Latest news with #SimonJenkins
The Guardian
12-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Putting up a defence for jury trials in Britain
Simon Jenkins' indictment of jury trial (Here's a radical way to save England's collapsing justice system: get rid of juries, 5 May) deserves a damning verdict on a number of counts. He points to the excessive delays afflicting English criminal courts, which he attributes to the 1% of cases that are decided by juries. He provides little evidence for this, while making no mention of the true causes – Covid and chronic underfunding. There is no evidence that jury trial causes delay in contested cases as opposed to judges sitting alone. Judges would have to provide reasoned arguments for each factual decision (subject to review) and, for this reason, the vast majority of British criminal judges strongly favour jury trial. Jenkins adds that we should join 'the rest of Europe' and end jury trial, without telling us what systems those countries enjoy and whether they are to be emulated. Yet the inquisitorial system in, say, France, with its many complications including dual investigation by examining justices, is subject to horrendous delays, historically far worse than their adversarial equivalent in the UK. Jenkins attributes jury trial to a 'medieval hangover, judgment by one's peers, over the whim of an unelected manorial lord or other authority' as though this were undesirable. In fact, it is far more likely to originate in an adversarial democratic culture inherent in British history and observable in parliament. But the greatest concern is the absence of any mention of the libertarian value of jury trials in an increasingly totalitarian world. As one of Britain's greatest jurists, Lord Patrick Devlin, observed: 'The first object of any tyrant would be to overthrow or diminish trial by jury. It is the lamp that shows that freedom lives.'Bob Marshall-Andrews KC Labour MP for Medway, 1997-2010 Simon Jenkins' article struck a strong chord with me. Having served on two juries, I am less than impressed. How are you meant to have a sensible discussion in the jury room without a transcript of the trial proceedings? Your only written record is whatever you can write in pencil on a sheet of paper, despite the fact that an official record is being taken. You are given no advice about how to run the jury proceedings, presumably because English yeomen all know intuitively how to do this. Not every member wants to be there, and some members' contributions can be negligible. For my first trial there were six charges, all related. For one charge, evidence from the victim indicated the rough date of the alleged offence quite accurately. It was revealed at a different point in the proceedings, and I noted this on my bit of paper, that the accused was in prison at the time. Despite this, the accused was convicted by 11 to one. I have also had to sit through the verbatim acting out of a police interview, where the prosecution barrister played the accused and the police interviewer played himself. The jury room may well be little more than a glorified broom cupboard. On my second trial, I was encouraged when I saw a whiteboard, which I thought would be quite useful. Naturally, the marker pens all needed replacing, and their replacements were highlighter and address supplied Simon Jenkins thinks that members of the public who serve on juries are incompetent to decide complicated factual issues. If he is right, then voting in elections should also be left to FitzGibbon KCLondon Have an opinion on anything you've read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
The Guardian
01-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Moving fast and breaking things is no way to govern a country
Simon Jenkins is right: Donald Trump is certainly moving fast and, two months in, the sound of things breaking is cacophonous. His contention that the end result might be a better US, however, is beyond contrarian (27 March). In rejecting his argument, I would cite the work of several American commentators and academics: the constitutional and legal experts Marc Elias and Joyce Vance, the widely acclaimed historians Timothy Snyder and Heather Cox Richardson, and the Yale philosopher Jason Stanley are all full of apprehension for the future of the country they love. None suggests an upside; all anticipate a long and difficult fight. The risk is existential. To take two examples of how serious the challenge to American democracy is, I would draw attention to Mr Trump's relentless efforts at voter suppression and the willingness of his officials both to break the law and to disobey direct judicial instructions. Beyond this, there is the trashing of decades-old alliances, the coddling of Vladimir Putin, the betrayal of Ukraine, the ludicrous appointments, the barefaced lying, the reduction of politics to spectacle and the full-frontal assault on the structures of the federal state. So no, I find it impossible to see how any of this will have the positive outcome Mr Jenkins BaileyFarnborough, Hampshire Mark Zuckerberg may have said 'move fast and break things' 25 years ago, but he did not break organisations, government departments or the lives of impoverished peoples. He broke concepts, and did no damage. Elon Musk is trying to break organisations that provide food and medical aid to extremely poor people. There are ways to improve organisations, but using a chainsaw and wholesale sackings are not the answers. Simon Jenkins writes: 'The US may review its role in the world, ... revert to being … another nation among nations.' That seems very admirable, but Donald