Portrait of the Week— ' MISTER THREE PER CENT . —alias Brother Brown—
set the election campaign alight with a reported Promise drastically to cut mortgage rates. By con- trast the Labour Deputy Leader complained that the Sunday Express had put words into his Mouth: but in these hypersensitive days the Tories were grateful of any stigma to beat a dogma. Mr. Hogg warned that the country would lynch the Socialists within six months, and National Opinion Polls forecast a Tory majority of eighty. Transport House denied having a spy in the Tory Central Office, Bexley Labour Party ordered 500 sticks of rock with a Labour slogan all the way down, and the BBC stopped Michael Dentine's show from having Chinese invaders blowing up Parliament.
LABOUR LEADERS watched in horror as a strike by eighty workers at a Birmingham factory threatened to produce a shut-down in most of the Midlands car industry : until then union squabbles had seemed less likely to lose votes. Mr. Cousins stepped into the London docks dispute, and there were admissions by an ex-official of the National Union of Seamen that he had rigged votes. Trans- Port House was amused rather than worried by the latest demonstration by Young Socialists, Proudly displaying besides placards of Trotsky and Lenin such banner gems as 'Wilson betrayer of Labour,' End police violence,' and `Mods and Rockers unite.'
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LORD RUSSELL hardly won respect when, as chair- man of the British 'Who Killed Kennedy?' Com- mittee, he denounced the Warren Commission's Report as 'a conspicuous failure'; more impartial observers, seeing that the Commission had evi- dence that filled twenty volumes from 26,000 interviews, accepted that Oswald alone had been the assassin. Meanwhile US opinion polls fore- cast a landslide victory for Johnson, while his °PPonent Senator Goldwater denounced Britain as 'second-class' thanks to her 'do-gooder policies.'
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THE ITALIAN GOVERNMENT provided a little light relief, as the Senate threw out plans for a turn- over tax that had already been collected. But Otherwise this was an unhappy week—with the Vatican Council squabbling over religious freedom, with Mr. Khrushchev allowing the Ber- lin Wall to have a chink four times a year, and With the South African Government arresting Nelson Mandela's lawyer. The Saharan gas tine for Britain came into operation, Australia is to Press for a Bloodhound repayment, and an Illinois bakery claimed that its 610-digit computer could mix and bake 120,000.00() cakes per year, as well as pack and freeze them, and do the book- keeping.
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I�ACKED BY A CLAIM BY MR. AMERY that it 'is not obsolete yet,' the TSR-2 took to the air for four- teen minutes` on Sunday. Another direct-selling washing machine company went into liquidation, and a major supermarket chain called it a day with trading stamps. The GPO may pay a higher rate of interest on savings, the Sun was reported to have a circulation of 1.8 million against the Daily Herald's 1.3 million, and the Inland Revenue was criticised for sending a chauffeur-driven car thirty- three miles to collect a debt of twopence.
THE OLYMPIC TEAM set out for Tokyo, where fore- casts of typhoons were matched by pre-journey squabbles between athletes and their managers: Britain's clay pigeon shooting team almost lost its star after allegations of professionalism. While the athletes took their arguments to Tokyo, Britain Was able to welcome to its shores a choir from the Society for the Preservation and Encourage- ment of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America.
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