Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 69

Anna Campbell’s death in Syria was futile, but her passion was admirable | Simon Jenkins

The humanitarian sympathy she showed by leaving Britain to fight for the Kurds should not be dismissed

“She wanted to create a better world and would do everything in her power to do that.” The words of Anna Campbell’s father on her death in Syria convey the heartbreak any parent would feel. She was, he said, “young, idealistic, passionate, brave, determined”. He was “in pieces”.

Related: British woman killed fighting Turkish forces in Afrin

Related: 'Hundreds of us will die in Raqqa’: the wo...

After the Skripal attack, talk of war only plays into Vladimir Putin’s hands | Simon Jenkins

Theresa May’s language in the wake of events in Salisbury has been unhelpful, given our history of provoking Russia

Do we really want war with Russia? Do we want to risk one, even a tiny one? The prospect has certainly taken British minds off Brexit. It has exhilarated the press. It has given Theresa May an immense boost and helped the defence lobby in its campaign for more money. There is nothing democracy seems to enjoy so much as contemplating war, to unite it and raise its spirits. It is n...

Liverpool prison is a symbol of our broken system. Send the inmates home | Simon Jenkins

The jail’s squalid conditions are shocking, reflecting the failure of the UK’s system as a whole. Do these prisoners really need to be locked up?

Prisons are Britain’s dirty little secret. Hospitals may be overcrowded, roads congested, teachers exhausted and students offended. These woes pale against the disgrace that is Britain’s prisons. The news that two long-serving workers at Liverpool jail have been sacked for complaining about conditions caps a litany of dire inspections of this establi...

Nerve gas in Salisbury, drones in Syria: is there a moral difference? | Simon Jenkins

The attempted murder of a former Russian spy is rightly condemned. Yet Britain advocates the execution of its own citizens in the Middle East. It’s sheer hypocrisy

In 2015 a British student from Cardiff, Reyaad Khan, was killed in Syria by an RAF drone bomb, presumably “piloted” from Lincolnshire. A House of Commons report later accepted that he was “orchestrating and inciting” terrorist attacks in Britain, but could not discover how imminent the attacks were or the legal basis for his killing...

Theresa May wants to have her cake and eat it with housebuilding too | Simon Jenkins

In trying to woo millennials and keep the Tory shires sweet, the government’s message on planning policy is mixed at best

Theresa May is becoming the maestro of contradiction. Over the weekend she announced the most savagely centralised planning regime in English history. Housing targets are to be imposed on every local authority – irrespective of where they are or the state of local demand. She sees provincial England as the Soviets saw power stations: as a statistical blob. Any council that...

Skunk is causing misery – criminalisation isn’t working | Simon Jenkins

Drugs reform has been urged by doctors and police chiefs. Yet our politicians have failed to act, and the consequences have been disastrous

Can Britain ever kill its worst taboo? This week’s news of the soaring prevalence of skunk, in place of weaker and less harmful herbal forms of cannabis, is appalling. With other news of prison chaos due to an epidemic of artificial cannabis (spice), government drugs policy is devoid of coherence – and clearly lethal. Deaths from drug misuse are now at an...

Obesity is a greater threat for millennials than cannabis. It’s absurd | Simon Jenkins

Millennials look set to be the fattest generation of Britons ever, yet the government continues to dodge the issue

Seven out of 10 millennials are now expected to be “overweight or obese” by their late 30s – compared with an already alarming half of baby-boomers. The well-documented burden on the NHS from type 2 diabetes alone will be crippling. Already only Iceland and Malta are fatter in western Europe. It is therefore a legitimate concern of the state. Yet the state is dodging the issue. Th...

Wine and dine democracy is now on trial – and about time | Simon Jenkins

The Westminster affair shows the potential power of the lobbying industry. Oversight is crucial for all

Each time a US gunman goes berserk, the British media erupts in fury at the money the gun lobby can devote to its lethal interest. To be sure, big time lobbying is the occupational disease of American politics. In the US, it can have murderous consequences. Still, on matters of principle, Britons would do well to watch their hypocrisy.

The sums spent by property companies on lobbying Westmins...

Student finance is broken. A graduate tax is the only solution | Simon Jenkins

Theresa May is right to criticise current tuition fees. The whole system needs overhauling

Britain’s student loan scheme is the worst public-sector project in modern history. It has put the nation’s graduates £100bn in the red, currently predicted to rise to £330bn by 2044, of which three-quarters will not be repaid. The rest is dumped on the taxpayer. This cannot go on. Extravagant, distorting and unfair, the existing loans system was transformed by Tony Blair’s introduction of tuition fees i...

Prize our public services, but don’t make privatisation a dirty word | Simon Jenkins

For all the concern about PFI, the truth is that we will always need a mix of state and market

What do Oxfam, Carillion and the East Coast mainline have in common? The answer is that we all own them, or we run them, or at least we pay for them to be run. They are agents of government, subcontractors, proxy servants of the state. The government has responsibility for the money they spend and picks up the pieces when they fail. They form a grey, soggy, unaccountable no man’s land somewhere betwe...