PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
'He keeps going on about zero inflation.
Arise in interest rates was avoided despite last week's appeal for calm by the Chancellor, Norman Lamont; the Bank of England had used $2 billion in one day to prop up the pound. A Catholic man, shot in west Belfast, became the 3,000th fatality in the Northern Irish Troubles of the past 23 years. Mr Michael Grade, chief executive of Channel 4, attacked the 'pseudo-Leninist' management of the BBC, simultaneously accusing it of 'political appeasement' and its hierarchy of failing to support the unsuc- cessful soap-opera, Eldorado. Sir Mar- maduke Hussey, chairman of the BBC board of governors, referred to Mr Grade gnomically as a 'Bourbon in red braces'. James Gilbey, suspected of being the man on a tape-recording of a telephone conver- sation with the Princess of Wales, had a car crash with a Sun photographer. Bucking- ham Palace denounced as a fake a letter purporting to come from the Prince and Princess of Wales's press secretary, describ- ing the Princess as 'relishing the martyr role'. Independent schools unsurprisingly came top in a league-table of A-level results. HM Inspectorate reported 'a gradu- al erosion of standards' in GCSE exami- nations; John Patten promised to act. A mother rescued her 10-year-old daughter
from a pack of 34 dogs that were savaging her; they were some of 40 belonging to a bachelor Cheshire farmer. Mr Frank Bough, the television presenter, was pho- tographed by a Sunday paper visiting a sado-masochistic vice den. Minto House, near Hawick in the Borders, was given Cat- egory-A listed status just as demolition men were setting fire to it; parts of it were later knocked down to make it safe. Its owner, Lord Minto, had ordered its demolition after plans fell through to export it to Japan, stone by stone. Britain (except Scot- land) celebrated a Bank Holiday with tradi- tional rain and gales; the weather in Scot- land was even more severe. Dr Kalim Sid- diqui, leader of the self-styled Muslim Par- liament, called for the hands of thieves to be chopped off: 'We would be well off because there would be no burglary.'
THE five-month Serbian siege of the Bosnian town of Gorazde was lifted, but in Sarajevo a Serbian shell killed 16 and wounded at least 78 in a crowded market. Lord Owen, taking up his new role as Euro- pean Community mediator on Yugoslavia, declined to pass judgment on the shelling, saying: 'There are going to be, hour by hour and day by day, terrible atrocities. I am not
going to comment on individual ones.' Bobby Fischer was threatened with a $250,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison for breaking a UN embargo against Yugoslavia if he went ahead with a chess match with Mr Boris Spassky in Monte- negro this week. M. Jacques Delors promised to retire from the European Commission if the French vote against the Maastricht treaty in their referendum on 20 September. Mr Ray MacSharry announced his retirement as Irish Commissioner to the EEC, plunging his country's domestic poli- tics even deeper into uncertainty. The con mander of British forces helping to enforce the air exclusion zone in southern Iraq said that the allies had found no unusual move- ments of Iraqi ground forces. Britain and America were said to fear that Russia has not implemented its undertaking to cease production of germ warfare weapons. Japan launched a £45 billion public-spend- ing spree designed to stimulate its econo- my. A three-day snow storm killed a million lambs in New Zealand. Japanese railway officials admitted the failure of a scheme to boost the network's income by getting rail- men to breed snapping turtles for restau- rant tables; the young turtles ate each
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