PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
he Queen agreed to pay income tax from next April and to forego the Civil List payments for all but the most senior mem- bers of her family. MPs denied themselves a planned 3.9 per cent pay rise next year. The Parliamentary Comptroller and Audi- tor General decided to investigate the pay- ment of £4,700 of legal fees for the Chan- cellor of the Exchequer, Mr Norman Lam- ont, in his efforts to expel a prostitute, Miss Sara Dale, also known as Miss Whiplash, from his Notting Hill basement flat. There was also an absurd flurry of speculation over the purchase by Mr Lamont of wine in Paddington, which turned out to have been on a different day and of a less vulgar nature than claimed. Miss Dale also turned up in the news as claiming that she had been proposed marriage by Dr Thomas Courtney, the Harley Street doctor and Aids-charity administrator jailed for seven years for drugging and raping patients. Police found a van with a load of explosives off Tottenham Court Road in London after an IRA telephone warning. Mr John Gum- mer, the Agriculture Minister, predicted his departure from the Church of England when women are ordained priests, and immediately resigned from the Synod. The 13-year-old grey gelding Desert Orchid sur- vived an operation for a twisted gut. Lord Spens was formally acquitted on charges arising from the Guinness takeover affair in 1986. Mr Paul Raymond, the pornographer and property magnate, was reckoned to be Britain's richest man. The imputed value of people's houses, for the purposes of the new council tax, was made public. Rose- haugh, the property developers with debts of £350 million, called in receivers. Sir Hugh Wontner, the chairman of the Savoy group, died aged 84. Sunnie Mann, the wife of the freed hostage in Lebanon, Mr Jackie Mann, died aged 79. Warwickshire County Cricket Club was ordered by a judge to refund ticket money to spectators who had protested against its refusal to do so after play was abandoned when only two balls had been bowled in a day at the first Test between England and Pakistan last June. A four-year-old boy was said to enjoy reading the Daily Telegraph.
CHINA, in an apparent attempt to under- mine economic confidence, threatened not to recognise contracts signed between the Hong Kong government and business enterprises. Mr Chris Patten, the Governor of Hong Kong, reasserted the British Gov- ernment's determination to extend democ- racy in the colony. President de Klerk of South Africa promised multiracial elections in March or April 1994. Four whites were killed in a grenade attack by five blacks on a golf-club in the Eastern Cape. A Russian constitutional court upheld President Boris Yeltsin's ban on the upper tiers of the Communist Party following last year's attempted coup, but found that his suppres- sion of local branches was unlawful. Mr Yeltsin later ran into trouble with former communist delegates to the Congress of People's Deputies, which discussed Rus- sia's continually disastrous economic state. French and Belgian farmers blocked roads in protest against trade agreements between the United States and the EEC. The poorer EEC countries then turned on Britain for its proposals to reduce spending on the 'cohesion' funds that heavily sub- sidise Spain, Greece, Portugal and Ireland. Part of the Hofburg palace in Vienna was destroyed by fire; 69 white Lippizaner hors- es were evacuated from the adjoining sta- bles. The American government revealed plans to send 30,000 troops to enforce the delivery of aid to Somalia. Washington wants other nations to join in, as in the Gulf war. Five were killed in a Dutch train crash; 63 in a Venezuelan jail riot. Presi- dent Carlos Andres Perez of Venezuela inspected his bombed palace after the defeat of a coup attempt. Sir Sidney Nolan, the Australian artist noted for his pictures incorporating Ned Kelly, died aged 75. A Japanese appeal court upheld a suspended ten-month sentence on an executive who put a dead cat in his boss's desk because he
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