Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 71

Revenge has no place in the law – even for John Worboys | Simon Jenkins

Victims of dreadful crimes receive more compensation and sympathy than ever, and rightly so. But justice is not theirs to deliver

Retribution is poor justice. It is the short cut to lynch law and mob rule. Lock-‘em-up-and-throw-away-the key has long been the default mode of British attitudes to crime, spectacularly on display today in the worrying case of the serial sex attacker John Worboys.

No one has any idea on what basis he has been released from an indeterminate sentence after serving lon...

Will neglect drive Yorkshire to a Catalan-style revolt? | Simon Jenkins

England’s most substantial province should be on a par with Scotland, yet devolution remains a distant dream

The week before Christmas there was a minor explosion over South Yorkshire. By a majority of 85%, the people of Barnsley and Doncaster voted “Shexit”. In a twin-town referendum, they chose to have nothing to do with neighbouring Sheffield, the city region about to rule over them. They declared themselves loyal only to God’s own county, plain Yorkshire. That was good enough for them.

What...

Britain’s need for ‘drunk tanks’ shows how broken our society is | Simon Jenkins

If we can have booze buses, then why not care clubs for the isolated, vulnerable and unwell? The need is sadly all too great

Friday night in a big city casualty department is not a nice place to be. A reported 70% of patients are not really ill, just blind drunk. What on earth are they doing there?

The answer is that every social nuisance nowadays seems to lead either to a police station or A&E. In recent years, 12 British cities have been “experimenting” with so-called alcohol recovery uni...

Fining universities for no-platforming denies the idea of academic freedom | Simon Jenkins

The government says it wants to ensure free speech on campus – yet under the Prevent strategy it has its own list of banned speakers

Who has the right to decide what students hear, read or see? The National Union of Students thinks it has that right. It argues that this is a free country and it can decide whom to censor. Universities minister Jo Johnson disagrees. He sees modern students as mollycoddled snowflakes who should grow up. He intends to fine universities that shield themselves and t...

Theresa has made up with the EU leaders. Now for the Tory Brexit rebels | Simon Jenkins

The suggestion of an orderly, reasonable Brexit had them applauding in Brussels. But fundamental problems remain at home

Last night Theresa May was awarded the apparently unique accolade of applause at an EU leaders’ banquet. Excellent. But why were they applauding? Was it relief at her emollient tone? Was it encouragement for the next round in the Brexit wars, or perhaps instinctive sympathy from elected colleagues at her domestic plight? It was significant that the clapping was led by German...

Universities are bastions of privilege. They have to change | Simon Jenkins

The astronomical course fees for these bloated institutions are no longer defensible. Two-year degrees would be a good move

The ice mountain is cracking. The glaciers are loosening. The greatest cultural confidence trick since the medieval monastery is dissolving. This week the universities minister, Jo Johnson, said the unsayable: the British three-year university course, virtually unchanged in 100 years, is absurd and should end. That many foreign universities are equally conservative is nei...

Of course Russian sport is corrupt, but then so are the Olympics | Simon Jenkins

The whole project needs a rethink. Scrap all the flags: let athletes compete as citizens of the world

I have some sympathy for Vladimir Putin. For years, he was playing footsie with the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The IOC had surely known perfectly well, and for decades, that Russian athletes, like many others, were doped to the eyeballs. It turned a deaf ear to all whistleblowers and journalists on the subject, even when clear evidence was privately submitted to it and its laughabl...

Theresa May must call the DUP’s bluff – this EU deal has to happen | Simon Jenkins

A minority party has humiliated the British government by wielding a veto over the Irish border. May needs to garner all-party support to push through this deal

Fudge is good only if it tastes sweet. Theresa May’s deal with the EU on Irish border trade is apparently too bitter for Ulster’s Democratic Unionist party to stomach. Yesterday they wielded a veto. A British government at an international summit was humiliated by a minority party pursuing a minority point of view. It is why government...

If Damian Green looked at porn at work, that’s not a police matter | Simon Jenkins

Raiding an MP’s office – on the orders of a rival political party – in the hope of finding reputation-damaging material is worthy of a totalitarian regime

Is everything an MP sees on his office computer a matter of public interest? That phrase in law does not mean public prurience or gossip or fascination, but what impinges on his or her public duties. Nine years ago police were sent, on the initiative of the then Labour government, to raid the office of a Tory MP, Damian Green, now deputy pri...

This is not a strategy – it’s a fast track to the dark ages of rail | Simon Jenkins

As transport secretary, Chris Grayling should be investing in the northern axis, not vanity projects like the Oxbridge line

The transport secretary Chris Grayling announced this week that he plans to reopen five, possibly eight, railway lines closed by Richard Beeching, to cut overcrowding and increase capacity. Beeching, who wrote a report back in the 1960s that identified 5,000 miles of railway line for closure, has been dead for a quarter of a century. The lines he closed are reopening all...