Trump is not doing that. Trump wants to put the US above other nations, using its economic and military power, and if others let him, he will take what he wants. He sees Putin as somebody in his own mould. Yes, Russia is obsessed with its frontier states, yet it has to accept that it can't rule over people who by misfortune border its land. The Baltic states, Ukraine and others want freedom, and we in western Europe and others believe we have to help them in that FrankelLisbon, Portugal Simon Jenkins optimistically proposes that Donald Trump and his fellow 'playground thugs' provide necessary and overdue challenges to convention. I doubt that Jenkins' lofty hopes are shared by the countries and individuals who will be hit hardest by Trump's smash-and-burn approach. To give so little consideration to those losing their jobs, healthcare, aid, social security and democratic freedoms while Trump 'moves fast' seems self-indulgent and shortsighted. Far from constructive movers and shakers, Trump et al may be more accurately compared to the privileged Great Gatsby characters Tom and Daisy Buchanan, who 'smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money … and let other people clean up the mess they had made'. Breaking the fibre of a democratic society hurts the most vulnerable, and may take decades to Annie HickoxThirsk, North Yorkshire Have an opinion on anything you've read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
The Guardian
23-03-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Scrapping GCSE maths doesn't add up
One-third of students reach 16 without a good pass in maths. As Simon Jenkins points out, most will endure a cycle of unsuccessful post-16 resits (GCSEs harm our young people. Ministers should have the guts to abolish them – and start again, 20 March). But it is wrong to call maths obsolete – financial literacy is impossible without a solid foundation in maths, to say nothing of the skills needed in a tech-driven economy. Rather than abandoning GCSE maths, we need to do more to support the so-called 'forgotten third'. Improving early secondary education in the subject and introducing a short course GCSE focusing on the fundamentals would be a good start. Jenkins' suggestion of abolishing GCSEs is neither desirable nor practical. Enacting such a change would eat up capacity in a system with little to spare. However, reform is needed. As the OCR exam board noted last year, there is an overreliance on exams at 16, and much of the curriculum is overloaded and outdated. OCR has called for fewer exams – alongside a streamlining of the curriculum in places and more subjects such as digital literacy and climate education. We were pleased to see the curriculum and assessment review's interim report reflect these calls. The most effective way to make things better for students is by improving and building on the solid system we already DuffyChief executive, OCR exam board I took my GCSEs in 2018. I was a capable student, getting the highest grades in my comprehensive school. I went on to a first-class Oxford degree and now a PhD. GCSEs should have been made for me – someone who loved learning and had high academic ambitions, who could think on the spot and learn lots by rote. However, I spent my GCSE year with constant nausea and emetophobia. From a neurodevelopmental perspective, GCSEs come at the worst time for students, a time when there are so many competing pressures, and students are at higher risk of mental illness. The exams don't even have any purpose any more given that education is compulsory up to 18. Nothing in my academic career – Oxford interviews, finals at Oxford, the gruelling process of applying for PhDs – has ever been as hard as GCSEs were. If they didn't work for me, who do they work for?Name and address supplied Have an opinion on anything you've read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘For £3,000 you can be told how guilty you should be': Why members are deserting the National Trust
The National Trust has become a lightning rod for criticism over its attempts to 'decolonise' its properties and foster social justice activism, and for placing historical links with the slave trade at the forefront of its conservation work. Add to this the loss of 89,000 members between 2023 and 2024, and this week's membership price rise – an increase of nearly 6 per cent – and you have a recipe for a genuine crisis for an institution founded in 1895 to protect numerous properties and landmarks of immense historical and cultural significance across England and Wales. Today, it manages more than 500 sites. 'If members were confident all their money was being spent on vital conservation work, the increase in membership price would have been understandable,' tweeted Zewditu Gebreyohanes, a senior researcher at the Prosperity Institute and former director of the grass-roots group Restore Trust, on Wednesday. 'Yet, with access to historic houses being reduced even as controversial and irrelevant activities are pursued, trust in the organisation's management is at an all-time low.' Accusations that 'woke' culture has infiltrated the heritage and conservation charity have been made for some years now, and even the former chair, Sir Simon Jenkins, warned last year that the organisation was failing to get the balance right on cultural issues. In 2021 it was reported that volunteers had been asked to wear rainbow-coloured clothes and lanyards at Ickworth in Suffolk during Pride month. In other controversies, Christian holidays have been excluded from an 'inclusivity and well-being' calendar, and a plant-based menu has been promoted in cafés, a decision which was regarded as emblematic of a preoccupation with ideology over the core function of preserving and promoting Trust properties, something hardly helped when the director-general, Hilary McGrady, declared, 'Seventy per cent of my staff and volunteers would be regarded as progressive activists'. Telegraph readers have been quick to register their disapproval at its policies and the new price rises (a single adult yearly pass rose by £19.40 to £96.20). 