PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
'I see the best man won.'
Mr Nigel Lawson was reported to be considering means-testing various pension- ers' benefits. This alarmed the rest of the Government, and Mr Lawson subsequent- ly accused journalists of misreporting him. The Treasury had failed properly to record his original interview and could not clarify the matter. A new broadcasting White Paper envisaged a fifth national television channel by 1993, dozens of local channels and hundreds of radio stations. Depart- ment of Energy sources criticised as 'mad- ness' last week's call by the Environment Secretary, Mr Nicholas Ridley, for Bri- tain's nuclear capacity to be substantially increased. Civil servants struck in protest at the GCHQ union ban, though Treasury and unions' assessments of the numbers involved differed widely. Nurses staged protests against their regrading. It was revealed that nearly half Britain's traffic forecasts were inaccurate. Labour won control of Nottingham with Communist help, while Church leaders conferred in Bradford with a view to opposing the Conservative council's spending cuts there. The Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland suspended from communion its most dis- tinguished adherent, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, for attending two Roman Catholic colleagues' funerals. Miss Koo Stark won £300,000, damages against the Sunday People for libelloosly suggesting her relationship with Prince Andrew had continued after both parties' marriages. Salman Rushdie won the Whit- bread Fiction Prize.
IN America's presidential election Mr George Bush defeated Mr Michael Duka- kis after a campaign of such epic dulness that it had given birth to nothing more substantial than the phrase 'sound bites'. Dr Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet dissident, started his own American tour and warned that perestroika was in danger. Moscow announced its approval of a monument to Polish officers murdered at Katyn during the second world war, though it was nOt revealed who, if anyone, would be official- ly named as perpetrators. Further east, Moscow proved less conciliatory, announc- ing it was halting troop withdrawals from Afghanistan. In Poland Mrs Thatcher met Solidarity and Church leaders and called for the reunification of Europe. The formation of Israel's new government re- mained incomplete, with the ultra-orthodox parties, who did so well in the recent elections, leaning now towards Likud, now towards Labour. An attempted coup in the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean was suppressed with Indian armed-forces help. Two powerful earthquakes hit China, the second of them killing more than 600 people. Peru's animal inflation reached 1,000 per cent. A cache of Christmas cards unearthed in the Duke and Duchess of Windsor's old Paris home offered evidence that relations between the ducal couple and royalty back in England, even the Queen Mother, had been less strained than commonly supposed. Australia was re- ported to be planning free heroin hand- outs to addicts to stop Aids spreading. In America it was announced that Ringo Starr was being treated there for alcoholism. COM
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