—Portrait of the Week
FOR HIS FOURTH BUDGET in eighteen months Mr James Callaghan seemed to have chosen a bad day: most people were talking about the weather, and some about The Times. On Monday temperatures reached eighty degrees, the highest in May since records began, and on Tuesday The Times appeared bearing news on its front page, the only newspaper reborn of the age we live in. But Mr Callaghan survived it all. He spoke lovingly of his powers to in- crease income tax and to step up the various forms of purchase tax, then, casting all these aside, came to the £7,000 million a year the country spends on services. This, said the
Chancellor, was an ideal source of future government revenue and calculated that his new Selective Employment Tax would bring the exchequer £241 million in a full year. Next day, the Government agreed in principle to a 'substantial' pay rise for doctors and dentists.
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