Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 144

America's itch to brawl now has a new target – but bombs can't conquer Iran | Simon Jenkins

A post-imperial virus has infected foreign policy. We've been here before, we know the human cost, and now we must stop

This time there will be no excuses. Plans for British support for an American assault on Iran, revealed in today's Guardian, are appalling. They would risk what even the "wars of 9/11" did not bring: a Christian-Muslim armageddon engulfing the region. This time no one should say they were not warned, that minds were elsewhere, that we were told it would be swift and...

For David Cameron big bridges are sexier than real jobs | Simon Jenkins

Conservative economic policy is still spellbound by supply-side glamour, so the market has no part to play in creating growth

The worst evil economics can inflict on humans is unemployment. Not lower pay, poor working conditions, costly housing or enforced migration; just the lack of a job. To be able-bodied and out of work is debilitating to an individual and a waste to society.

Figures todayfrom the Office for National Statistics and earlier ones from the OECD and the International Labour...

Great English dates No 8: 1688 - the Glorious Revolution

The Protestant William of Orange's seizure of the throne from the Catholic James II was blatant usurpation, but it settled once and for all the conflict between crown and parliament

The 16th-century Reformation and 17th-century revolution can in retrospect seem inevitable in the story of England. Both were close-run things. Though initially Protestant, the Stuart monarchs dallied not only with Roman Catholicism but with the idea, much touted by James I, that kingship was divinely ordained and ...

EU bailout: In trying to save the euro, Germany is making demands that cannot be met | Simon Jenkins

The EU, which was mildly corrupt, is now reckless and rigid too. Whatever the question, monetary union is not the answer

It was the best of deals; it was the worst of deals. Now it is Germany waving a piece of paper declaring peace in our time. Now it is Germany taking the burden of what Angela Merkel, its leader, calls "the worst crisis since the second world war". Greece has defaulted by 50% on its debt. The afflicted banks are to be aided, and the wider eurozone is to be underpinned by a...

Great English dates No 7: 1536

Two years after Henry VIII's break with Rome, the dissolution of the monasteries changed the face and fortunes of England for ever

Henry VIII (1509-47) was the Hercules of English history. Part medieval tyrant, part renaissance prince, he discarded the ancient compromise of Norman rulers and English people. He took a nation salvaged by his father, Henry Tudor, from civil war and set over it a sovereign king, master of its civil and religious being.

In 1534, tormented by the Roman church's...

Occupy Wall Street? These protests are not Tahrir Square but scenery | Simon Jenkins

Power has slipped from democratic institutions and is ever further from the people. Insurrection, though, requires menace

Street protest "against capitalism" appears to have nowhere to go. The rioters of Athens and Madrid, the marchers of Milan and Frankfurt, the squatters of London and New York can grab a headline and illustrate a story, but then what? With no leaders, no policies, no programme beyond opposition to status quo, they must just sink into the urban background.

Travelling this...

Occupy Wall Street? These protests are not Tahrir Square but scenery

Power has slipped from democratic institutions and is ever further from the people. Insurrection, though, requires menace

Street protest "against capitalism" appears to have nowhere to go. The rioters of Athens and Madrid, the marchers of Milan and Frankfurt, the squatters of London and New York can grab a headline and illustrate a story, but then what? With no leaders, no policies, no programme beyond opposition to status quo, they must just sink into the urban background.

Travelling this...

Europe's defunct idealism is like Munich all over again | Simon Jenkins

The blindness that afflicts Europe's leaders on the euro and austerity is straight from the 1930s

Europe's financial crisis is acquiring the stench of Munich. No, it is not Nazi Germany. But it is the same ceaseless meetings and pretend deals, the same flying here and there and getting nowhere, the same refusing to acknowledge catastrophe on the horizon, hoping someone else will take a tough decision.

In 2008 the financial spotlight was on Washington. Banks were rescued, but not the American...

Great English dates No 6: 1415

Agincourt is one of the most famous battles in English history, but the victory proved short-lived and marked the begining of the end of English ambitions in France

One of the greatest of English military victories was also the most senseless. As a battle, conducted mostly by archers against mounted knights, it was sensational. As at Crécy and Poitiers, earlier in the 100 years war, English (or rather Welsh) archers out-manoeuvred the French. Bodies of hundreds of fallen men-at-arms formed a r...

Why fiddle with our clocks? This ritual persecution of the sleepless must end | Simon Jenkins

The return from summer time to gloomy GMT owes nothing to nature and all to the Scots. Let us down south enjoy a little light

I usually wake at 5.30, which is earlier than I like but gives me two uninterrupted hours of work before the day begins. However, at the end of the month the government will make me wake at 4.30, which I find miserably early. Then, when I have grown used to treating 4.30 as 5.30, the government will next April tell me to wake at 6.30. This is crazy. If lighter evenings ...