PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Rose blight The annual rate of inflation rose to 8.3 per cent, its highest level for seven years. The Chancellor, when asked where the rate would stand by the end of the year, replied, 'I am only in the forecasting business really as a sideline.' The Tories lost 13 seats and their relative majority in the European Parliament to Labour, who also won by-elections for the Westminster seats of Vauxhall and Glasgow Central. Mr Peter Brooke, the Tory Party Chairman, was expected to carry the can for their defeat. The Green Party came third with 15 per cent of the vote, more than double the share of the SLD, but won no seats. Labour was warned against the danger of defection to the Greens over unilateralism. Lady Butler of Saffron Walden threatened to defect to them over Hong Kong. Ronald Reagan received an honorary knighthood, and, in the Birthday Honours, the tradi- tional sort went to Rex Harrison and Hardy Amies. Professor Stephen Hawking was made a Companion of Honour. It was revealed that over the past 20 years the Church of England has razed 289 churches and closed another 926. The number of clergy has fallen by nearly 20 per cent. Mr Billy Graham, in London to make sense of Life, said he had found that newspaper editors and publishers 'genuinely feel there is a need for moral and spiritual renaiss- ance here.' England lost the first test to the Australians.
THE authorities in China began sentencing students to death — they also removed all traces of the occupation of Tiananmen Square and its bloody end, expelled West- ern journalists, purged the party of liber- als, mounted a propaganda counter- offensive, attacked Western governments for sheltering dissidents and reassured Western investors that China is still a heck of a place to do business. Sir Geoffrey Howe cautiously recognised a government obligation to 'respond' to a post-1997 `cataclysm' in Hong Kong. The colony's Governor, Sir David Wilson, who last week came to London to remind the Government of its obligations to those trying to get out of Hong Kong, this week went to Geneva seeking forcibly to repatri- ate up to 45,000 Vietnamese boat people trying to get in. President Gorbachev, visiting West Germany, proclaimed the end of the Cold War. The warm-hearted Germans greeted him along his way with chants of `Gorbi, Gorbi'. Steel workers in the Ruhr are to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize. As earnest of his pacific tendencies, he hinted at the prospect of an end to the Berlin Wall and suffered to take place in Hungary a memorial service for Imre Nagy, who had been murdered by his predecessors. The Rumanians started building a wall along their border with Hungary. Ethnic Turks continued to be persecuted both by Bulgars and by Uzbeks, while in Turkey itself there was co-operation with Iraq in persecuting the Kurds, about 1800 of whom have been received as refugees in Britain. In Greece, Mr Papandreou's Socialists lost their par- liamentary majority after eight years in power, partly owing to their leader's affair with a former air hostess. Sosuke Uno, the prime minister of Japan, came under press- ure to resign after only a fortnight in office because of allegations of an affair with a soi-disant geisha — behaviour hitherto not thought worthy of public comment in that country. Imported Western morality was thought to be responsible. JVB
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