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Zoe Williams

Zoe Williams

The Guardian

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760,000 women in the UK waiting for a gynaecological appointment? That’s just the tip of the iceberg

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has landed on an arresting image to illustrate the waiting-list crisis in its field. If all...

previous day 20

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

If you can’t trust the voice of David Attenborough, what can you trust?

It sounds too fanciful and too outrageous to be true, but nothing is too outrageous for the world the tech bros have bequeathed us. The BBC has...

monday 10

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

A British export the US didn’t need: a cosy relationship between editor and proprietor

Postmortems continue for who lost Kamala Harris the US election, and these will be consequential for the left in the UK. However many times the US...

15.11.2024 8

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

That’s the fireworks over for another year. Phew!

Near my house, there are some incredible firework enthusiasts. In November 2020, when I’d just moved in, I thought it was an optical illusion...

12.11.2024 20

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

Billionaires like Elon Musk don’t just think they’re better than the rest of us – they hate us

Nearly three years ago, I started working on an idea for a book. It started out with the pretty mild proposition: we’re in a class war, but it’s a...

11.11.2024 60

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

It’s taken me 20 years, but I’ve finally updated my to-do list

My time management is quite old-fashioned, mainly consisting of a to-do list. Three columns if I’m feeling particularly efficient: work; admin;...

05.11.2024 10

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

Unlike the Spanish, the British aren’t pelting their royals with mud. But patience is running out …

There was something so incongruous about the sight of King Felipe of Spain, mud-splattered by raging elements of a crowd in Paiporta, a suburb of...

04.11.2024 40

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

My mother nursed a life-affirming 25-year grudge. Hard as I try, I don’t have the attention span

The best thing that happened to me during the whole of the pandemic was a story on the internet. An Oregon resident, furloughed, saw on a daytime...

03.11.2024 10

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

An excess of billionaires is destabilising politics – just as academics predicted

The concept of “elite overproduction” was developed by social scientist Peter Turchin around the turn of this century to describe something...

31.10.2024 100

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

Pity the poor chuggers – they do an impossible job in terrible conditions

The modern practice of chugging – a contraction of “charity” and “mugging”, where cheerful young people come up to you in the street and ask...

29.10.2024 9

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

I followed Trump and Joe Rogan into the manosphere – and it was not pretty

According to Forbes, Donald Trump talked about five important things in a three-hour-plus podcast with Joe Rogan: whether the 2020 election was...

28.10.2024 7

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

Rebecca Hendin on Labour’s plans for the NHS – cartoon

21.10.2024 9

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

James Cleverly spent £655 a head on in-flight catering – while asylum seekers receive £49 a week

It already feels like quite a long time since the Tories were in power, but it was only in December that James Cleverly took a day trip to Rwanda...

21.10.2024 20

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer try to fill the ‘fiscal black hole’ – cartoon

16.10.2024 10

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

Ikea shelves, books by politicians, even a whole celeriac: in defence of middle-class fly-tipping

One experiences politics through direct encounters with the state, and since the first wave of austerity that experience has diverged enormously...

16.10.2024 10

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

Tommy Robinson’s book went to No 1 on Amazon. This is what I learned from the reviews

It’s always tempting to self-soothe when the far right is on the march. Tommy Robinson’s new book, Manifesto: Free Speech, Real Democracy,...

15.10.2024 200

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

Why is Halloween suddenly so big in Britain?

When a fella of 17 arrived at the house in a corset, some pointy ears, a lot of makeup and an alice band with a cat on it, it was only polite to ask...

14.10.2024 20

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

Why has Melania Trump come out as pro-choice? Seems obvious to me

Melania Trump has put her support for abortion rights at the centre of her forthcoming memoir – you might even call it the news line. This has...

08.10.2024 20

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

The government could win Britain’s trust back. MPs would just have to wear a uniform

Polling just dropped on trust in the Labour government – 59% think it’s fairly or very sleazy, according to YouGov, which will be sobering news to...

07.10.2024 10

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

Starmer is boxing himself in over Europe – and putting approval ratings above young people’s futures

As Keir Starmer entered the room with Ursula von der Leyen for his first meeting with the European Commission as prime minister on Wednesday, we had a...

04.10.2024 70

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

What I learned when I fell off a Lime bike

I noticed Lime bikes almost as soon as they arrived in London, in 2018, because of the teenagers. Let me explain: it’s possible to hack the rentable...

01.10.2024 10

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

Why did Kemi Badenoch attack maternity pay? Ask the Tory members …

Kemi Badenoch polished her brand as the say-the-unsayable candidate for Conservative leader thus: “Statutory maternity pay is a function of tax; tax...

30.09.2024 10

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

My dog has been reviewed online – and it wasn’t exactly glowing

When Uber was first invented, my mother was incensed about the star-rating system. She did not wish to be evaluated for her manners, she said. It was...

24.09.2024 20

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

I bumped into Liz Truss at a school open day. It was super awks

Before going to an open day for a sixth form college, I’d made a number of promises to my daughter, H, in respect of how fundamentally embarrassing...

23.09.2024 30

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

Shōgun proves you don’t need dragons and bare bottoms for compelling drama

A friend who works in TV explained to me once how Game of Thrones had ruined our attention spans, packing in too much event. Dragons, nakedness,...

17.09.2024 20

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

The Evening Standard gave me a job – and unleashed Boris Johnson on the world. I’ll still miss it

The Evening Standard, chronicler of the nation’s capital since 1827, is closing down this week. OK, every bit of that sentence was slightly wrong....

