Portrait of the Week— THE TRADE FIGURES for May gave
everyone the willies—imports up £24 million, exports down otm.. trade deficit wider by £19m.—though Mr. Jay said it was only 'a statistical accident.' Wall Street slid and rallied, the pound took a knock. The Home Secretary forbade the sale of alcoholic after-shave lotion in prisons, after prisoners had been found inexplicably drunk in their cells, and a lady was arrested in Naples because petrol came out of her bath taps. President de Gaulle was greeted in Bonn by children waving left-over Union Jacks and Prince Rainier of Monaco threat- ened to nationalise Onassis if he didn't toe the line. The Ministry of Aviation advised pilots that fear was a better stimulant than pep-pills.
THERE WAS AN acrimonious African prelude to the Commonwealth Prime Ministers Conference, which met on Thursday. In Lagos three of Ghana's neighbours accused her of fomenting rebellions in West Africa; in Tanzania, prospects of East African unity dwindled when the government tightened its belt and withdrew from the united Currency Board; and in London, Prime Minister Banda announced that the Tanzanian Foreign Minister was privately harbouring Malawi rebels. Prime Minister Nyerere declared the British seemed on the verge of collapse. Nothing much happened to cheer their hosts. Mr. George Brown declared he was 'being ganged up against' and suspected a conspiracy of Press and City. Ladbroke's lengthened the odds on a general election this year, and also on the Tories winning it. The Ku-Klux-Klan opened a branch in Birmingham, England, to pave the way for a visit of the USA's Imperial Wizard (which the Home Secretary promptly forbade). Doubts and protests about the war in Vietnam continued in America as in Britain. where Mr. Michael Stewart and Mr. Cabot Lodge took part in a teach-in.
H WAS A BAD WEEK for Scottish crofters selling shell-fish (whose freight charges went up by 87 per cent), but a joyful one for astronomers, prize- winners and underwater enthusiasts. A staggering discovery of unimaginably distant galaxies was made at Mount Wilson and may shortly reveal the origins of the universe; the Beatles got the MBE, whereupon various gentlemen offered to return theirs, though none apparently objected to OBE's for denizens of Coronation Street and Dixon of Dock Green: the Royal Navy set up a workshop 600 feet below the surface of the Mediterranean; and two Italian enthusiasts are to he married on the sea-bed of the Blue Grotto.
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