Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 104

Germany’s ‘pinstripe Nazis’ show the immigration debate is overheated | Simon Jenkins

Hyping every crime involving a Muslim as a security threat is unhelpful – government and the media must behave responsibly

Rightwing parties are on the rise across Europe. Should we worry? Such movements have come and mostly gone for decades. They draw strength from immigrant surges and economic woes. The Pegida rallies – Germany’s “pinstripe Nazis” – now drawing thousands of marchers to German cities, are specifically anti-Muslim. But are they different from similar movements in France, Swede...

Britain will learn nothing by trying to emulate China’s schools | Simon Jenkins

It was a myth that Beijing perfected the art of teaching. The nation’s success has little to do with maths

One third of England’s secondary schools are “failing”. In some places half of them are “bad”. A total of 170,000 pupils are in “inadequate” institutions – 70,000 more than two years ago. Fifty more schools are in “special measures” than last year.

This is the verdict of the nation’s schools inspector, Sir Michael Wilshaw. Half a century of incessant centralised reform and upheaval, of res...

In publishing the CIA torture report, the US is taking a brave step | Simon Jenkins

It took more than a decade but US citizens will now have an idea of what was done in their name post 9/11. Britain still awaits the Chilcot report on Iraq

• CIA braces for impact of torture report inquiry as release date nears

America deserves credit for its decision to publish a report into the CIA’s use of torture following the 9/11 disaster. Despite redaction, the Senate’s intelligence committee confirms what has long been known, that 20 “enhanced” interrogation methods were authorised by th...

Ignore George Osborne’s bombast: there’s a reason Britain is back to growth | Simon Jenkins

The chancellor, patron saint of mega projects, has offered a fantasy splurge and shown himself as a wily figure

Thank goodness. George Osborne failed to cut the deficit and is borrowing far more than he ever expected. His silliest economic measure was always to try to slash spending in 2010-12 as Britain headed for recession. It did not work. Spending rose, and is rising still. The result has been to give Britain the highest growth rate in the developed world.

Wednesday’s autumn statement...

Britain and the US must help mend the Syrian refugee crisis they helped create | Simon Jenkins

Western powers were quick to back military action in the Middle East. Now food aid has run out they urgently need to step up the humanitarian response

Western governments are tiring of Muslim wars. They are also tiring of their victims. The UN is reported to have run out of money to relieve the refugee tide now spreading across the Middle East. Some 4 million people are living in camps reliant on the UN’s World Food Programme, not to mention other camps caused by wars in Sudan, Somalia and the...

Andrew Mitchell was hoist by the paranoid establishment’s own petard | Simon Jenkins

The former chief whip lost his rag when confronted by sheer bureaucratic idiocy, but it is politicians who are behind our extravagant security-industrial complex

The toffs are revolting. Tory ex-minister David Mellor finds taxi-drivers intolerable, Labour MP Emily Thornberry is shocked by proletarian Anglophilia, and former chief whip Andrew Mitchell is driven to fury by a Downing Street cop. What is the matter with them?

Mitchell was the most reckless of all. He went to court and encountered t...

We should cash-bomb the people - not the banks | Simon Jenkins

Juncker’s new fund will do little to head off Europe’s lost decade, as Friedman and Keynes would agree

Abandon helicopters. Use bombers. Bomb Germany, France, Italy, Greece, the entire eurozone. Bomb them with banknotes, cash, anything to boost demand. The money must go straight to households, not to banks. Banks have had their day and miserably failed to spend. From now on they get nothing.

Five years after the financial crash it is nearly unbelievable that the eurozone’s lords...

Big supermarkets may be dying, but they leave a plague on the landscape | Simon Jenkins

Shuttered out-of-town retail stores will languish and become the coalition’s most visible legacy to the British environment

I have to admit, the Jenkins household now shops online. On Saturday morning the doorbell rings, and there stands a young man with the weekly supplies in neat recyclable bags. He has replaced the weekly trudge to the supermarket. Something may be lost, but a deal of time and shoe leather is saved.

I am one of millions: it is expected that 90% of the rise in British retail...

If Charles Manson has found love, surely that’s a good thing? | Simon Jenkins

A 26-year-old woman is due to marry the 80-year-old killer – there are precedents, and the motivation is not always cynical

Woman, 26, is to marry mass murderer, Charles Manson, aged 80 and imprisoned for life. How to you react? Do you say, how lovely? Or yuk!

It is hard to imagine a less plausible argument for the restorative qualities of romance than Manson. In prison for the past 45 years for a bout of “hippie” killings, he remains unrepentant and, if last year’s Rolling Stone interview is a...

Ignore the value of rural beauty and vandalism is the result | Simon Jenkins

We lack the language to articulate our love of landscape and buildings. Thats why they are at risk under this government

The National Trust is a virtual state within a state. It has the most members, the biggest land-holding and the grandest mission of any British charity: 4 million members and 200m visits a year to its coasts and uplands have freed it from any need for public subsidy. Standing down after six years as chairman, I remain in awe of the place.

Yet six years in any institution cann...