Portrait of the Week
`THE DREARY OLD WEAPONS of increases in bank rate and purchase tax' was the Liberal Parlia- mentary Party's description of the Chancellor of the Ekchequer's proposals to meet the economic situation. The Director-General of the Institute of Directors said that directors throughout the Country would feel the Government had led them LIP the garden path—meaning, perhaps, that they had feared that the surtax concessions of three months ago would have been taken away, but they weren't. Members of the National Union of leathers proposing to drown in drink and to for- get in tobacco-smoke their sorrow at having the promise of a rise in pay ratted upon, discovered that whisky had gone up half a crown a bottle, beer a penny a pint, and cigarettes fourpence for twenty. Telephone rentals,,parcel post, and printed Paner and newspaper postage had already gone up t° help the Post Office make ends meet.
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111L UNITED STATES' second man into space, Cap- tain Virgil Grissom, went up and came down all right, but his capsule sank and he had to swim for it. President Kennedy asked for more money and more men to strengthen American military forces, but said that although ready to defend by force their interests in Berlin, the American people were Prepared to open formal or informal talks with the Soviet Government on the problem. The American Defence Secretary came to Europe, and was said to have asked for British forces in Ger- many to be put on a war-time footing; in the course of his economic speech in the House of Commons, Mr. Selwyn Lloyd seemed strongly to ttliPlY that unless the West German Government Contributed towards their upkeep there soon would be fewer British troops in Germany. Mr. Ham- Marskjold flew to Tunis in an attempt to settle t111.0 dispute between Tunisia and France over . lz!rta, which President Bourguiba said he would Vgain take to the Security Council. Britain asked „r,..a.,c1 for the return of the staff sergeant, corporal -1,"' sapper of the Royal Engineers taken prisoner 'Y a twelve-year-old boy when they lost their way 4Ild wandered over the Kuwait-Iraqi border. The southern Rhodesian Government said that the call °r a. strike by Africans on the eve of the new eonstttution had failed; Africans were shot dead bP°ice and others wounded in widespread dis- UYrban„s.
Persia complained that Soviet radio
,r):°grammes were inciting Persians to demonstrate "g4Inst their government.
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14E lUC TOLD THE ETU to get rid of its Communists °q the executive, that its Communist president Would have to stand for re-election, and to give Its non-Communist general secretary his proper rwers. As .surprising as the TUC's turning tough 114, the praise given by the Daily Express, a taverbrook newspaper, for the 'vigour and
res
ourcefulness' of Lord Mountbatten, Chief of tithe Defence Staff, in mobilising British forces for t)''e. Kuwait operation, and Lord Mountbatten's oet.ing one of the sponsors in the House of Lords te new Lord Avon (Anthony Eden), whose "ezil Policy he was known to have opposed.
11.1"),Eltli WAS A STRIKE among the carpenters and _aourers at work on No. 10 Downing Streei -120 'nen out of 430 demanding higher bonus pay- rne 11K It was stated that Soviet ballet dancers re- ceived a hundred pounds' worth of dental treat- thent under the N )n.il Health Service during h el" yisit here, but ,l`■ not known whether they wad insisted on stainless steel artificial teeth, a. s :In. at home. Th: Ei ening News celebrated Bs frtleth birthday. Gertrude, a five-and-a-half- a-pot earthwo-rm from the Colombian Andes. died English month at the London Zoo, apparently of "gnsh food.
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