Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 139

In Afghanistan it's lies that are really killing our soldiers

The phoney oratory of British national security so beloved of Cameron and his generals has lost all contact with reality

Sometimes they have to lie. As the British death toll in Afghanistan rises past 400, every news item tells of reverses, mistakes and a desperation to withdraw. Someone has to hold the line. Those whose job is to fight and possibly die for their country need to believe they do so for a purpose. A nation bidding them to die needs it too.

Hence the prime minister has to assert t...

In Afghanistan it's lies that are really killing our soldiers | Simon Jenkins

The phoney oratory of British national security so beloved of Cameron and his generals has lost all contact with reality

Sometimes they have to lie. As the British death toll in Afghanistan rises past 400, every news item tells of reverses, mistakes and a desperation to withdraw. Someone has to hold the line. Those whose job is to fight and possibly die for their country need to believe they do so for a purpose. A nation bidding them to die needs it too.

Hence the prime minister has to assert t...

Politics Weekly podcast: middle class taxes and Super Tuesday

There is less than two weeks until George Osborne presents his annual budget and Vince Cable has been letting it be known he wants more work done on wealth taxes. He'd also like to see RBS broken up as well as a more "compelling vision" for economic growth.

Earlier in the week his Liberal Democrat colleague Nick Clegg did the rounds on breakfast television amid reports he's pressing Osborne to tinker further with child benefit cuts.

Both men are hoping they can rally their troops at their...

Drop the 50p tax rate and target property – the gutsy Welsh way to go | Simon Jenkins

Our council tax epitomises the political cowardice of successive governments. Will George Osborne be braver?

George Osborne has the right instinct on tax. Get some sanity into child and housing benefit, relieve taxes at the bottom and, at the top, tax wealth rather than income. If so, there is no time like the present. The chancellor should drop the unloved 50% band of income tax and go for property. Housing is the most inefficient, mal-distributed, under-taxed and therefore overpriced asset i...

We are fighting Islamism from ignorance, as we did the cold war | Simon Jenkins

The west wasted trillions in needless conflict with the USSR. Now we are being brainwashed into confrontation with Iran

Were we wrong? I have lived through two global conflicts: the west against Russian communism and now the west against political Islam. The latter was caused by western leaders exaggerating a threat from a tiny group of terrorists to win popularity in war. But the former? Surely the cold war was a good war, a Manichean struggle between competing visions of how to order...

Leveson's phone-hacking show trial has a cruel virtue | Simon Jenkins

My Leveson scepticism is fading. Public humiliation of Murdoch and co is where its value lies, not judgments on media reform

This week's allegations against the Sun newspaper and the Metropolitan police are serious. They are no everyday story of journalistic folk, of sleazy reporters and bent coppers after a tip-off. The police investigator, Sue Akers, told the Leveson inquiry of a systematic "culture of illegal payments" to suborn officials in various government departments, some involving...

Leveson's phone-hacking show trial has a cruel virtue

My Leveson scepticism is fading. Public humiliation of Murdoch and co is where its value lies, not judgments on media reform

This week's allegations against the Sun newspaper and the Metropolitan police are serious. They are no everyday story of journalistic folk, of sleazy reporters and bent coppers after a tip-off. The police investigator, Sue Akers, told the Leveson inquiry of a systematic "culture of illegal payments" to suborn officials in various government departments, some involving...

Adele and her ilk have mangled the ancient art of rhetoric | Simon Jenkins

Awards ceremonies highlight the amateurism of modern public speeches – most are an exercise in tedium and torture

Adele's finger is not the issue. Nor is it the tyrannical "suits" who cut off the Brit Award winner's speech in full flow on Tuesday. Nor is it the power of money over human discourse or of Blur's music over Adele's oratory. The issue is that speeches go on too long. They all do. Damon Albarn rambled on interminably, leaving no time for Adele to do likewise. The rudeness was...

Theresa May plays a familiar part in the farce of border control | Simon Jenkins

Whitehall reorganisation is ministers' favourite blood sport. But frontline staff must be allowed to make their own decisions

Half a million foreigners have apparently entered the UK since 2007 without proper passport checks. Anyone who thinks this posed a major threat to national security is mad. There has been no crime wave, no jihadist uprising, no outbreak of suicide bombing. One wonders what immigration control is for. Yet the words foreigner and border control trigger such hysteria that ...

We can love only a beloved. For all the others, try courtesy | Simon Jenkins

Her hymn to love was beautiful, but Jeannette Winterson's mistake is to generalise this most specific of emotions

The Guardian honoured Valentine's Day on Tuesday with a front page piece by Jeanette Winterson on love. It was a fine idea, given prominence over the euro, phone hacking and Syria. Winterson is a glorious writer and a delightful person. But why a woman? Why is it that only women can write of love?

The stereotype holds that women do love and men do lager. Women are delicate and...