—Portrait of the Week— BORE OF THE NEW YEAR IS
already resale price maintenance. ln spite of the manipulated wrath of the Beaverbrook press, the British public shows little interest. Price-cutting supermarkets aban- doned their independence at the first whiff of opposition from wholesalers, and Tory back- benchers wilted before minor broadsides from the small shopkeepers. Mr. Butler mesmerised the 1922 Committee into believing all was well in the RPM garden, while the Prime Minister and Mr. Wilson shadow-boxed over TV debates during the election campaign. Both leaders may be over- estimating the impact of television, as a Mass Observation survey of the BBC 2 'Kangaroo' cam- paign revealed that only 19 per cent correctly identified the kangaroos with the BBC. Under- standably, most associated them with Australia: more inexplicable was the widespread association of the kangaroos with berets, pregnant women, sultanas, and 'something out of Epstein.'
EMBASSY-BOMBING, Archbishop Makarios insisting on UN troops intervening, and Turkish-Greek hostage-seizing: Cyprus tottered on the brink of violence, but the proposed international force may quieten tempers. Customary violence was missing from the latest South Vietnam revolt, when an army junta eased itself into power, but there were reports that 15,000 Watutsis had been put to death by the Rwanda Hutus. Chou En-lai cancelled his proposed East African tour, Ghana became a one-party State, with a vote of 2,682,000 to 2,480, but an opponent, in the Mayor of Marseilles, has been found for President de Gaulle for the 1965 election. Ranger VI, the US spacecraft, hit the moon only fifteen miles from its target area in the Sea of Tranquillity, but failed to send back any TV pictures, and a twenty-four-hour French TV strike was cut short by five hours so as not to annoy viewers.
NOT CONTENT WITH HIS PORTRAIT fl 10,000,000 newspapers per day, Mr. John Bloom entered the trading stampede, with 500,000.000 stamps each bearing his image, returnable for anything from fish-knives to church halls. Meanwhile, a US stamp company offered an original Renaissance painting for only one million dollars' spending. In the postage-stamp world, Sierra Leone issued a map-like stamp with the shape of Sierra Leone, and Jamaica featured Miss World on its new stamps. Dr. Beeching saved £17,000,000 last year, or rather lost £17,000,0000 less, and the Welsh steel strike ended, with £1,250,000 lost in wages. Mandy Rice-Davies announced she was to film Fanny Hill, and the intended sale of British Lion goes ahead.
WITH BILLY GRAHAM DENYING Presidential ambi- tions, Messrs. Rockefeller and Goldwater cam- paigned on fruitlessly in the primaries, while Washington waited for the Baker scandal to rake Up old sores: past memories brought suicide to one and resignation to another of Dr. Erhard's aides, while the Corsican leukwmia biologist, M. Naessens, was arrested. One mouse grounded a jet at London Airport, and a BOAC Comet touched down in the Nairobi National Park. nine miles short of the runway.
BRITAIN'S FIRST COLOURED POLICEMAN was ap- pointed in Gloucester, but later turned out to be the second when Plymouth claimed it had had a coloured policeman for twenty-five years. Mr. Charles Forte became Honorary Consul-General of San Marino in London, Britain won a gold medal in the two-man bobsleigh event at the Winter Olympics, and a record company with- drew a new release, 'I think I'm gonna kill myself,' in case the record public, or its critics, did.
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