PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Saatchi's life The Scottish people voted by 74 per cent to 26 per cent in favour of a Scottish parliament, and by 63.5 per cent to 36.5 per cent in favour of that parliament having tax-raising powers. The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, flew to Edinburgh to say 'the era of big, centralised government is over', then flew to Cardiff to persuade Welsh vot- ers to back plans for a parliament there, in a referendum which promised to produce a far closer result. Peace negotiations recom- menced in Northern Ireland without the Ulster Unionist party; however, the party leader, David Trimble, was said to be on the point of joining in, sharing the same building with Sinn Fein, if not the same room. The talks process was then put under threat when a bomb, blamed upon an IRA splinter group, exploded in Markethill, Co. Armagh. Robin Cook, the Foreign Secre- tary, indicated that legislation to remove voting rights in the House of Lords from hereditary peers would be introduced in the next Queen's Speech. The Department for Education admitted that examination grades had undergone inflation over the past ten years. The Tory leader, William Hague, accused the government of 'shabby politics' over the arrangements for the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales. Elton John appealed to the British to stop griev- ing for Princess Diana, as his tribute to her, `Candle In The Wind', sold 600,000 copies and was propelled to the top of the hit
parade. Flowers continued to pile up out- side Althorp House, becoming, in the words of the Spencer family, 'a bit of a problem'. A survey revealed that 50 per cent of people calling themselves vegetari- ans eat meat when nobody is watching. Angela Eagle, a junior Department of the Environment minister, decided to tell the world that she is a lesbian. Two men tra- versed the River Thames by tightrope, one stepping over the other midway across. A team of surgeons in Bristol removed a lady's head, then fused it back onto the top of her spine, apparently without any ill effects. British Gas announced it was to make gas less smelly in order to cut the number of gas leaks reported. A mining company was refused permission to burrow beneath Newstead Abbey, Lord Byron's family home, on the grounds that the build- ing might collapse. P.H. Newby, the novel- ist, died, aged 79.
MADELEINE Albright, the American Sec- retary of State, on a visit to Israel, called upon the Netanyahu government not to undermine Middle East peace talks by building any more settlements in Palestini- an territory: Mr Netanyahu initially said no, but later vetoed a proposed housing project in east Jerusalem. European finance minis- ters met on the French-German border to declare that in spite of reported hitches, monetary union would be launched as
planned on 1 January 1999. Troops had to escort Bosnian refugees into their former home towns to vote in the country's munici- pal elections. Mother Teresa was given a state funeral in Calcutta. President Yeltsin backed a move to reintroduce Soviet legis- lation outlawing swearing. Italy decided to build a £3 billion, two-mile bridge between Sicily and the mainland. A Parisian back clinic confessed that 31 of its patients have been infected with tuberculosis after being treated with instruments rinsed in contami- nated water. The French government intro- duced legislation to outlaw bizutage: initia- tion ceremonies in which students have been forced to eat tadpoles and kiss rotting pigs' heads. The United States Air Force begged members of the public to scour their backyards and to return any fragments of a Stealth bomber which crashed at an air show in Maryland. A cosmonaut who crashed his cargo vessel into the Mir space station was found to have been suffering from 'weightlessness sickness'. Police in the Indian state of Assam were reduced to hitching lifts from passing motorists as their force ran out of petrol. A group of Aborig- ines failed in an attempt to sue the Aus- tralian government for $40 million — a sum calculated on compound interest on $50 they said should have been paid to their ancestors for helping to capture the outlaw Ned Kelly. Burgess Meredith, the actor, died, aged 89. RC
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