Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 147

Nightly Britain bombs Tripoli. Bar death, what do we achieve? | Simon Jenkins

Britain should never have got involved in Libya. But Whitehall constraint has been eroded, and none in power admit their folly

Britain's half-war against Libya is careering onward from reckless gesture to full-scale fiasco. As it reaches six months' duration, every sensibly pessimistic forecast has turned out true and every jingoistic boast false. Even if the desperate and probably illegal tactic of trying to assassinate Colonel Gaddafi gets lucky, Britain would find itself running a shambles ...

This localism bill will sacrifice our countryside to market forces | Simon Jenkins

The government's 'sustainable' new planning policy invites corruption and will sink us in urban sprawl

With parliament in recess the government this week sneaked out the most astonishing change to the face of England in half a century. A "national planning policy framework" replaces all previous regulation and encourages building wherever the market takes it, crucially in the two-thirds of rural England outside national parks, green belts and areas of outstanding natural beauty. Farms...

The last thing Norway needs is illiberal Britain's patronising | Simon Jenkins

Hysterical British reaction poses a greater threat to democracy than Anders Breivik's meaningless and random acts of violence

The Norwegian tragedy is just that, a tragedy. It does not signify anything and should not be forced to do so. A man so insane he can see nothing wrong in shooting dead 68 young people in cold blood is so exceptional as to be of interest to criminology and brain science, but not to politics. We can sympathise with the bereaved, and with their country in its collective s...

Monetary union, always unworkable, has set in train a European disaster | Simon Jenkins

The eurozone is edging closer to doomed fiscal union. But sceptics shouldn't celebrate, as the chaos will reach Britain too

At last, a real crisis. The Franco-German salvage operation for the eurozone was inevitable for the simple reason that Armageddon never happens. Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel patched together yet another "temporary" bail-out for the Greeks, and will do so for the Portuguese and Irish if need be. German taxpayers will pay the Greeks' bills and aid Europe's banks as...

The Murdoch story is not a Berlin Wall moment – just daft hysteria | Simon Jenkins

Phone hacking was a serious error. But the media industry would be poorer without Murdoch's innovative presence

Britain has gone mad, or at least the tiny patch of Britain round Westminster. The Pentagon would call it a clusterfuck, an all-embracing, uncontrollable chain reaction that appears unable to cease. The new ecstasy theorists call it "whooshing", when reason loses out to passion, and thought to imagination. As after the death of Princess Diana, every politician and commentator cries: ...

Press regulation: Q&A with Simon Jenkins | Simon Jenkins

The Guardian columnist debates with readers from 2.30pm on regulation of the press following the phone-hacking scandal

What should be done about us journalists? We outraged the royal family over the Diana pictures and tapes. We outraged MPs over expenses. Now we have (some of us) outraged public taste over phone hacking. On each occasion privacy was breached and the law in some degree defied. Each led to calls to toughen up regulation, take action against intrusion and protect privacy. With...

Gordon Brown now suffers that incurable syndrome: ex-PM | Simon Jenkins

Whether it was Heath's long sulk, Blair's penance or Thatcher's betrayal, Britain has rarely been kind to departed leaders

No animal in the political jungle is more awful in its misery than an ex-prime minister. With the blood of past battle still congealed on its back, it howls through the haunts of old, reeking of stale breath and stale headlines, a putrefying hulk of resentment, hopelessness and revenge. It grabs friend and foe alike by the neck and cries: "Fools, the lot of you. I was...

Politicians will forget the phone hacking and cringe again | Simon Jenkins

A newspaper faced up to Murdoch, not parliament. Instead of regulation, leaders need the courage to call the media's bluff

The family was rich, ruthless and had the king in its grasp. The nation quaked. But when the fell, the barons' revenge was savage. Hugh Despenser was strung up in Hereford market. His genitals were cut off and roasted before his eyes. His bowels were then torn out, to rid his body of filth. When still conscious, he was hanged close to death, taken d...

News of the World was not such a steal for Murdoch | Simon Jenkins

It may have made him piles of money, but the News of the World has proved more trouble to Rupert Murdoch than it was worth

When Rupert Murdoch bought the News of the World from its ancestral owners, the Carr family, in 1969 he called it "the biggest steal since the Great Train Robbery". Now it has turned and bit the hand that did the stealing. The paper was Murdoch's first big acquisition, a prelude to the Sun and the Times. But the glory soon passed when he serialised the Christine Keeler

Sir George Gilbert Scott, the unsung hero of British architecture | Simon Jenkins

The restoration of the St Pancras hotel should remind us of Scott, who towered over his profession yet has no biography

I remember it as a rat-infested dump. Water dripped down walls. Wires hung from ceilings. Pigeons colonised turrets and rafters. Gormenghast could not do justice to the profile of that destitute old lady, slumped at the far end of Euston Road. Poor St Pancras hotel embodied the contempt of modernism for anything old, stylish, romantic and, above all, Victorian. The place...