Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 103

Where are the Real Tories? We need a party to halt the advance of the state | Simon Jenkins

The Conservatives’ default ideology is Thatcherism, but this government splurges cash on vanity projects

The trouble with David Cameron is that we don’t know what he stands for. How often do we hear this cry, not least from Conservatives? But what is he supposed to stand for? Two weeks ago I argued the need for a “real Labour” party. It was relatively easy. Labour can be defined by its interests, its texts and proclaimed values. A “real Tory” is harder to define. In our campaign quest for choi...

Facebook’s outage exposes our digital fragility | Simon Jenkins

Today’s Facebook suspension shows how vulnerable digital information is – penetrable by hackers, governments or subject to random failures

OMG Facebook is down! Down too went Instagram. It was just for an hour this morning, but the tweets screamed “Do I have to talk to someone real?”

In a manner of speaking, yes. Despite the hackers of Lizard Squad claiming credit, it is now clear that an outage at Facebook’s HQ was responsible. But the confusion was understandable after Lizard Squad had in rec...

QE for the eurozone is a gigantic confidence trick. It should fool no one | Simon Jenkins

Quantitative easing will simply bury money in commercial bank vaults, when it is cash in circulation that’s desperately needed

• Live blog: Thursday’s developments in the eurozone

At last the euro’s lords and masters have accepted that something must be done about their zone’s lamentable growth. They will unleash a massive bond-buying programme totalling a reported €1tn. The former BBC economic pundit Stephanie Flanders told the world it was “Santa Claus time”; the European Central Bank (ECB) h...

Chilcot: we know Blair was to blame for Iraq, so this is already a work of history | Simon Jenkins

The longer we wait for the inquiry, the less we care about the outcome. Such reports should be immediate and quick, whatever the risks of unfairness

The best war inquiry was into the Charge of the Light Brigade. It was conducted by the poet Alfred Tennyson in eight weeks, and reached a one-line conclusion, “Someone had blunder’d.” It has never been bettered.

Everyone knows who blundered in Iraq. It was Tony Blair. Mild interest may still attach to the question, why? But no one is sitting in an...

Page 3’s demise smacks of censorship | Simon Jenkins

The Sun’s Page 3 was about as arousing as an ankle at a Victorian dance. It has outlived its editorial purpose. Yet sex still sells

• The Sun calls time on topless models after 44 years

So it’s farewell nipples. They are to vanish – from the Sun’s Page 3. So they will remain online, except in the Daily Star, except in a hundred magazines and a thousand “tasteful” fashion shoots. So what next?

Children are already pixelated. What about female (and male) bottoms, singers’ crotch shots, David Beckh...

The Labour party of my dreams would stand up for poorer people. Where is it? | Simon Jenkins

The nation surely deserves a party of the left – and a real choice when it goes to the polls

There is the moment in an election campaign when I crave a choice, not an echo. That moment is now. For starters, I want a real Labour party. I know what the Tories are about. I have watched them at it for years. But against them the nation surely deserves a party of what is conventionally called the left. Where is it?

The new politics suggests we focus not on policies but on groups, tribes, interests....

Cancer drugs will always be emotive but the government is right to restrict them | Simon Jenkins

Drug companies and critically ill patients cannot be left to dictate how the NHS allocates its scarce resources

Another NHS chicken comes squawking home to roost. Cancer drugs are effectively free at the point of use, so the relevant government agency, Nice, must ration which ones it licenses for prescription.

This rules out the most expensive and least cost-effective. Along comes politics in the form of David Cameron at the last election, pledging a separate “Cancer Drugs Fund” (CDF) to pay fo...

Charlie Hebdo: Now is the time to uphold freedoms, not give in to fear | Simon Jenkins

Terrorists can kill and maim, but they cannot topple governments. We must not hand them victory by treating this massacre as an act of war

Why does it happen? Whenever a political outrage is committed, the sensible question is to ask: what does its perpetrator want? What reaction does he seek, and what does he not seek?

Continue reading...

The NHS can’t survive without payment for frontline treatments | Simon Jenkins

Rationing supply of care by payment may offend tradition, but rationing by chaos is cruel

• NHS A&E crisis worst ever, new figures show: Politics Live blog

Politicians have gone mad. The NHS is to be rescued with £2bn from the banks (Tories), with £2.5bn from cigarettes (Labour), with £1.5bn from London mansions (Labour), with the same £1.5bn for Scottish nurses (Scottish Labour) or with £8bn “from the proceeds of growth” (the Lib Dems). Or it can always be res...

Easy to sneer at arts graduates. But we’ll need their skills | Simon Jenkins

Creative types have the confidence to take risks. And they understand that money isn’t everything

Anthony Ward Thomas, of Ward Thomas Removals, has a problem that he shares with the public. After a life spent turning a man with a van into a multimillion-pound firm, he finds his children are not interested in taking over. “They have different interests,” he says. He is sad, but agrees “there should be no divine right that they get the business”. They should make their own way in the world....