Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 133

Let us all see the Foreign Office anaconda | Simon Jenkins

London has far too many paintings, sculptures and museum objects hidden from view. Time for the 'anaconda project'

How much is an anaconda? The £10,000 paid by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to have theirs re-stuffed seems a lot. You can pick up a nine-footer from Cleethorpes for £250 on eBay, "mature, could be calmed down if you have the time." I am sure the FCO interns could pen it up, and use it to terrorise recalcitrant Tory backbenchers.

The FCO snake has attracted attention chiefly b...

In the wind turbine debate, who dares utter the B-word? | Simon Jenkins

Unless we find the words to discuss the beauty of our landscape, it will be desecrated by lines of great waving semaphores

You can smash a building, bomb a city, impoverish a nation and the world grants you a hearing. But break the twig of a British tree and hobgoblins will descend and destroy you. Thank goodness for that.

Britain this autumn is ablaze. The year's eccentric climate has given us dying leaves of unprecedented splendour. Researching a book on English landscape, I travelled last we...

David Cameron's pro-EU charade cannot go on much longer | Simon Jenkins

The PM talks tough on the European Union but claims to support it. His position is hopeless. A new deal is needed

After Wednesday's vote in the House of Commons, David Cameron could find himself the last "pro-European" in Britain. He will leave for Brussels next month for the seven-year EU budget summit trying to hang tough, but outflanked by his party rebels and by Labour, all wanting him to hang even tougher. He wants to keep the EU budget in line with inflation. The others want it slashed....

Wave a banknote at a pundit and he'll predict anything | Simon Jenkins

Of course it is outrageous to jail scientists for honest errors, but it is legitimate to hold them to some account

On the evening of 5 April 2009, Luigi Guigno of L'Aquila in Italy was phoned by a sister terrified by tremors under their village. He told her not to worry. Government experts in "the forecasting and prevention of major risks" had just been on the news declaring there to be "no danger" of an earthquake. They need not go out into the street. A few hours later an earthquake struck a...

The Jimmy Savile witch-hunt sets us on a path to paranoia | Simon Jenkins

In our rush to apportion blame for the actions of an individual, we risk becoming blind to the real issues of the day

Is Jimmy Savile and the BBC the biggest story on Earth? Apparently so. Today the British media placed it above Romney versus Obama, above the implosion of Lebanon and above the birth of the world's largest oil company. Savile was bigger than killer drones in Lincolnshire, bigger than Cameron's prison policy, bigger than the sensational Birmingham terrorism trial. The mere "stan...

Rather than prices, David Cameron should fix the energy mess | Simon Jenkins

If a Tory prime minister can 'pass a law' on utility bills, then he can make a decision on where our power should come from

David Cameron's way of running the country becomes ever more eccentric. This week he was like a dyspeptic columnist. On Wednesday he raged about soaring energy prices, leapt up in the House of Commons and said he would "pass a law" against them. That is the joy of being a Blairite prime minister. Margaret Thatcher would have spent hours fussing over how to do what she sai...

It's drugs politics, not drugs policy, that needs an inquiry | Simon Jenkins

The sanity of politicians in opposition turns into the darkest taboo in power. This is the greatest failure of modern statecraft

Imagine the Afghan war had run for the past 40 years. Imagine 2,000 deaths a year. The enemy remains 400,000-strong, despite 40,000 being taken prisoner annually. The war costs £1bn a month. Casualties vary from time to time, but there is no hope of victory. Were that the case, I suggest public opinion might be exasperated. Parliament might debate the matter. Ministe...

Michael Gove's centralism is not so much socialist as Soviet | Simon Jenkins

Instead of modernising, British schools stick with the same culture that saw a Nobel winner humiliated in class

What first occurred to Sir John Gurdon, scientist, on hearing this week that he had won the Nobel prize for medicine, was presumably the joy of recognition. What next occurred was more basic. It was a chance for revenge against his old science teacher, who had called his work "disastrous" and marked him to the bottom of the class. Any ambition to be a scientist was "a waste of time …...

We need an iconoclast to lead the Bank of England | Simon Jenkins

Central bankers are acting like allied commanders at the Battle of the Somme. Adair Turner would be a breath of fresh air

How to wreck Adair Turner's chances of becoming next governor of the Bank of England? Answer, name him as the best candidate fit for the job. For the first time in modern history it really matters who is governor. It matters that the person should have a grasp not just of the shambles that is modern banking but of the rigor mortis now afflicting Britain's economic mana...

Cromarty may have gone, but now we have Spanglish | Simon Jenkins

Dialect can't be saved any more than the families that use it can be frozen in time. Instead, enjoy the creation of new voices

Bobby Hogg of Cromarty has died at the age of 92. His death was not neglected on the slopes of Millbuie or shores of Avoch Bay, especially since the death last year of his brother, Gordon. They were the last two speakers of the Cromarty dialect, on the wild Black Isle of the Moray Firth. With them goes another British tongue, surviving only in a phrase book and a few p...