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Catherine Bennett

Catherine Bennett

The Guardian

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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 –...

sunday 70

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 10

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 20

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 10

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 10

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 6

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 80

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 7

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 50

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 80

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 10

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 30

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 4

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 100

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 7

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 50

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

A vacuous, amoral elite who lost the plot. Saltburn or the Covid inquiry? It’s hard to tell

At the beginning of Saltburn, Emerald Fennell’s new addition to Brideshead-genre stately worship, the outcast status of a non-posh Oxford student is...

26.11.2023 7

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

In adopting suffragettes as role models, Just Stop Oil is painting itself into a corner

Who doesn’t love the suffragettes? A group of women who are heroic, right, and, perhaps most advantageously for their collective reputation, no...

12.11.2023 10

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

In Boris Johnson’s Lord of the Flies fraternity, women were there to be talked over or banished

‘Women have very little idea of how much men hate them,” wrote the great Germaine Greer, in 1970. But now we have the Covid inquiry. Last week...

05.11.2023 6

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

Better call Saul off, but isn’t this opera exactly why trigger warnings were invented?

Creating probably more disquiet than audience disappointment, a Cambridge student opera has been added to the cultural cost of existing conflicts. In...

28.10.2023 3

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

Spare us devout MPs like Peter Bone. If we ever had faith in them, it is long lost

‘I am a practising Christian,” Peter Bone has told the House of Commons, by way of a substitute for argument. For instance: “I am a Christian...

21.10.2023 10

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

Bluestockings. Unshaggables. It’s how Laurence Fox and co put strong women down

C redit, first, where it’s due. As with so many celebrated public nuisances, from David Starkey and Jacob Rees-Mogg to Nigel Farage and the wider...

01.10.2023 60

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

For the likes of Jeremy Clarkson, this ‘lefty’ penchant for safer roads is just too pedestrian

G iven the extensive research that connects dangerous driving with alarming personality traits, it is always enlightening to see who speaks up for...

24.09.2023 60

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

If only Ed had the balls to cut the podcast bantz and take George Osborne to task

Even for non-attendees, George Osborne’s July wedding lingers in the memory. First, because of the bizarre, orange confetti protest. Second, because...

17.09.2023 10

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

If Unilever truly wants ‘a world with more joy’, why is it filling Putin’s war chest?

S o long as you are not Ukrainian, it is difficult to imagine a more caring and sensitive ally than the food, cosmetic and hygiene giant, Unilever....

10.09.2023 100

The Guardian

Catherine Bennett

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