PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Happy New Labour!
MR DAVID Blunkett, the Secretary of State for Employment and Education, who is blind, said, in a letter to Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, which was leaked to the Sunday Telegraph, that cuts in benefit pay- ments to the disabled proposed by Miss Harriet Harman, the Secretary of State for Social Security, 'make a mockery of our professions on social exclusion and the con- struction of a more just society'. Two Labour members of the European Parlia- ment resolved to stand as independent Labour candidates in the next election in protest at the policy. Lord Justice Phillips is to inquire into all aspects of bovine spongi- form encephalopathy. The government is to give away 10 million tins of stewed beef to poor people as part of a European Union scheme to reduce the beef mountain, Billy Wright, a Loyalist Volunteer Force terror- ist nicknamed King Rat, was shot dead in the Maze Prison by a fellow prisoner belonging to the Irish National Liberation Army; four people were shot, one of whom, Seamus Dillon, a former Irish Republican Army man, died, at Dungannon in reprisal. Mr Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, said that an application for citizenship by Mr Mohamed Fayed would be considered afresh; any rejection of such applications would in future be accompanied by reasons. Mr Blair stood by a Cabinet colleague whose 17-year-old son was arrested on sus- picion of selling cannabis after being set up by the Mirror; the minister cannot be named as the law prohibits identification of the boy, but his identity soon became an open secret. The Press Complaints Com- mission brought in a new code of conduct for newspapers from 1 January; it recog- nised for the first time a right to privacy. A schoolgirl set a new record by having a baby at 11 years three months. Gales cut off electricity from more than 100,000 on Christmas Day. James Lees-Milne, the diarist and conservationist, died aged 89.
THE World Bank rushed through a $3 bil- lion loan to South Korea, where the curren- cy, the won, halved in value against the dol- lar, and government bonds were re- classified by American credit-rating agen- cies as equal to junk bonds; 'I can't sleep since I was briefed,' commented Mr Kim Dae-jung, the President elect of South Korea, 'I am totally flabbergasted.' Russia introduced a new rouble worth 1,000 old roubles. Mayan-speaking Indians from a hamlet in Chiapas state, Mexico, shot dead 45, mostly women and children, in a neigh- bouring hamlet; most of the dead were con- nected with a movement called Las Abejas (the Bees), which supports the aims but not the violent methods of the Zapatista insur- gents. Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, a terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal, was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of three people in Paris in 1975. Mr Kenneth Kaunda, the former President of Zambia, was arrested and held without charge under emergency regulations imposed after an abortive coup by drunken officers last October. King Juan Carlos of Spain is to be given a new yacht costing £19 million by tourist operators grateful for his promotion of Majorca. Hong Kong slaughtered all 1,200,000 chickens in the territory after perhaps 20 people fell sick with avian influenza, encouraging fears of a global pandemic. Scores of Kenyans and Somalis and their livestock bled to death of an unidentified sickness. Woody Allen, the film actor and director, aged 62, married Soon-Yi Previn, aged 27, the adopted daughter of Mia Farrow, with whom Woody Allen used to live.
CSH
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