—Portrait of the Week— HINTING ON TV at an election
'in the spring of 1969,' the Prime Minister led the Labour Party at Brighton through a post-mortem on the Brat fifty of these thousand-plus days of dynamic action. Mr. Brown bubbled with enthusiasm for his much-heralded incomes policy, and con- fided that.'no one could accuse the new Govern- ment of playing safe? Yet Mr. Brown's incomes policy hopes received a blow when the ETU unanimously rejected a proposed `package deal' for the engineering industry. Meanwhile railway- men received a nine per cent wage increase (likely cost: £25 million) and seven paper boys came to London to ask TUC Secretary Mr. Woodcock which union they should join to get more pay. His advice: go to the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers. Home loans go up next month, and all our road signs-1.6 million of them—are to be altered in the next five years, at a cost of .€22 million. The Common Market, meanwhile, took a major step forward by reaching agree- ment on a common grain price, and the NATO council met amid proliferating uncertainties.
RUSSIA AND AMERICA started a miniature arms race in reverse, when both decided to cut armed forces spending. Russia is to lop £200 million off its de- fence bill to devote more to consumer goods and seek `better relations with capitalist countries.' Not to be outdone, the US hopes to save £54 million by cutting army . strength by 150,000. Meanwhile the UN building in New York sur- vived a bazooka shell fired at it by an anti-Castro Cuban—the shell fell short and exploded in the East River. While Dr. Martin Luther King was receiving his Nobel Peace Prize, twenty men arrested last week for the murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi were freed.
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AN UNEASY WEEK for foreign governments: in British Guiana Dr. Jagan lost the election but re- fused to resign. An Order-in-Council amending the constitution had to be made before he could he replaced. Three Turkish Ministers resigned, President Tito sacked one third of his Ministers, and in Indonesia President Sukarno may have to resign because of illness. Meanwhile in Greece defaming Queen Frederika is to become a crime. At home BEA was crippled by a strike of cabin crews, and there were widespread floods, gales, and fog; but the long-term weather forecast for lanuary was 'milder?
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I * MANCHESTER UNITED footballer Denis Law was suspended for a month for swearing at the referee, and Wimbledon tennis is to remain an amateur' competition. In Smethwick only thirty- three tickets were sold for a performance of Messiah, in Edinburgh an eighty-year-old man was imprisoned for making 'near-perfect' florins, and Pisa was offered Russian help to put the Leaning Tower straight again.
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