Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 120

Is nuclear power the solution to our energy needs? – five-minute video debate

Columnist Simon Jenkins debates the future of nuclear power with Craig Bennett, director of policy at Friends of the Earth

Simon JenkinsCraig BennettPhil Maynard

Empire of digital chip meets nemesis: the law of diminishing political returns | Simon Jenkins

The innovations of the past few years, initially so exhilarating, show ever more downsides

Route 101 leads south from San Francisco to Silicon Valley and the cybertowns of Mountain View and Cupertino. Rush-hour traffic is dotted with "working" coaches of computer staff already at their screens – Google ones white, Apple ones silver.

On arrival, they enter a nirvana of designer landscapes and ethnic cafes where they plot the next stage of the cyber-revolution.

I wonder how many ever predicted tha...

Universities should ditch the talk of investing in the future | Simon Jenkins

Instead of research academics need to focus on giving students what they want for their money: that is, a well-rounded education

Money talks. After two years of tuition fees at £7,000-£9,000 universities are apparently rolling in cash, and their students are demanding value for it. Universities are expected to deliver not just education but jobs. Courses are being tailored to "employability". Research is concentrated in the elite Russell institutions. Now the universities minister, David Wille...

Welcome back nuclear power, our costly, unpopular light in the dark | Simon Jenkins

The coalition's Hinkley nuclear deal is messy and bad for UK energy users, but it's a decision. And it's cheaper than wind

The best to be said of the Hinkley nuclear power station announced this morning by the government is that it was announced at all. After decades of indecision, the certain prospect of lights going out across Britain as coal stations closed finally forced Whitehall's hand. The coalition has taken a decision on energy, praise be. And nuclear is at least cheaper than wind.

Bey...

The US shutdown crisis has shown us democracy red in tooth and claw | Simon Jenkins

A catastrophe has been avoided, but the conflict over resources was real, and the problem has not gone away

The US has uttered a sigh of relief, and its critics the world over have chortled with glee. The nation that never ceases telling the world how to govern itself – even taking admonition as far as war - cannot run its own whelk stall. Was hypocrisy ever more grotesque?

Yet to visitors such as myself this week, America's budgetary hysteria and exhausted resolution have seemed a synthet...

Help to Buy should be dubbed Help to Vote | Simon Jenkins

George Osborne's crazy scheme is the latest in half a century of political bribery. But Britons never question why home ownership should be subsidised

Help to Buy should be dubbed Help to Vote. George Osborne today promised his party to deliver half a million "hard-working" electors from the dungeons of housing debt to the sunny uplands of Help to Buy. He would shower them with £12 billion of other people's money. He could summon the spirits of Toryism past, but will they come?

The coalition's...

Beating terrorism means good local policing, not a National Crime Agency | Simon Jenkins

Rather than the 'British FBI' and the US crashing about Somalia and Libya, it's police work on the ground that gets results

Navy seals storm ashore on Brighton beach. They race to a murky boarding house and bundle its occupants into a Mercedes and rush them to a ship offshore. Don't worry, they tell passers-by, they are terrorists. The innocent have nothing to fear. What would we think? The US attacks on Somalia and Libya over the weekend were against lawless parts of the world that harbour da...

The Shard can eat its heart out – this is Britain's beauty | Simon Jenkins

The 2013 Stirling architectural prizewinner is a medieval ruin brought back to use. The worm seems to be turning

The 2013 Stirling prize for architecture, announced last week, received almost no publicity. The reason must have been that the winner was not so much a building as architecture itself. This should have made it all the more significant.

The best work was the former ruin of a medieval fortified manor, converted into a house for holiday renting. Astley Castle in Warwicks...

After this budget chaos is Uncle Sam ready for assisted suicide? | Simon Jenkins

The federal shutdown looks disastrous, but the constitution's strength allows the US to stare into the abyss – and step back

I am of the pro-American generation. To us America was the future. Europe was nowhere. We read, saw, heard, visited America. We studied and worked there. Some of us even married Americans. We were affiliates of the tribe. We bought into the exceptionalist legend.

America can sorely test that loyalty. We were taught that the federal constitution must take the rough with the...

Nigel Farage has made an offer the Tories shouldn't refuse | Simon Jenkins

The Tories are simply too unpopular to turn down a Ukip pact in local elections – it might just keep them in power

Ukip's offer not to stand against local Conservative candidates who agree with its policies should be a no-brainer for the Tories. Bring it on. Why should the party order a Eurosceptic Tory MP to commit suicide, just because David Cameron dislikes the Ukip leader, Nigel Farage? Why should the Tories collectively deny themselves any way of securing a majority in the next parliament...