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After the resignation of Liam Fox as Defence Secretary, a report by Sir Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, found that there had been a ‘clear breach’ of the ministerial code in his working relationship with Adam Werritty, who had accompanied him on 18 foreign trips. Dr Fox, he said, had been warned about Mr Werritty’s role, although Dr Fox had not benefited financially and Mr Werritty was not a lobbyist, he found. Philip Hammond, the Transport Secretary, replaced Dr Fox and Justine Greening replaced Mr Hammond. Canon Giles Fraser, the Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral, requested police on its steps confronting anti-capitalist demonstrators to leave; about 150 tents were pitched around the cathedral. Lord Judge, the Lord Chief Justice, said that, after the ‘utterly shocking’ riots of August, ‘severe sentences, intended to provide both punishment and deterrence, must follow — it is very simple’; he dismissed seven appeals, including two who planned a riot on Facebook. Julian Barnes won the Man Booker prize with The Sense of an Ending.
• The annual rate of inflation, measured by the Consumer Prices Index, rose from 4.5 per cent a month earlier to 5.2 per cent, its highest since March 1992. As measured by the Retail Prices Index it rose to 5.6 per cent from 5.2. Sir Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, said that ‘a return to normality’ would take longer because of the problems in the eurozone. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, and Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary, held a one-day ‘summit’ with six energy companies and the regulator Ofgem, which said that energy suppliers now made £125 a year from each customer; in June the margin was said to be £15. The London boroughs of Kensington & Chelsea and Hammersmith & Fulham decided to share a chief executive to save money.
• Backbenchers tabled a debate on whether a referendum should be held by May 2013 on Britain’s continuing membership of the European Union. Police and bailiffs evicted travellers from an illegal settlement at Dale Farm, Essex. In a YouTube video, the Duke of Cambridge urged people to create or preserve 2,012 open spaces by 2012 to mark the Queen’s diamond jubilee. David, Lord Sainsbury of Turville was elected Chancellor of Cambridge with 2,893 votes, beating Brian Blessed into second place with 1,389. Rangers Football Club said it was ‘withdrawing all co-operation with the BBC’, accusing it of ‘prejudiced muckraking’. The Scottish government said it might ban the spread of coastal fish farms lest parasitic lice spread to wild fish.
Abroad
Markets fell after the spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany made pessimistic noises about the chances of the European Union summit on 23 October solving the euro crisis. Greeks held a two-day general strike against austerities; Portuguese unions called a one-day general strike for November. The population of Spain fell by 28,000 in the first six months of the year, with hundreds of thousands of migrants returning to Latin America. Olympus, the Japanese camera manufacturer, sacked its Liverpudlian president after six months; he then took evidence about company payments that he had questioned to the Serious Fraud Office in London. A woman who had served a sentence for starving a man to death was found to be holding four mentally disabled people chained in a cellar in Philadelphia, so that, it was alleged, she could claim their benefits. Liliane Bettencourt, the 88-year-old L’Oréal heiress, lost a court battle with her daughter over her £15 billion fortune.
• The Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit returned to his home town of Mitzpe Hila from five years’ captivity in Gaza after his abduction by Hamas. In return Israel freed 477 Palestinian prisoners, and promised to free another 550. Kenyan forces pressed towards the town of Afmadow, 75 miles inside Somalia and a stronghold of al-Shabab, the Islamist militant group, which has been abducting foreigners from Kenyan territory. Dozens of protesters were shot dead in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. A new biography of Van Gogh blamed his death on a teenager dressed as a cowboy.
• In Libya attempts by forces of the National Transitional Council to take Sirte went slowly, with the city being left in ruins. Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, visited Tripoli. The Queen began an 11-day tour of Australia. World deaths from malaria fell from 985,000 in 2000 to 781,000 in 2009. Fauja Singh, aged 100, from Ilford, east London, finished the Toronto Waterfront Marathon in eight hours, 25 minutes, 16 seconds. CSH
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