Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 91

Gravitational waves may help us answer the biggest question of all | Simon Jenkins

Humanity’s biggest question has always been: ‘How did it all start?’ Proving Albert Einstein’s hypothesis means we are edging ever closer to the answer

So what? I heard on the radio on Thursday that scientists had discovered gravitational waves and were thus closer to the dawn of time. I was walking past a newsstand shouting of a Syrian massacre and an NHS meltdown. A beggar asked me for a few pence. What really mattered?

We can understand cancer cures and Alzheimer’s breakthroughs. We can cope...

Our adoration is killing the NHS. It needs tough love | Simon Jenkins

Archaic demarcations between GPs, consultants and nurses are wasting billions. These have to go

John Reid, then the Labour government’s health secretary, in 2004 offered GPs a deal that ended weekend and home visits. They could hardly believe it. He also leveraged their average pay to £100,000 a year. People said it would send thousands rushing to accident and emergency. The British Medical Association called the deal “a bit of a laugh”, and the King’s Fund later calculated it added...

Welcome to the Syrian peace conference that will prolong the war | Simon Jenkins

The reality in Syria is grim: President Assad is going nowhere, and the west’s continuing intervention only gives hope and aid to the losing side

Every Syrian conference, like this week’s in London, comes with the same plea: don’t just give money – end the war. Money is given. Attempts are made to end the war, but the war goes on. Could there be a connection?

Next month it will be five years since the “day of rage” against the Assad regime in March 2011. Western intelligence said the regime wou...

The removal of road markings is to be celebrated. We are safer without them | Simon Jenkins

It’s clear there are fewer accidents when drivers are trusted not to kill themselves, and each other. Assuming we need constant protection is the mark of a controlling state.

Sensational news. The government is starting to remove white lines from the middle of roads in parts of the UK. It is doing so to reduce accidents and save lives. The idea is apparently revolutionary.

Research has shown that removing white lines induces uncertainty and thus cuts vehicle speeds by 13%. This has been the cas...

Zika’s greatest ally is human intransigence | Simon Jenkins

Mosquitoes spread the virus, but a slow response from the WHO and the Catholic church’s attitude to birth control make fighting it much harder

The revenge of the viruses marches on. After bird flu and Ebola comes Zika, and the possibility of widespread child deformity in mosquito-infested parts of the globe. The impact of the disease is as yet unpredictable, but its spread is so far fierce and unstoppable, and the disease is incurable. While a precise causal link between Zika and small-brain d...

The Big Shortfall: how UK taxpayers are cheated by business lobbyists | Simon Jenkins

We have a chancellor who can describe as a ‘major success’ just 130m in back taxes paid by Google. It has to be one of the biggest sweetheart deals of all time

What’s wrong with big business all of a sudden? The latest revelations of malpractice at Tesco, Sports Direct and Volkswagen are now capped by Google’s grand larceny of British taxpayers. There is of course “no wrongdoing”, that motto of modern business. But Google executives are behaving like medieval penitents, wandering Europe’s conf...

After Litvinenko, more sanctions against Russia would be pointless – and hypocritical | Simon Jenkins

Killing one’s enemies abroad is odious, be they in London or Syria. But economic action would only strengthen Putin and hurt the Russian people

So now we know. We have waited 10 years to be told that the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, is an unprincipled thug. He gets his minions to rub out his enemies and traitors, such as Alexander Litvinenko, even when they are living abroad.

Related: Litvinenko murder suspect dismisses inquiry as 'nonsense'

Related: Alexander Litvinenko: the man who solve...

Britain broke Iraq. We can’t turn our back on its refugees | Simon Jenkins

The only justification for toppling Saddam Hussein was humanitarian – so Britain has to help those fleeing the horror it created

Welcome to pornography, United Nations style. You catalogue atrocities in meticulous detail. You list decapitations, mutilations, rapes, defenestrations and sex enslavements. You think of all the synonyms you can find for depravity. Then you deplore them, and go out to lunch.

Related: We need Chilcot’s lessons from Iraq now – before we bomb Syria | Richard Norton-Tay...

The free market works, but not when it comes to schools | Simon Jenkins

Our education system is becoming an inefficient, socially segregated mess – all because central government stripped councils of their powers

The free market is the best way of allocating scarce resources in 90% of cases. The other 10% includes schools.

Britain’s headteachers today claimed the blindingly obvious. If the government funds private organisations to set up “free” state schools wherever parents do not like existing ones, provision will be “wasteful, fragmented and confusing”. There wi...

Renew Trident? It’d make more sense to put Dad’s Army on the case | Simon Jenkins

It’s bizarre that Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour opponents have chosen this useless nuclear missile for their battleground

It brings a tear to the eye. The old times we never thought to see again are back. The talk is of hard left and soft right, of Trots, Bolsheviks and revisionists. Where were you, goes the clever question, not at Marston Moor but at Kronstadt? Where were you when Trotsky took his Red Army against the hapless party dissidents of the Baltic fleet, and mowed them down?

Related: Labour...