idols like Liam Payne. Given the perils, should we let them?

Sex, drinking, smoking, gambling, joining the army, being put to work – we now take it as obvious that there should be strict laws protecting...

19.10.2024 3

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Can you resist all the addictions modern life throws at you? Only if you’re rich enough

They are problems of success, really, these modern ills. Social media addiction, gaming disorders, the compulsive over-eating of sugar and...

13.10.2024 20

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Social media isn’t driving the plastic surgery boom. Who doesn’t want to look better?

Plastic surgery is a brutal business. No wonder it makes a good subject for a horror film. In fact, the subject may be too much for the genre....

06.10.2024 10

The Guardian

Martha Gill

He cries, he forages, but redemption may still elude cast away Phillip Schofield

Idea for a TV show. Cancelled celebrities compete against each other for the ultimate prize: public forgiveness. Hosted by a coterie of bitchy...

29.09.2024 10

The Guardian

Martha Gill

No promotions, no buzz. Home workers pay high price while bosses save on costs

At the age of 25, casting around for what to do next, I was lucky enough to get a few weeks paid work at a newspaper. The work itself wasn’t...

22.09.2024 3

The Guardian

Martha Gill

To put frockgate behind them, the Starmers could learn from the Johnson administration

Not all of us are good at clothes. Some have the gift of sartorial certainty; some suffer from a sort of “mirror blindness”, doomed to stand in...

22.09.2024 2

The Guardian

Martha Gill

The Perfect Couple’s mega-rich are fair game, but why not satirise the merely wealthy?

It’s hard to satirise the super-rich. Not that we don’t enjoy trying. The most recent attempt – The Perfect Couple, a murder mystery starring...

14.09.2024 2

The Guardian

Martha Gill

When dogs recall toys and horses plan ahead, are animals so different from us?

The details differ, but really it’s the same story, turning up every few weeks, for around a decade now. The revelation – and it’s always...

07.09.2024 1

The Guardian

Martha Gill

I love the nanny state, but let’s leave outdoor smokers to puff away in peace

Have you ever wondered why pubs in Britain bother with gardens? They seem like a solid enough investment now, in summer, sure. But what’s the draw...

01.09.2024 10

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Chris Riddell on Kamala Harris reveals the choices facing US voters in the presidential election – cartoon

24.08.2024 3

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Riots, shootings, sadism… blame it on the boredom of social media

‘The age of boredom… has now passed”. So begins On Boredom , a 2021 essay collection that claims the likes of TikTok and YouTube have driven it...

24.08.2024 1

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Chris Riddell on how the Democrats are tying the Republicans up in knots – cartoon

17.08.2024 10

The Guardian

Martha Gill

A-levels are far from perfect, but in the exam hall every pupil – rich or poor – is equally afraid

‘You may turn over your papers now.” For how many of us, decades after A-levels, does that phrase still cause a ripple of nerves in the stomach?...

17.08.2024 10

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Shoplifting, tax evasion... If UK politicians break the rules, why shouldn’t the rest of us?

What to make of last week’s annual report by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), which declares – I summarise – that the inhabitants...

28.07.2024 3

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Forget the tired franchises, a new wave of horror movie will make us jump out of our seats

There’s nothing I find so cheering, these days, as the rise of the horror movie. Take its intrusion into this year’s summer blockbusters. We have...

13.07.2024 2

The Guardian

Martha Gill