2 APRIL 1965, Page 3

— Portrait of the Week IHOUGH AN EFFIGY of the Minister

of Agriculture was publicly burnt in East Anglia, though farmers threatened to turn pigs loose in Piccadilly Circus, and though full-page ads were bought in every possible national newspaper, the farmers aroused little public sympathy in their protests against the Government's price review. Nor was the Govern- ment disturbed—Mr. Wilson invited farming leaders to come to dinner at No. 10. Meanwhile Mr. Wedgwood Benn, the Postmaster-General, introduced a 4d. post, and vigorously defended it; Mr. Brown said it was 'absolutely mad' to talk about limiting the numbers to fill vacant jobs in the UK, and later claimed he was talking economics not immigration; and Labour MPs organised a twenty-four-hour Commons filibuster to prevent discussion of a Bill on pensions.

VIETNAM DRIFTED from worse to worse: a bomb outrage outside the US Embassy in Saigon killed thirteen and injured 183, and seemed likely to lead to reprisals. Former UK Foreign Secretary Mr. Gordon Walker is to go on a fact-finding commission for the Prime Minister. Meanwhile, after the Alabama civil rights march ended in death, the Ku Klux Klan is to be investigated by the Un-American Activities Committee, and the gun that killed Kennedy (which cost £4 10s.) was agreed to be worth £3,500. Mr. Senanayake be- came Premier of Ceylon, the Congo elections col- lapsed, and Rhodesia is to vote on May 7. There was more talk of sterling devaluation, and it was announced that Britain's balance of payments deficit in 1964 was £745 million.

WHILE AMERICAN TV VIEWERS could watch live pictures of a Ranger rocket landing on the moon, British TV was more parochial, Z Cars is to end this year, while Not So Much a Programme comes off in April. This week it succeeded in causing offence in two directions, with a sketch on the Duke of Windsor hours after his sister, the Princess Royal, had died, and with Bernard Levin calling Sir Alec Douglas-Home a 'cretin.' But Sir Alec received some support from Sir Gerald Nabarro, who faintly urged Tories 'not to shoot the pianist, he is doing his best.' Prince Philip returned to the UK, there were rumours of a Nazi sympathiser civil servant giving secrets to Russia, bald-headed blackbirds have been seen in Wiltshire, drunkenness has increased 50 per cent in the past decade, and a man who built a doll's house in his garden had £2 added to his rates.

WHAT MAY BE THE LAST Grand National went to lay Trump, an American horse. But British honour in sport was maintained: the BBC is to sponsor a balloon race next month, while Chatham students claimed a new world record in titling twenty-nine people into a six-seater car.