'The National Trust simply doesn't talk to its members,' writes Heather Erridge. 'They act like an overbearing parent and assume they know what's best for members, and hence numbers are dropping.' Another writes, 'The National Trust has shot itself in the foot, or rather its woke board has. People have left in droves, as have volunteers. Most houses are now so denuded of volunteers they can't fully open. We will be leaving as our membership expires in August.' Historian Prof Lawrence Goldman, meanwhile, says the Trust takes a one-sided view of history. 'I've been going to National Trust properties for decades so my criticism is that they often ignored the history of their properties. No context provided, very few labels on exhibits, and it didn't care to explain its history to its visitors,' says the professor, who stood as a candidate for the National Trust Council last year. 'And then suddenly, after Black Lives Matter, it became interested. 'But it was a skewed version of history in which they pointed the finger at all these terrible people from the past who had some vague connection with the properties. But even then, they never explained the full context of the properties, the families and the estates. In the process, national history is distorted. Speaking as an academic historian, this is the worst of all worlds. When they finally take an interest in history, they do it terribly.' The falling membership, leaving it with around 5.38 million members, has been ascribed in part to this seeming emphasis on the role of slavery and colonialism in its properties and the families who once owned them, leading to some critics to accuse them of being 'anti-British'. In 2020, McGrady oversaw the publication of a research document on the subject, and she revealed in 2022 that she had received death threats in response to the policy, which disclosed links at 93 properties to colonialism or the slave trade. John Orna-Ornstein, the director of culture and engagement, said at the time that it was about raising awareness. 'Just to be really clear, we're not making judgments about the past; what we're trying to do is reflect as accurately and comprehensively as we can the histories across a variety of places.' The report outlined links to plantation owners and others who received compensation during abolition. It includes properties with connections to people involved in colonial expansion, including figures from the East India Company or Winston Churchill's home, Chartwell. It also featured properties with cultural links to Britain's colonial history, such as Rudyard Kipling's home in Sussex. 'For £3,000 you can be told how bad your ancestors were and how guilty you should be,' writes Telegraph reader Colin Cowan, citing the new price charged for a lifetime family membership. By seemingly becoming more overly political in the past decade, the National Trust has created a perennial problem for itself, an institution with a primary conservative mission: to preserve and promote historical sites and buildings for posterity. 'The context surrounding the membership price hike is very important,' Gebreyohanes told The Telegraph. 'It is worth noting that lots of the sites in the National Trust's care are less accessible than ever, with prebooking required rather than members being able to make impromptu visits; car-parking prices rising steadily; a ticket to enter the historic house being required in order to access gardens and estates, whereas grounds were formerly usually accessible without a ticket; and historic houses being shut to the public for much more of the year than they used to, including sometimes permanent closure due to years of neglect. The high levels of dissatisfaction with the Trust's management is reflected in the ongoing exodus of members and volunteers.' With annual costs for an adult pass hitting £96.20 and the price of a lifetime family membership now £3,025, it means this week's price rises have contributed to an almost 25 per cent increase in three years. Rather than a blanket percentage rise across all membership types, fees have risen by between an above-inflation 4.8 per cent and 5.7 per cent. At the same time, the National Trust has just advertised for a part-time head of inclusion and belonging with 'a specific focus on race awareness and equity'. The eventual holder of the position will be able to work from home for half its allocated hours. 'I've been a joint member for decades, but gave up because of the woke nonsense,' writes Telegraph reader Suzanne Norman. 'British history should be portrayed and preserved truthfully, not distorted to fit some modern woke ideology.' Some readers' loyalty towards the institution – often a relationship of decades – means there are those prepared to overlook its misgivings. 'I agree with a lot of the sentiments here about the recent attitude of the NT towards DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion], slavery and reparations, which should form no part of the NT's policies,' writes Liz Whitman. 'However, I love visiting NT properties and am truly grateful that so much of our most beautiful and precious countryside and coastline has been protected so I am prepared to overlook the things I don't like.' 