Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 65

Worrying about robots stealing our jobs? How silly | Simon Jenkins

The digital age will free us up not only for leisure activities but also to take on caring roles that can only be filled by humans

So we are doomed. Robots will steal our jobs. Algorithms will capture our children. Artificial intelligence will corrupt our free will. We are to be slaves to machines.

The Bank of England economist Andy Haldane warns today that “large swathes” of current labour will disappear as AI takes over. For a man who lives and breathes statistics, large swathes is a poor per...

Museums are not the proper home for our greatest works | Simon Jenkins

The permanent resting place for Stephenson’s Rocket should be a railway platform

What is the connection between an Ethiopian’s hair, a famous steam engine and a set of chess pieces? The answer is that all are topics of dispute in the murky world of museum politics. The hair was cut from the head of a dead emperor and brought to London by a victorious British general in 1868. Now in the army museum in Chelsea but regarded by Ethiopians as sacred, its return has long been requested by Addis Abab...

More British troops are being sent to Afghanistan – to appease Trump | Simon Jenkins

Why is no politician of any party brave enough to challenge the UK’s continued involvement in this distant and hopeless war?

Four hundred and forty British troops are about to leave for Afghanistan to help fight the Taliban. Could someone explain why? It is now four years since British troops “left” that country, after 13 long years and £40bn of fighting, culminating in defeat in Helmand. In 2014, Nato formally ended its retaliation for Afghanistan harbouring Osama bin Laden. It said it would...

The HS2 rail project is out of date and out of control. But it can still be halted | Simon Jenkins

Britain is cutting care homes and children’s centres, yet blowing £80bn on a railway line that has failed every viability test

Vanity projects are like foreign wars. They ensnare politicians and drive them mad. A high-speed rail track from London to Birmingham and beyond was first sold to David Cameron in 2009 as a glamorous alternative to a third runway at Heathrow, which he had pledged never to build. HS2 was stupid then, and has grown ever stupider ever since.

Related: HS2 is not a useless...

If we value rural Britain, we can’t build houses all over it | Simon Jenkins

The countryside should not be up for speculative land grab – we need clear rules about which areas are open for development

Government housing policy has lost all contact with planning Britain’s countryside. This week the Campaign to Protect Rural England is up in arms over house-building in green belts, and over the lack of what it calls affordable housing. These are a distraction. It is planning as such that has collapsed.

The CPRE is concerned that 8,000 houses were built last year on green-...

The crisis in Northants reveals a Britain heading back to pre-Victorian days | Simon Jenkins

With the council close to bankruptcy, years of austerity are coming home to roost. The government should uncap local taxes

Is Northamptonshire Britain’s first banana republic? This once lovely county, much of it now a waste of wind turbines and warehouses, is close to bankruptcy. It must sack staff, freeze pay,  close two-thirds of its libraries and stop all bus subsidies. It faces default on its statutory duty to public health, children in care and the elderly. While much of this is due...

The railways are a mess. But it’s not all Chris Grayling’s fault | Simon Jenkins

Fragmented rail privatisation has resulted in a fiasco for which no one person or company can justly be held responsible

Which question is best when something goes wrong? How to put it right, or who to blame? The first makes sense, but the second is more fun. That is why Chris Grayling, the hapless transport secretary, is being cursed by rail commuters from Brighton to Bedford to Blackpool. Today, yet another emergency timetable enters operation on Northern rail, announced with an inaugural ca...

Is execution Britain’s new populist ruse? | Simon Jenkins

The government’s cooperation over the US trial of two Isis suspects undermines British justice, even if it has been forced to temporarily suspend it

I shuddered at the news that Japan has finally hanged the remaining six sarin killers of 1995, as well as their leader. It was not the ghoulishness that dismayed me, but the return to fashion of execution under the guise of counterterrorism. Capital punishment has long been a populist cause. Four years ago, a majority of Britons still supported it...

Don’t worry, a no-deal Brexit won’t be allowed to happen | Simon Jenkins

Even if Britain does leave the EU on WTO rules next March, life will still go on largely as normal

Now they are talking car crashes. From Brussels comes Project Fear Mk II, a “preparedness” guide for Europe if there is no deal on Brexit. It is Brussels-speak for a terrorism red alert. It covers such things as passports, air traffic control, financial transfers, military bases, data protection, medicines licensing and all the border clutter we have spent half a century removing. Unlike the rema...

A second referendum during Brexit negotiations would be absurd | Simon Jenkins

Justine Greening’s suggestion fails to acknowledge that the current parliamentary deadlock is party political

• Justine Greening endorses second Brexit referendum

An eerie truth is starting to dawn. Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn agree on Brexit. They are both realists. They know Britain needs a customs union with the EU. Perhaps they should go off to a Welsh mountain together, and do a Trump/Putin? Either way, it is time for parliament to offer united support to Britain’s negotiators in Brusse...