Simon Jenkins's Blog, page 98

Simon Jenkins on Chris Woodhead: ‘He climbed an argument as he climbed a mountain, because it was there’

Chris Woodhead was a fanatical mountaineer. When tiring of the pressure of educational politics, he and his wife, Christine, moved to a cottage in Wales, on the near inaccessible slopes of his beloved Cnicht, in Snowdonia. He dreamed of climbing the days away. Yet within a year of arriving, he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease. I went with him on one of his last walks up the mountain, and recall him remarking that every climber wants to die on a mountain. I said I would always help him...

Here’s how to save 10,000 lives – let GPs order cancer tests | Simon Jenkins

The health regulator, Nice, is right – as my experience shows, early diagnosis is essential. But it’s being prevented by the NHS’s own testing regime

I have a plan to save 10,000 lives a year, but no one will listen. That is the number of the shocking excess of cancer deaths in the UK over the European average. The excess is mostly attributable to late diagnosis, or so the health regulator, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), has announced. The reason for late diagnos...

Refugees: this is the human tide the west doesn’t want | Simon Jenkins

The global crisis engendered by people fleeing war seems unstoppable. But open borders carry an unacceptable political price for national governments

Who now cries, “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore”? We stand appalled as boatloads of refugees wash up on the beaches of the northern Mediterranean. Men, women and children scramble up rocks and plead: “Is this Europe?” We arrest the traffickers, yet aid thei...

Appointing a ‘low-level disruption’ school tsar is stupid government | Simon Jenkins

Education secretary Nicky Morgan’s meddling has reached ludicrous levels with the creation of a new Whitehall overlord tasked with tackling slightly bad behaviour

All ministers go mad, but some go mad faster than others. A sure sign is a craving to appoint “tsars”.

Related: School behaviour tsar appointed to tackle classroom disruption

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George Osborne talks tough on debt – so why not on the banks? | Simon Jenkins

Britain still tolerates economy-threatening monoliths like HSBC. In America they know that small works

Shock horror. A chancellor of the exchequer thinks we should not spend beyond our means. The habit must end. The Micawberish cliche, respun by George Osborne’s aides before his Mansion House speech tonight, is hardly new. Jim Callaghan shouted it at a rally in 1976, as did Margaret Thatcher at her party ad nauseam. Gordon Brown had his 1997 “golden rule” and America its Gramm-Rudman act. Such...

Wales’s e-cigarette ban is irrational nanny statism at its worst | Simon Jenkins

If the Welsh government was really concerned with the health of its citizens it would clamp down instead on the health-devastating poisons of alcohol and junk food

Should we devolve intolerance? There is no clear health justification for the Welsh government’s decision to ban e-cigarettes from public places, offices, factories, pubs and lorries. The decision has been widely criticised by Cancer Research UK, Action on Smoking and Health and numerous anti-smoking organisations. They regard e-cig...

Sorry, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, but The Met series really is a puff piece

The action-packed police-collaboration documentary series makes good viewing but its portrayal of universally sensitive officers lets the force off lightly

The best shot in the BBC’s new blockbuster TV series on London’s Metropolitan police, which starts on Monday, sees an officer climb into a waiting car and complain about the smell. What smell, asks his colleague. “Cynicism,” he replies.

I am amazed it was not cut. When two embattled British institutions get into bed together and profess “del...

America curbs state snooping, Britain gives the green light | Simon Jenkins

As the US Congress passes a Freedom Act, the grip of the UK’s securocrats on ministers is clearer than ever

The US Congress passed a Freedom Act this week, partially curbing its power to harvest bulk data on the lives of America’s citizens. A congressional tussle has been going on between libertarians and securocrats ever since the Edward Snowden whistleblowing of 2013. That argument, and the act itself, vindicate Snowden’s disclosures, whatever their legality.

Meanwhile Britain’s government mo...

HS2 is not a useless railway, merely the stupidest | Simon Jenkins

The election was in no way a massive vote of confidence for Cameron’s vanity high-speed project. It’s time for the Tories to admit their mistake

The transport secretary, Patrick McLoughlin, yesterday called the election a “massive vote of confidence” in his controversial HS2 railway. It had conclusively “won the argument” for the line. Does that apply to every government policy, however silly?

HS2 is not a useless railway, merely the stupidest. In 2010 David Cameron backed it unthinkingly, as a...

A hero of the Fifa corruption exposé – step forward the British press | Simon Jenkins

Journalist Andrew Jennings and the Sunday Times have been relentless in their pursuit of the institutional corruption at Fifa. Now it’s up to the FA to act

This week’s Fifa exposé is widely credited to the FBI and the tough US attorney general, Loretta Lynch. That they have brought about this crunch is welcome. It is also humiliating for the Swiss police, who know full well what such global agencies get up to on their turf, and for Britain’s Scotland Yard.

Institutional corruption at Fif...