'I have stuck with my membership despite the rising cost, the institutional wokeness,' adds Jeffrey Hobbs. 'I want to retain a stake in our British heritage. Hopefully the silly wokeness will pass soon.' There are some positives for the under-fire charity, with visitors to its sites across England, Wales and Northern Ireland who pay on the door – non-members – rising by 12 per cent in 2023-24 compared with the previous year. It said total visitor numbers were also up by 5 per cent, to 25.3 million. Still, many critics continue to vote with their feet. 'It should be an organisation for everybody and it's alienating to start pointing fingers of blame or taking that posture to the past,' says Prof Goldman. 'We should be informing, not judging. It shouldn't be treating history as a Manichean struggle between good and ill – not to mention trashing the reputation of the families who lived in the houses or built the houses and in many cases gave the houses to the National Trust.' 'It is one of the organisations in the heritage sector that is destroying its own reputation and its own base in the nation,' says Prof Goldman. 'These remarkable buildings, paintings and artefacts should be used to integrate the nation and bring us together to understand our shared history and culture. But we are doing the reverse. We are using culture as a wedge.' A National Trust spokesman said: 'We set all our prices carefully, based on what it costs to carry out our conservation and other work. Operating costs have soared in recent years in the challenging external financial context. In our last financial year, our operating costs grew by £53.2 million.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. 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Telegraph
06-03-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
‘For £3,000 you can be told how guilty you should be': Why members are deserting the National Trust
The National Trust has become a lightning rod for criticism over its attempts to 'decolonise' its properties and foster social justice activism, and for placing historical links with the slave trade at the forefront of its conservation work. Add to this the loss of 89,000 members between 2023 and 2024, and this week's membership price rise – an increase of nearly 6 per cent – and you have a recipe for a genuine crisis for an institution founded in 1895 to protect numerous properties and landmarks of immense historical and cultural significance across England and Wales. Today, it manages more than 500 sites. 'If members were confident all their money was being spent on vital conservation work, the increase in membership price would have been understandable,' tweeted Zewditu Gebreyohanes, a senior researcher at the Prosperity Institute and former director of the grass-roots group Restore Trust, on Wednesday. 'Yet, with access to historic houses being reduced even as controversial and irrelevant activities are pursued, trust in the organisation's management is at an all-time low.' Accusations that 'woke' culture has infiltrated the heritage and conservation charity have been made for some years now, and even the former chair, Sir Simon Jenkins, warned last year that the organisation was failing to get the balance right on cultural issues. In 2021 it was reported that volunteers had been asked to wear rainbow-coloured clothes and lanyards at Ickworth in Suffolk during Pride month. In other controversies, Christian holidays have been excluded from an 'inclusivity and well-being' calendar, and a plant-based menu has been promoted in cafés, a decision which was regarded as emblematic of a preoccupation with ideology over the core function of preserving and promoting Trust properties, something hardly helped when the director-general, Hilary McGrady, declared, 'Seventy per cent of my staff and volunteers would be regarded as progressive activists'. Telegraph readers have been quick to register their disapproval at its policies and the new price rises (a single adult yearly pass rose by £19.40 to £96.20). 'The National Trust simply doesn't talk to its members,' writes Heather Erridge. 'They act like an overbearing parent and assume they know what's best for members, and hence numbers are dropping.' Another writes, 'The National Trust has shot itself in the foot, or rather its woke board has. People have left in droves, as have volunteers. Most houses are now so denuded of volunteers they can't fully open. We will be leaving as our membership expires in August.' Historian Prof Lawrence Goldman, meanwhile, says the Trust takes a one-sided view of history. 'I've been going to National Trust properties for decades so my criticism is that they often ignored the history of their properties. No context provided, very few labels on exhibits, and it didn't care to explain its history to its visitors,' says the professor, who stood as a candidate for the National Trust Council last year. 'And then suddenly, after Black Lives Matter, it became interested. 'But it was a skewed version of history in which they pointed the finger at all these terrible people from the past who had some vague connection with the properties. But even then, they never explained the full context of the properties, the families and the estates. In the process, national history is distorted. Speaking as an academic historian, this is the worst of all worlds. When they finally take an interest in history, they do it terribly.' The falling membership, leaving it with around 5.38 million members, has been ascribed in part to this seeming emphasis on the role of slavery and colonialism in its properties and the families who once owned them, leading to some critics to accuse them of being 'anti-British'. In 2020, McGrady oversaw the publication of a research document on the subject, and she revealed in 2022 that she had received death threats in response to the policy, which disclosed links at 93 properties to colonialism or the slave trade. John Orna-Ornstein, the director of culture and engagement, said at the time that it was about raising awareness. 