Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 90

Migration is a fact of life – yet our deluded leaders try and turn back the tide | Simon Jenkins

David Cameron’s inhumane plan to send refugees back to Libya won’t work. Movement of people can’t be stopped, it has to be managed

It is all for show. The EU plan to limit migrants flowing into Europe might cut numbers by a few thousand. Subsidising Turkey’s refugee camps might hold a few back. David Cameron’s “Australia” plan to seize and return migrant boats might cut a few more. News of horrors on the Macedonian border might deter some from making the desperate bid to escape present danger...

George Osborne is a Roman emperor indulged in all his follies and fads | Simon Jenkins

As the chancellor delivered his eighth budget, we saw the hazards of a politician grown overmighty

The chancellor, George Osborne, is monarch of the political glen. From his Treasury fastness he commands all he sees. Those he favours prosper, those who displease him die. But in today’sbudget we saw him in more cautious mode. Last year he boasted of “a budget that takes Britain one more big step on the road from austerity to prosperity”. This year, with Britain’s growth forecasts slashed, neith...

There’s no such thing as imperialism-lite, Obama. Libya has shown that once again | Simon Jenkins

The US president thinks Britain’s to blame for not doing enough in 2011. But while David Cameron and Obama make up, chaos continues in the Middle East

So Barack Obama thinks Britain in 2011 left Libya in chaos – and besides it does not pull its weight in the world. Britain thinks that a bit rich, given the shambles America left in Iraq. Then both sides say sorry. They did not mean to be rude.

Thus do we wander across the ethical wasteland of the west’s wars of intervention. We blame and we name...

Our fixation with maths doesn’t add up | Simon Jenkins

Politicians tell us it is the pre-eminent subject. Nonsense. They’re just obsessed with measuring, targetry and control

Who will win the Varkey Foundation’s million-dollar “best teacher” prize this week in Dubai? Hot favourite is Britain’s star maths teacher, Colin Hegarty, whose videos are followed by a million viewers worldwide. Hegarty has been hailed as the great hope for British maths.

Like much of the public realm, British maths is “in crisis”. The country is languishing alongside America...

The EU referendum has given the Tories a nasty attack of the Trumps | Simon Jenkins

David Cameron was meant to have detoxified his party of its Brussels plague. But the disease is back – and it’s worse than ever

Name-calling, rubbishing, fearmongering, mendacity, xenophobia, talk of building walls and destroying reputations: that is just the Tory party.

At least America has seven months to recover from Trumpitis. Britain has to compress the modern politician’s instinct to polarise into four.

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Healthy towns alone won’t cure the ills of urban planning | Simon Jenkins

Forget the concept of 10 new wellness communities – we should be improving life in the cities we’ve already got

The strain of running the NHS is clearly getting to its boss, Simon Stevens. With daily headlines of woe perhaps it is understandable that he should have lost the plot. Stevens has given his imprimatur to the phoney “garden city” movement, by redubbing its estates “healthy towns” and offering to send in his apparatchiks.

Related: Ten new 'healthy' towns to be built in England

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Fear and failure flow through the BBC’s hardened corporate arteries | Simon Jenkins

What the Jimmy Savile report exposes most clearly is the intimate relationship between size and disaster in institutions

Do you go into work afraid? Do you sense a “culture of fear” around you?

That is the phrase thrown at the BBC by Dame Janet Smith’s report on the Savile affair. It is hardly unique. It was used of the fate of NHS whistleblowers. It underlies the police behaviour in Rotherham’s sex exploitation case. It underpins many banking scandals.

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While London rides the Crossrail gravy train, the north is stuck in reverse | Simon Jenkins

Vanity megaprojects in the capital like the Elizabeth line and HS2 always win Whitehall battles, and can only spell doom for provincial spending

There will be no Elizabeth tube line from Salford to Rochdale, from Bolton to Wigan. There may be a train or two, but not a royal railway blessed by the monarch, like , all 14.8bn of it. The capital is special.

At the same time the chief inspector of schools, Sir Michael Wilshaw, was bewailing the poor quality of schools...

The pope should beware of criticising Trump. The church has its own walls and damnations | Simon Jenkins

Faith and politics are a vexed mixture. At least Donald Trump is seeking a democratic route to office – who elected Pope Francis?

You could hear the cheering. Pope Francis slams Donald Trump. Build bridges not walls, he says. Man of God humiliates demagogue as “not a Christian”. So perhaps America’s 70 million Catholics will not vote for him after all. That should see off Trump and all his types.

Hold on a minute. Suppose Trump had espoused birth control and abortion – which we can assume he pr...

This EU referendum doesn’t matter. But the next one will | Simon Jenkins

A no vote could precipitate the sort of reform Europe is crying out for. Surely that’s what everyone wants

In 532AD the city of Constantinople was torn between two parties, the blues and greens. Everyone, aristocrat or slave, belonged to one or other. In January a chariot race between the two erupted into riots. Destruction was appalling. Half the city was gutted by fire, including the great church of Hagia Sophia. A green emperor was chosen to replace Justinian, who backed the blues and butch...