Portrait of the Week
■ IRITAIN'S TRADE FIGURES for 1960 showed a rise in imports of 14 per cent, and in exports of six. The TUC told the Chancellor of the Exchequer not to blame high wages but bad management for our failures in overseas markets, and the President of the Board of Trade told manufac- turers not to expect tax concessions on profits earned from exports. There were rumours of a preliminary 'little' Budget. Meanwhile, ICI asked its shareholders for nearly £35 million of new capital, and a ten-year building policy for hos- pitals was announced—not before time—that will cost £500 million.
THERE WAS RIOTING IN ALGIERS, after the referendum. There were reports of a plot against President Tshombe's regime in Katanga, fol- lowed by a number of arrests, and Mr. Lumumba was taken there trussed up. There were hopes of reviving the Interna- tional Commission on Laos, and in Zanzi- bar voters went peacefully to the polls, to elect the island's first responsible government, to the strain of Elvis Presley songs relayed by Public loudspeaker. There are no figures yet of how many votes were cast for Mr. Presley. In the course of the Kenya election campaign, Europeans pelted Mr. Michael Blundell with rotten eggs, thus demonstrating how unfitted non- Europeans are as yet for democratic government.
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IN HIS FAREWELL BROADCAST from the White House, President Eisenhower expressed 'a defi- nite sense of disappointment' at the failure of East and West to agree on disarmament. The White House grass was painted green for Mr. Kennedy's inauguration, application to take part in which by the Coldstream Guards was politely rejected by the United States authorities—mind- ful, no doubt, of what happened the last time the redcoats got at the White House. Members of the British political party led by Mr. Gaitskell, who was visiting Washington, loyally advised Mr. Kennedy not to take any notice of what their leader had to say on British policy. An American radar tower in the Atlantic collapsed into the sea with twenty-eight men on board. 'Secret' State Department documents Planted in London, it was thought by Soviet trouble-makers, succeeded in deceiving only the built' Express.
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THE BELGIAN GOVE&NMENT'S AUSTERITY BILL WaS approved by the Chamber of Deputies, but riot- ing went on, and strikers stayed out. The Socialist 'arty appealed to the King for alternative economic measures and an amnesty for strikers, and there were renewed suggestions of self- government for the Walloons. In a clash at Liege a famous Belgian boxer was killed by gendarmes, 1""1 Socialist senators walked out of the Senate in Protest.
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." INQUIRY by the Chief Inspector of Railways Into the failure of the new electric trains on the Glasgow service revealed the sensational fact that those transformers that had broken down had been those that were too weak. Six new life Peers were created—five of them Labour sup- Porters, agreed upon by Mr. Macmillan and Mr. Gaitskell, and among them Dr. Edith Summer-
They will be joined in June by the present Archbishop of Canterbury, who told Convoca- ton that he will resign his office on May 31. The captain of the Essex County Cricket Club Packed it in, too.
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