Portrait of the week

Spectator, The, Jul 26, 1997

The Irish Republican Army announced an 'unequivocal' ceasefire in response to recommendations by Mr Gerry Adams, the president of its political face, Sinn Fein, but the word 'permanent' did not appear in its announcement. Sinn Fein representatives were allowed into multiparty talks and the question of decommissioning arms was put to one side. The Labour government decided, even before the publication of Sir Ron Dearing's report on the funding of higher education, to end student grants and make undergraduates pay for residence and tuition with loans. In response to complaints from opposition backbenchers that government plans had been leaked to newspapers before being announced in the Commons, Miss Betty Boothroyd, the Speaker, said, 'The rights of this House are now in danger of being overlooked.' White Papers on devolution for Wales and Scotland were published. Wales, if a referendum in September approves, will get an assembly of 60 members, with 20 of these elected by proportional representation from party lists. Scotland will get a parliament with tax-raising powers if its own referendum, a week before the Welsh one, allows. Four Liberal Democrats were invited to join a Cabinet committee on constitutional change. The International Monetary Fund said, 'The new government has made an excellent start,' but added that there should be a 'serious economic debate' on the extension of Value Added Tax to such goods as food and children's clothes. The profits of Stagecoach, the bus and rail operators, increased from L43 million to L120 million. The number of abortions rose by 13,587 in 1996 to 177,225; abortions for under-16s rose by 11.3 per cent. The National Audit Office refused to accept the annual accounts of the Child Support Agency, which was found to get 85 per cent of maintenance calculations wrong. Sir James Goldsmith, the billionaire entrepreneur turned anti-European Union politician, died, aged 64. Vincent Hanna, the political reporter, died, aged 57. Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles celebrated her 50th birthday with a party at the house of the Prince of Wales, who gave her a diamond and emerald bracelet said to be worth L100,000.

FRANCE increased business taxes in an attempt to come nearer the convergence criteria for monetary union. An astronaut on Mir, the stricken orbiting space-station, pulled out the wrong plug, cutting power and sending the craft spinning out of control; thorough repairs are going to have to wait until September, when two replacement astronauts go up. Mr K.R. Narayanan, aged 76, an 'Untouchable' or Dalit, became President of India. Elections in Liberia were won by the National Patriotic Party, led by Mr Charles Taylor, the leader of an armed faction who started seven years of civil war by attempting to overthrow President Samuel Doe. In Afghanistan an aeroplane belonging to forces opposed to the ruling Taleban regime dropped two bombs on Kabul, killing eight people, including three children. President Boris Yeltsin refused to sign a bill passed by the Russian Parliament which restricted all religions excepting Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism. Heavily armed policemen raided Islamic seminaries and arrested more than 100 students in an attempt to stop religious killings in Punjab. In northern Uganda 11,500 people fled the town of Kitgum for fear of rebels adhering to the Lord's Resistance Army, who want to set up a government based on the Ten Commandments and who had killed 12 people in the marketplace there. Floods in Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic refused to subside. In Spain a man died and 20 were injured when a bull crashed through a wall at a bullfight at Val d'Uixo, north of Valencia.