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Martha Gill

Martha Gill

The Telegraph

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Mental health is a measure of success, not a reason for politicians to sneer

There’s more to life than money, but societies can struggle to express it. When we talk about the state of nations and their citizens, we tend...

previous day 30

The Guardian

Martha Gill

One thing stops us from prising teens from their phones: peer pressure

Across the rich world, a problem emerges. Children are spending more time hunched over iPhones working on their personal brands and less time building...

13.04.2024 10

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Would ID cards be such a bad idea if they made things work a bit better?

‘Britain has never been a ‘papers, please’ society,” said Jacob Rees-Mogg, speaking on his GB News radio show last week. “I’ve always...

06.04.2024 5

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Cute, cuddly, and often crippled: look where the love of dogs has taken the British

You may have missed a recent international incident. Last week, we Brits got wind of a very worrying development across the Channel. “Sausage Dogs...

30.03.2024 9

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Free speech warriors take note, if film censors can move with the times, you can too

A familiar set of headlines last week: Brits are growing more prudish. The James Bond film From Russia With Love would today be slapped with a higher...

23.03.2024 4

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Britain is great in a crisis, but useless in a slump. Just take a look at the NHS

If Britain were a person, they might strike you as a familiar type. They’re the type that slumps on the sofa, letting problems pile up. There’s...

17.03.2024 20

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Can’t read a map or add up? Don’t worry, we’ve always let technology do the boring stuff

The dystopian novels of the last century were mostly filled with terrifying visions of the rise of technology – a genre of which we are still to...

09.03.2024 10

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Millennials will be the richest generation ever, but who gets that wealth is down to luck

What have millennials been complaining about? Far from languishing in poverty as society’s lost stepchildren, they are on course to become the...

03.03.2024 30

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Like cigarettes, junk food should come with a warning: ‘Can kill’

The 1970s was a confusing decade in which to be a smoker. People knew, of course, that smoking was bad for them: the evidence linking it to lung...

25.02.2024 70

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Here’s to hanging out with friends, a splendidly pointless pastime we’re at risk of losing

We spend more time online. We socialise less. Our mental health is getting worse. These three trends have been obvious for some time – particularly...

18.02.2024 30

The Guardian

Martha Gill

The plight of King Charles moves us, but we soon tire of feeling sorry for the poor

The human capacity to empathise is among our most celebrated qualities – so it can be rather galling to think this purest of instincts might be...

11.02.2024 30

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Plummeting morale, low pay, unjust wars. No wonder young people resist joining up

Why won’t young people join the military? The armed forces have been trying to solve the problem for years. They have tried using YouTube...

28.01.2024 10

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Can the super-rich tell us how to save the planet? Gen Z certainly think so

There’s just something about corporate chieftains meeting at a ski resort to save the world that seems to get people’s backs up. It could be the...

21.01.2024 10

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Will no one rid King Charles of his turbulent prince – Andrew has to go, but how to do it?

The royal family is supposed to have divested itself of Prince Andrew. But it hasn’t finished the job. It’s exactly two years since he was...

14.01.2024 10

The Guardian

Martha Gill

We’re proud of pantos and cheese rolling, but must Unesco decide which to protect?

A central plank of the British character is a fascination with the British character – if the Americans speak of their traits with pride, and the...

07.01.2024 20

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Vicars, tennis and a black sleuth… it would be a mystery if the BBC hadn’t updated Agatha Christie

Has there ever been so much fuss about an Agatha Christie adaptation? This year’s dose of Christmas homicide, Murder is Easy, has now received a...

31.12.2023 20

The Guardian

Martha Gill

For many, the case for assisted dying is clear. But life – and death – is often not so simple

As it grows older, more liberal and less religious, the west is changing its mind about how it wants to die. Thirty years ago prescribing people the...

24.12.2023 30

The Guardian

Martha Gill

King Charles has appointed a homeopath. Why do the elite put their faith in snake oil?

When I hear someone extolling the virtues of homeopathy, I am often reminded of a quotation from the TV show 30 Rock. “There are many kinds of...

17.12.2023 20

The Guardian

Martha Gill

From the contaminated blood scandal to Hillsborough, we need whistleblowers now more than ever

Imagine you are the first to notice that something bad has been going on at work. It has been going on for years. Some terrible mistake has been made,...

09.12.2023 4

The Guardian

Martha Gill

You may balk at giving your health data to Palantir but it could save your life

As we sink deeper into the digital age, a problem emerges. People dislike the idea of giving up their data to some vast and powerful entity. But,...

02.12.2023 4

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Wealthy jet-setters are hastening the climate crisis, so let’s make them pay

Is net zero a “luxury belief”? A strange assumption seems to have become knitted into the climate debate: that the burden of cutting carbon...

25.11.2023 10

The Guardian

Martha Gill

The round robin is dead, but we blow our own trumpets online these days

Was there ever a Christmas tradition so universally despised as turning on the lights in mid-November? Well yes, actually, there was. Do you remember...

18.11.2023 3

The Guardian

Martha Gill

As The Crown ends a gap arises. A tragi-comedy on a dysfunctional family, anyone?

Restraint is probably the mark of the true artist, but still it seems odd that Peter Morgan has chosen to end The Crown , which returns this week, in...

11.11.2023 9

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Is AI regulation really possible?

05.11.2023 3

The Guardian

Martha Gill

The Observer view on leasehold: let’s abolish this antiquated and unfair system

‘This system is not business, it is blackmail,” Lloyd George said of leasehold in 1909. More recently, it has been described by Rishi Sunak as...

05.11.2023 9

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Observer comment cartoon Rishi Sunak displays his astonishing incompetence (AI for short) – cartoon

04.11.2023 4

The Guardian

Martha Gill

If chatbots can ace job interviews for us, maybe it’s time to scrap this ordeal

In the evolutionary arms race between interviewer and interviewee, I think it is inevitable that both roles will at some point be played fully by...

04.11.2023 8

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Body-shaming, revenge porn, sexism: a catchy name gives us something to fight

Did you know that “grooming” only began to be used in courtrooms in the 1990s? Before then, the word was “seduction”. And did you know that...

29.10.2023 60

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Zoos are the opposite of educational: they construct fictions about their captives

Every afternoon at London Zoo until the early 1970s a table laid with cups, saucers and a teapot would be set out for the chimpanzees. An amusing set...

22.10.2023 80

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Britain’s filthy, violent prisons shame us all. Here’s why we should care

I magine a judge making these sentencing remarks to a man found guilty of rape: “This is one of the most vicious crimes I have come across. I am...

15.10.2023 40

The Guardian

Martha Gill

When Taylor Swift reaps country-sized riches, other artists are squeezed out

D id you know you’ll soon be able to take a course in Taylor Swift at Queen Mary University of London? There’s already one of these at a...

30.09.2023 3

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Russell Brand’s no hypocrite, he preached what he practised. That’s why we indulged him

A nyone remember Ned Fulmer? Fulmer was one of the Try Guys, a quartet of fairly inoffensive comedians whose YouTube channel was in 2022 valued at...

23.09.2023 9

The Guardian

Martha Gill

FOGO, our fear of growing old, is sweeping the land. Just look at Trinny Woodall

A geism is perhaps the most paradoxical prejudice: we are, barring accident, discriminating against ourselves. Members of the persecuting in-group are...

16.09.2023 5

The Guardian

Martha Gill

Sorry, chaps, but you don’t need your own minister to become better men

The first thing to say about the idea of appointing a minister for men, as suggested last week by Tory MP Nick Fletcher and taken rather seriously by...

09.09.2023 6

The Guardian

Martha Gill

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