Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 154

This localism bill shows Eric Pickles is Hazel Blears in super-sized wolf's clothing | Simon Jenkins

Like his predecessors, communities secretary Eric Pickles set out on the road to localism but has swerved off into the fudge factory

The big society is dead. Long live the small one. Big is bad, and anyway it was just a politician's cliche, glitter to dress the stage for a passing election back in early 2010. What matters is power, power and its distribution. That is the theme with variations of the coalition's most important constitutional measure so far, this week's localism bill published...

In this World Cup sewer, we reptiles of British journalism hold our heads high | Simon Jenkins

Let Fifa's murk be cleared. As WikiLeaks has shown, disclosure is all we have when audit is polluted and politicians are cowed

The grovelling of the prime minister and the second in line to the throne before Fifa's Zurich racket has been a national humiliation. Had they no intelligence of what was going on? Had this exposure to ridicule not been risk-assessed? Even a cursory glance at the allegations from the Sunday Times and the BBC's Panorama would have warned Downing Street and the Palace t...

US embassy cables: The job of the media is not to protect the powerful from embarrassment | Simon Jenkins

It is for governments – not journalists – to guard public secrets, and there is no national jeopardy in WikiLeaks' revelations

Is it justified? Should a newspaper disclose virtually all a nation's secret diplomatic communication, illegally downloaded by one of its citizens? The reporting in the Guardian of the first of a selection of 250,000 US state department cables marks a recasting of modern diplomacy. Clearly, there is no longer such a thing as a safe electronic archive, whatever...

Napoleon Gove can dictate its terms but the school curriculum is bogus | Simon Jenkins

Like his predecessors, the education secretary must fiddle. Yet his list will mean just as little for life beyond the school gate

Nothing appeals to a politician so much as the chance to rewrite a curriculum. He would not dare operate on a brain tumour or land a jumbo jet or design the Forth Bridge. But let him near a classroom, and the Jupiter complex takes over. He goes berserk. Any fool can teach, and the existing fools are no good at it. Napoleon might lose the battle of Waterloo, but he r...