Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 123

How to rid Twitter of misogyny – and make it fit for debate | Simon Jenkins

Women like Caroline Criado-Perez have suffered a torrent of bigotry on social media. But regulation can stop it

The great god of the mountain is turning grim. The warm, lovable, liberal dawn of the digital era suddenly seems dark and menacing. E-crime is rife, state snooping is everywhere, hate speech and misogyny howl and cackle in the internet slipstream. People are getting hurt.

Such has been the row over Jane Austen at the Bank of England that we might think Caroline Criado-Perez was runnin...

Making travel 'safer' is a dangerous game | Simon Jenkins

The train and coach crashes in Spain and Italy may have been preventable, but we mustn't think we can make travel truly safe

Travel is dangerous. It has been since the dawn of time. Two horrific accidents in the past few days suggest that neither railways nor roads are wholly safe. A Spanish high-speed train goes too fast into a bend and 79 people die. An Italian coach crashes through a "safety" barrier and plunges off a viaduct, leaving at least 37 people dead. Our response is instinctive. Wh...

At last, George Osborne has got in touch with his inner Keynes | Simon Jenkins

With his buy-to-let scheme the chancellor is finally pumping cash to a more productive place than bank vaults

At first sight, you could not make it up. For three years George Osborne starves the economy of money in an orgy of recession and austerity. Then, just as things pick up, he offers the huge sum of £12bn to precisely the sector – sub-prime housing – that caused the trouble in the first place. He is begging the drunks back into the bar. Is Osborne mad or is he mad?

I must admit that when...

Enjoy today, young prince. It's all downhill from here | Simon Jenkins

The third in line to the throne cannot expect to enjoy the slightest privacy. The media drones are already overhead

In the Charles Addams cartoon, the ghoulish father outside the maternity ward looks up as the door opens. "Congratulations," says the nurse, "it's a baby." The world's media went beyond parody this week as they waited at the Lindo wing of St Mary's hospital in London. The globalised suspense seemed synthetic. What did they expect the woman to produce, a gorilla?

"The news is that...

Chris Froome's victory deserves praise, not political piggybacking | Simon Jenkins

If there were a gold medal for co-opting sporting triumph for political purposes, British politicians would win it

Olympics, tennis, rugby, cricket, and now cycling – is there anything we cannot do better than everyone? We were beaten at golf and women's football, but we'll let that pass. However the one thing Britain does best of all is to claim monumental "externality" to sporting prowess. When the economy was in the doldrums, we "couldn't even win a World Cup". When we do win World Cups, it...

David Cameron has failed to resist the lunchtime lobbyists' lure | Simon Jenkins

In opposition, he saw the scandal coming. But in office the PM has cosied up to corporate figures like Lynton Crosby

I chat; you lobby; he is corrupt. It is all persuasion. When Lynton Crosby's clients in the tobacco industry saw him land a big job advising Downing Street, they must have whooped with joy. When Whitehall was about to apply tough curbs on tobacco labelling, Downing Street instantly objected. The clients must have cried, "Attaboy, Lynton!"

In the Commons on Wednesday, David Camero...

Another NHS crisis? This is no way to run a public service | Simon Jenkins

Grotesquely overcentralised, and with every arm raised in salute to the minister, Britain's healthcare is stuck in a 1940s time-warp

Will it never stop? Today's Commons shouting match on failing hospitals between the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and his opposite number, Andy Burnham, was the worst possible publicity for a national health service, a godsend to privatisers and American rightwingers. Blame was diffused to more reports, inspectors, risk registers, special measures, leadership ac...

TA soldiers aren't alone in brushing with danger in the Brecon Beacons | Simon Jenkins

The death of two TA soldiers puts heat training in question – but many others seek an escape from health-and-safety drudgery

Don't mess with the Brecon Beacons. The trek over at nearly 3,000 feet is freezing in winter and punishingly hot in summer. The sweeping combes and sudden drops are deceptive to the unwary and getting out is not easy. The training offered by the Beacons has made them a natural base for the SAS. Thousands of soldiers use these mountains each year. Just occasionally someon...

Who let this Gulf on Thames scar London's Southbank? Mayor Boris | Simon Jenkins

Boris Johnson pledged to control the vulgarity of bigness. But his city is alone in Europe in its slavery to 'anything goes' money

When the jokes and buffoonery are dead and forgotten, the towers will remain. The true nature of Boris Johnson's London is taking shape in the form of some 30 bleak glass megaliths dotted at random across the capital. He did not intend them and appears not to have planned them. Like Ken Livingstone, Johnson came to power pledged to end the "pepper-potting" of Londo...

Even Le Carré's latest fiction can't do justice to Snowden | Simon Jenkins

Whistleblower and writer both finger the enemy as their own side. But the full horror of truth always outdoes the imagination

Shocked, or not shocked? The chasm widens. The New York Times this week carried a story from a whistleblower close to Washington's foreign intelligence surveillance court, known as the Fisa court – a secret body set up in 1978 to monitor federal phone taps. It now gives legal cover to intelligence trawling of millions of individuals, at home and abroad.

The recent revela...