16.09.2024 10

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

What now for the Spectator under Paul Marshall’s ownership? The signs are pointing further right

The most and possibly only surprising thing about hedge fund manager Paul Marshall’s purchase of the Spectator was the anguished public resignation...

16.09.2024 10

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

Teenagers will always get drunk – so why don’t we just serve them in pubs?

My friend’s son, 16, sauntered into a pub at the weekend and came out with a pint. He wasn’t asked for ID, which she thought was outrageous, and I...

10.09.2024 20

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

Why is dating app Feeld so popular? Fetishes and throuples are only part of the story

Obviously if you are not on any dating apps, you shouldn’t have any opinions about them, and you definitely shouldn’t worry about other people’s...

09.09.2024 10

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

Want to know the problem, Tories? You’re … weird. And even your own tribe thinks so

Two months on from the Tories’ worst election result in its history, none of its prospective leadership candidates inspire confidence in a fast...

05.09.2024 10

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

Good riddance. Ofsted’s one-word ranking system for schools never made any sense

Ofsted’s one-word ranking system for schools won’t be missed, because it never made sense: “outstanding” couldn’t possibly mean...

03.09.2024 20

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

You love Oasis? Your fiance? Your dog? Then get ready to spend, spend, spend

Because I am a good friend and a solid person, I sometimes put together a quiz for my associates. Because I am a slapdash friend and a flake, the...

02.09.2024 10

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

It’s 2024 and I might be the last person on earth to watch The Walking Dead. What a loser!

I never watched The Walking Dead when it first aired, in 2010, because I thought I didn’t like zombies. Then I had a work experience kid who was...

27.08.2024 10

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

Of course Kirstie Allsopp is happy for her 15-year-old to go Interrailing on his own. It’s ‘character-building’!

Following a post on social media about letting her 15-year-old son go on an Interrailing trip, Kirstie Allsopp should definitely be investigated by...

26.08.2024 10

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

Theresa May-lite or real humanitarian? Yvette Cooper’s new migrant plan makes me fear the worst

Yvette Cooper isn’t wrong when she speaks of the “chaos that has blighted the immigration system for too long” – but it’s still profoundly...

21.08.2024 10

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

Why the funniest jokes at the Edinburgh fringe just didn’t make me laugh

Delayed in transit with Mr Z, I was looking for a way to fill precisely one minute. I’d scoped out my responsibility in the crusade against boredom,...

20.08.2024 10

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

What does it mean to be 16 today? It is totally different to when I was growing up

Ah, August, the month where you have to hear again what Jeremy Clarkson got in his A-levels, to be juxtaposed delightfully (he thinks) against his...

19.08.2024 10

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

Fighting on a plane is not a good idea – and I should know

I was getting off a plane the other week, having returned from Iceland, when I had an altercation. The woman in front of me was getting her stuff...

13.08.2024 10

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

Can menopause be fun and sexy? Yes, according to Miranda July

We went 1,000 years, or maybe 10,000, without anyone ever mentioning menopause, and then we started mentioning it all the time – which wasn’t...

12.08.2024 20

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

Britain’s jails are in terrible crisis, but prison can work. I know, I’ve seen it

Prisons had been flagged as a possible candidate for the new government’s first crisis. There were rumours that Rishi Sunak’s surprise summer...

08.08.2024 10

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

Why do I love Greggs? Let me count the ways

At the height of the vegan sausage roll furore, I was idly looking around for other things to like about Greggs, beyond that the bakery giant had...

06.08.2024 10

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

From RFK Jr’s dead bear to a shot dog, why do US politicians keep throwing us red meat?

I had never really engaged with how spooky Robert F Kennedy Jr looked until I saw him describe in a video the circumstances in which he ended up...

05.08.2024 10

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

We have allowed the demonisation and dehumanisation of male refugees. They are victims too

The Rwanda policy has been scrapped and the Bibby Stockholm is to be closed down. The policy on asylum seekers was almost a gift from the last...

31.07.2024 80

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

A Morrissey tribute band separates the art from the artist – but I still end up feeling queasy

On Saturday night, I went to the Dublin Castle, a pub and music venue in Camden, north London, the fabled birthplace of Britpop. I definitely wasn’t...

30.07.2024 20

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

Why does the Olympics turn me into such an absolute animal?

It was 2012 and, now I look it up, actually my birthday, and I was having a standup row with an American journalist because the Australian Anna Meares...

29.07.2024 10

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

My sausage-like fingers are not sexy. But they have given me one incredible talent

Very early in life, I perfected one skill: I can carry four pints at once. I put them in a straightforward quadrant; nothing dumb like balancing one...

16.07.2024 10

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

Forget the football! Eleven days into a Labour government, here are reasons to be hopeful

Looking for a boost on a grey day full of awful news, I was trying to remember the last time I felt politically optimistic. Was it for a real reason,...

15.07.2024 10

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

Making Britain’s voting system fairer won’t enable parties like Reform – it’s the only way to challenge them

The classic argument for a first past the post (FPTP) voting system was that it kept the cranks at bay and delivered a stable, two-party system, with...

10.07.2024 30

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

My kids are holidaying without me – and I’m worried they’ll repeat my foreign faux pas

I’ve been racking my brain for all the things that have ever gone wrong, in the history of teenage train travel between me and my sister, because...

09.07.2024 10

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

Angela Rayner’s suit and Victoria Starmer’s secret power: why do I suddenly smell sexism?

I didn’t have powerful 1997 vibes last week, and not because I was too busy grumbling; I also hit the ground complaining about Tony Blair. But one...

08.07.2024 20

The Guardian

Zoe Williams

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