— Portrait of the Week —
`LET NOT POOR NEDDY STARVE,' was clearly the thought of all industrialists, government and TUC experts who gathered in London for a two-day session on the economic future, just as the trade gap widened by £50 million and National Pro- ductivity Year began disastrously with a decline in output. More Labour MPs did not want Mr. George Brown than didn't want Mr. Harold Wilson, and the new Labour leader hurriedly arranged for image-building trips to Washington, Moscow and Brussels. The Conservatives seemed rather worried that their leader was old enough to be the father of the Leader. of the Opposition and there were rumours of revolts: on Saturday Mr. MacMillan made clear that talk of his retire- ment was only `macbelieve,' and gave no hints of the next election. But general election jitters got under way With the beginning of the by- election season, with Colne Valley first on March 14, and 185 candidates to be pruned by a Select Committee.
THE NATIONAL INCOMES COMMISSION opened, with shocks: the Treasury advisers calmly declared that Neddy's target was chimerical, and even if not, the old `guiding light' should remain: an- other of Selwyn Lloyd's dreams was shattered when government spending rose by 9.4 per cent. against his intention of an annual increase of 21 per cent. The Ford strike was called off, and Mr. Cousins turned his attention to the London busmen who, like the beefeaters at the Tower, Were threatening strike action. Lord Hailsham Put in a good word for squares, Mr. Gunter a good word for shop stewards, and the Quakers a good word for sex. The Defence White Paper had the virtue of brevity, but announced a new British missile for use with the supersonic TSR2.
MR. KHRUSHCHEV AGREED to remove thousands of troops from Cuba, and EFTA countries agreed to remove tariffs by 1966. There were rumours of an Anglo-Russian trading possibility in oil and ships, of a Chinese A-bomb explosion, of broken pledges over the Central African Federa- tion, of yet another plot against de Gaulle and of friction between Russia and the new regime in Iraq- A Venezuelan ship was pirated and offered sanctuary in Brazil, Bailey's Ltd. took out a writ against the Maltese Government as Well as against the British Government, and Dr. Adenauer received a severe polling setback in West Berlin: not enough to edge him out of office, but now the writing is on the Berlin Wall.
Mr. Khrushchev offered NATO a non-aggression Pact.
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A GLOOMY WEEK for sport: the Test series in Australia petered out with a tame and spineless draw; all America seemed set on trying the fifty- mile walk following the example of the Kennedy family; in England the football season was extended to the beginning of next year's football season; and in Cologne magistrates dismissed a
of cruelty to animals brought against a wwhan who performed a striptease on horseback. The magistrates found no evidence that bareback riding was cruel to horses.
MRS. DALE WAS SACKED from her programme without a pension, while a thirty-two-year-old carpenter in Birmingham who was sacked has been given a £3 per week pension for life. The Cunard Company sold Eagle Airways to its original owner for less than they originally paid him for the firm, and to complete a gloomy week, the Vatican newspaper, Osservatore Romano, declared that people living on other planets—if any—were without question excluded from any prospect of salvation.
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