Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 110

High-speed 3? These mega-projects are the quack remedies of modern politics | Simon Jenkins

George Osborne's high-speed rail line across the Pennines is a pipedream. He should free northern cities to build their own head of steam

When Jim Hacker in Yes Minister asked Sir Humphrey why the M40 (to Oxford) was completed so long before the M11 (to Cambridge), the reply was simple: "It's been years since Transport had a permanent secretary from Cambridge." Ask why the London to Manchester HS2 is so close to the heart of the chancellor of the exchequer while the trans-Pennine "high-speed...

The scaremongering has begun. Isis is no threat to Britain | Simon Jenkins

Liam Fox, MI6 and co are preparing the ground for more military intervention and greater powers for GCHQ spuriously justified by the fear of returning jihadists

Seumas Milne: More US bombs and drones will only escalate Iraq's horror

The security service trade union is now in full cry. It wants more money, more power, less oversight and will go to any lengths of scaremongering to get it.

Yesterday its cheerleader, the former defence secretary, Liam Fox, was unequivocal. There were people going a...

In this post-digital age, we still thrill to the power of live | Simon Jenkins

The tyranny of the internet is crumbling as we seek an antidote everywhere from galleries to Glastonbury. I find it all hugely reassuring

Where were you, grandad, when we all went post-digital? Don't tell me you were still boring on about apps, streams, firewalls, clouds and the dark web. That was yesterday. Didn't they teach you about experience theory back in 2014?

Cut to this week's queue outside the Serpentine Gallery in London, where Marina Abramovic tells delighted crowds to abandon all d...

Further military intervention in Iraq? The very idea beggars belief | Simon Jenkins

The yearning to bomb someone, if only to send a message, shows how western politics remains stuck in the age of Homer

Richard Seymour: Tony Blair and his ilk are not democrats, but liberal tyrants

What is going on? Until recently Britain's foreign secretary, William Hague, parroted Washington's thesis that Iran was an axis of evil. No epithet was too harsh for the ayatollahs and their minions, and "all options" were on the table for punishing Tehran. Now, the UK government is in a spo...

The only silver lining over Iraq is rapprochement between the US and Iran | Simon Jenkins

Perhaps America's need for help will usher in an era of greater respect for the integrity and sovereignty of foreign states

Chaos creates strange bedfellows. Having induced shambles in Iraq and so far failed to induce shambles in Iran, America now needs Iran's help to clear up the shambles in Iraq.

Instability is the worst curse an invader can visit on a vanquished state. At such a time, any agent of stability is welcome. As in Syria and Lebanon, and now in Iraq, Iran is such an agent, and a de...

In Rio and Manaus Fifa's racketeers will show they are the only game in town | Simon Jenkins

The English FA should quit the thieves who run this obscene World Cup. But Blatter can relax: chauvinism will, as always, come first

So the Manaus pitch is rubbish, a patch of burnt sand with streaky lines across it. The useless Brazilians cannot plant a hundred yards of lawn without fouling it up. How dare they insult the golden angels of English and Italian football. The groundsman should be fed to the Amazon piranhas. Manaus is a bungle in the jungle.

So say the British tabloids. Yet it is o...

When Whitehall meddles in schools, it's only ever bad news | Simon Jenkins

Forget talk of liberating local schools in Birmingham or anywhere else. The distant rule of Gove and Ofsted is far more damaging

Where is the voice of Birmingham's teachers? In a former life I was briefly a teacher. Of all the jobs I have ever done, this was the hardest. I felt I was doctor, policeman, judge, scholar, counsellor and friend. I felt horribly responsible for the faces of the future gazing up at me. My professional accountability was to them and no one else. Never d...

The Trojan horse row shows the failure of Michael Gove's centralism | Simon Jenkins

Wielding the blundering cudgels of Whitehall is not the answer. These schools must be governed through local accountability

Schools in Birmingham are today subject to two separate eruptions. One concerns relations between the education secretary, Michael Gove, and the home secretary, Theresa May, over whether the former "did enough" to counter Islamist extremism the "Trojan horse" plot in the schools now considered in his charge. Here Gove might reasonably protest that his...

Secret justice may be right for Putin's Russia but not peacetime Britain | Simon Jenkins

Judges have become co-opted into the security apparatus, bartering liberty for an assumed safety

Those who trade freedom for security deserve neither. Benjamin Franklin's platitude loses none of its force for being chronically in need of repetition. This week in the court of appeal a group of newspapers pleaded to be allowed to report the fact that a criminal trial was to be held in secret for the first time in Britain. A judge, Mr Justice Nicol, had earlier ordered that the press be gagged fo...

Cleanse Fifa of corruption by leaving it, not playing along | Simon Jenkins

We've danced to Blatter's tune for too long. Britain, the birthplace of football, should set up a rival body if only we had the guts

Why is world sport so corrupt? Olympics, football, cycling, even cricket have been enveloped in scandals of doping, match-fixing, transfer bungs and venue bribery. The Sunday Times' exposure of alleged corruption in Fifa's choice of countries to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups is overwhelming. Yet Michael Garcia, the American lawyer appointed by Fifa to in...