Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 106

Ministers high on their war on drugs need a speedy cure | Simon Jenkins

A psychology of macho law-making dominates British drugs policy in defiance of both public opinion and common sense

The government should ban all reports on drug legalisation. They get you hooked on rage. Evidence-based reform is a gateway substance to common sense. Just send a message: no thought means no.

Parliaments response to this weeks report on the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act shows that psychoactive substances are the last taboo to afflict Britains elite. It has got over past obsession...

Pavements are risky public spaces – David Cameron has to live with that | Simon Jenkins

The Leeds jogger who jostled Cameron has shown it’s impossible to protect anyone who wants to lead a reasonably normal life

None of us is secure. We dice daily with death. Somewhere is a bullet or a tree or a double-decker bus with our name on it. When David Cameron was allegedly jostled by a Leeds jogger on Monday it “could have been” much worse. Everything could always be much worse.

The story is indeed puzzling. The Met police’s famously overstaffed and underworked VIP protection mafia were...

Pavements are risky public spaces David Cameron has to live with that | Simon Jenkins

The Leeds jogger who jostled Cameron has shown its impossible to protect anyone who wants to lead a reasonably normal life

None of us is secure. We dice daily with death. Somewhere is a bullet or a tree or a double-decker bus with our name on it. When David Cameron was allegedly jostled by a Leeds jogger on Monday it could have been much worse. Everything could always be much worse.

The story is indeed puzzling. The Met polices famously overstaffed and underworked VIP protection mafia were sunn...

Can England really walk the road to devolution? | Simon Jenkins

The Tories must offer more than words if they are serious about giving local councils more power

Is the revolution to hand? Is devo met for real harbinger of the one true decentralist shift of power from London to provincial England since, well, Magna Carta? A merchant banker, Jim ONeill, this week claimed that George Osborne has accepted his city growth proposal to move fiscal and other liberties to Britains 15 big cities. With a statisticians phoney exactitude, ONeill says this could bo...

Oscar Pistorius should not be going to jail | Simon Jenkins

Pistoriuss life is ruined. No one will be deterred by his sentence. Imprisonment is a brutal response that achieves nothing in such cases
Pistorius jailed for five years
Deborah Orr on a troubling verdict
Roxane Gay on the mythical black intruder

Oscar Pistorius was guilty. However gripped by anger, its difficult to accept he didnt know whom he was likely to kill. He had a violent history and his claim that he thought he was shooting a burglar stretches credulity. He killed his girlfriend.

Give...

Downing Streets Ebola panic is a classic case of the politics of fear | Simon Jenkins

Remember Sars? What about bird flu? Here we are again with the latest pandemic, having our insecurities cynically exploited

No one can tell me if Ebola is the worst plague since, variously, Aids, Sars, BSE or the black death. All I hear is that it might be. I do not mind being told no one knows. But what do I make of a prime minister who emerges from his Cobra bunker and declares a very serious threat to the UK, a US president who says it is spiralling out of control, and a World Health Organi...

Post-Scotland vote, a grand convention on devolution is needed - politicians keep out

Ministers pledged the moon to Scotland but cant and wont deliver with the English question muddying the waters

Tuesdays live blog: MPs debate further devolution

Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive, said Scotlands Walter Scott. His hour has come. Frantic to stop Scotland leaving the union last month, Westminster leaders rushed north to promise the moon. Scotland could have more devolved powers. Scotland would lose no Barnett subsidy. Scotland would stay represente...

Bombing Isis fails wars most critical imperative, so where is the opposition? | Simon Jenkins

Terrified to be seen as weak, our political leaders have backed a half-war they have no capacity to end

It is my first Hitler of this war. I queried the wests strategy of bombing Islamic State (Isis) and an elegant thinktanker retorted, I suppose you would let Hitler run riot over Europe. I walked away. I always respect Godwins Law, which states that the longer an argument runs, the greater the likelihood Hitler gets mentioned, killing it stone dead.

I cannot recall a conflict so swamped by inc...

Nick Clegg, human rights and Ukip Politics Weekly podcast

Simon Jenkins, Nick Cohen and Naomi Smith join Tom Clark to discuss the Liberal Democrat party conference; Conservative plans to reform the Human Rights Act and Ukip's parliamentary ambitions Continue reading...

The National Crime Agency would take us back to Soviet-style surveillance | Simon Jenkins

There is no threat to national security that justifies the kind of erosion of civil liberties suggested by the NCA chief Keith Bristow

Whenever I hear the words national security, I reach for my subscription to Liberty. According to the director general of the National Crime Agency, Keith Bristow, in todays Guardian, the police need new powers to hack private phone calls and emails. The requested snoopers charter is needed to find out who is talking to whom so as to catch serious and organised...