'Just to be really clear, we're not making judgments about the past; what we're trying to do is reflect as accurately and comprehensively as we can the histories across a variety of places.' The report outlined links to plantation owners and others who received compensation during abolition. It includes properties with connections to people involved in colonial expansion, including figures from the East India Company or Winston Churchill's home, Chartwell. It also featured properties with cultural links to Britain's colonial history, such as Rudyard Kipling's home in Sussex. 'For £3,000 you can be told how bad your ancestors were and how guilty you should be,' writes Telegraph reader Colin Cowan, citing the new price charged for a lifetime family membership. By seemingly becoming more overly political in the past decade, the National Trust has created a perennial problem for itself, an institution with a primary conservative mission: to preserve and promote historical sites and buildings for posterity. 'The context surrounding the membership price hike is very important,' Gebreyohanes told The Telegraph. 'It is worth noting that lots of the sites in the National Trust's care are less accessible than ever, with prebooking required rather than members being able to make impromptu visits; car-parking prices rising steadily; a ticket to enter the historic house being required in order to access gardens and estates, whereas grounds were formerly usually accessible without a ticket; and historic houses being shut to the public for much more of the year than they used to, including sometimes permanent closure due to years of neglect. The high levels of dissatisfaction with the Trust's management is reflected in the ongoing exodus of members and volunteers.' With annual costs for an adult pass hitting £96.20 and the price of a lifetime family membership now £3,025, it means this week's price rises have contributed to an almost 25 per cent increase in three years. Rather than a blanket percentage rise across all membership types, fees have risen by between an above-inflation 4.8 per cent and 5.7 per cent. At the same time, the National Trust has just advertised for a part-time head of inclusion and belonging with 'a specific focus on race awareness and equity'. The eventual holder of the position will be able to work from home for half its allocated hours. In the space of just three years, the price of an annual @nationaltrust membership has risen from £76.80 to £96.20, an increase significantly above inflation. This is all the more perverse because there has been a decline in standards at the @nationaltrust, with dissatisfaction… — Zewditu Gebreyohanes ፡ ዘውዲቱ (@zewditweets) March 5, 2025 'I've been a joint member for decades, but gave up because of the woke nonsense,' writes Telegraph reader Suzanne Norman. 'British history should be portrayed and preserved truthfully, not distorted to fit some modern woke ideology.' Some readers' loyalty towards the institution – often a relationship of decades – means there are those prepared to overlook its misgivings. 'I agree with a lot of the sentiments here about the recent attitude of the NT towards DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion], slavery and reparations, which should form no part of the NT's policies,' writes Liz Whitman. 'However, I love visiting NT properties and am truly grateful that so much of our most beautiful and precious countryside and coastline has been protected so I am prepared to overlook the things I don't like.' 'I have stuck with my membership despite the rising cost, the institutional wokeness,' adds Jeffrey Hobbs. 'I want to retain a stake in our British heritage. Hopefully the silly wokeness will pass soon.' There are some positives for the under-fire charity, with visitors to its sites across England, Wales and Northern Ireland who pay on the door – non-members – rising by 12 per cent in 2023-24 compared with the previous year. It said total visitor numbers were also up by 5 per cent, to 25.3 million. Still, many critics continue to vote with their feet. 'It should be an organisation for everybody and it's alienating to start pointing fingers of blame or taking that posture to the past,' says Prof Goldman. 'We should be informing, not judging. It shouldn't be treating history as a Manichean struggle between good and ill – not to mention trashing the reputation of the families who lived in the houses or built the houses and in many cases gave the houses to the National Trust.' 'It is one of the organisations in the heritage sector that is destroying its own reputation and its own base in the nation,' says Prof Goldman. 'These remarkable buildings, paintings and artefacts should be used to integrate the nation and bring us together to understand our shared history and culture. But we are doing the reverse. We are using culture as a wedge.' A National Trust spokesman said: 'We set all our prices carefully, based on what it costs to carry out our conservation and other work. Operating costs have soared in recent years in the challenging external financial context. In our last financial year, our operating costs grew by £53.2 million.'
