Portrait of the week

Spectator, The, Sep 11, 1999

Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister said that, with '12-year-old girls getting pregnant by 14-year-old fathers... we need to find a new national moral purpose'. Mr Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, was annoyed to find that no councils had imposed the child curfews that he had invented, and he sent out a `sharp reminder'. Mr Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, went to Japan and showed enthusiasm for the euro: 'I assure you that if the euro proves a stable, successful economy,' he said, `Tony Blair's government will make sure that Britain is ready to take part.' Senator George Mitchell flew to Belfast to carry out a review of the working of the Good Friday Agreement. The report by Mr Chris Patten into the future of the Royal Ulster Constabulary was criticised for recommending what in effect seemed like the abolition of the force. The Mail on Sunday decided not to publish extracts from a scandalous book by Mr James Hewitt about his affair with Diana, Princess of Wales after Earl Spencer told its editor that publication would be too much to bear for the Princess's mother and children. Drilling began at Buckingham Palace to make a 450ft-deep borehole to produce half a million gallons of water a day. Bobby Robson took on the managership of Newcastle United at the age of 66.

Legal & General, the life assurance company, recommended a 10.7 billion takeover by National Westminster Bank; the day before the announcement insider trading sent L&G shares up 10 per cent. Alan Clark, the independent-minded MP and diarist, died, aged 71.

MILITIAS opposing independence for East Timor, which had been decided upon by a referendum, murdered many in the capital, Dili, burnt houses and drove thousands of civilians from the city, with the connivance of Indonesian soldier,v. United Nations staff fled; Bishop Carlos Belo, the Nobel Peace Prize-winner, had his house burnt down. The Indonesian government asked donor countries, through the intercession of Mr Lawrence Summers, the United States Treasury Secretary, to reschedule $6 billion of debt due in 2000 to a new payment date of 2002. Mr Ehud Barak, the Prime Minister of Israel, signed a treaty with Mr Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, to implement the Wye Agreement on peace and control of territory; three died in car bombs shortly afterwards at Tiberias and Haifa. The Israeli supreme court prohibited the interrogation by Shin Bet secret policemen of political detainees by methods that amounted to torture. An unusually strong earthquake in Athens killed dozens. A bomb at a Russian army hostel at Buynaksk in Dagestan killed 30; 2,000 rebels crossed shortly afterwards from Chechnya and took control of border villages. Russian forces bombed the Chechen rebels on both sides of the border. Russian soldiers in Kosovo shot dead three Serbs who had fired on a motor car carrying Albanian speakers. In Congo (Brazzaville) government troops killed dozens of guerrillas called Ninjas under the command of Bernard Kolelas, a former mayor of Brazzaville. A French report on the death of Diana, Princess of Wales two years ago found that the fatal motor accident was the fault not of paparazzi, still less of a secret service conspiracy, but of the driver's having drunk too much on top of medical drugs and then driving too fast, on instructions from Dodi Fayed, who also died in the crash. The Venezuelan economy began to shrink at a rate of 10 per cent a year. Manila and Hanoi proposed a new code of practice banning new buildings on the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, which are claimed by Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei, the Philippines, China and Taiwan. Four people died of botulism after eating fish sold by street vendors at UlanUde, near Lake Baikal in Siberia.

CSH