Among austerity measures outlined by Mr George Osborne, the shadow chancellor of the exchequer, at the Conservative party conference in Manchester was that the pensionable age for men should rise to 66 no earlier than 2016, instead of by 2026. He also promised a one-year pay freeze for public-sector workers, apart from the million who earn less than £18,000. On the eve of his speech, Mr Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, came up with the wheeze of suddenly announcing that pay for people in the public sector such as GPs and judges would be frozen. The Conservatives also showed their seriousness in responding to the public deficit by banning overt consumption of champagne at their conference. Mr David Cameron, the leader of the opposition, was photographed by the daily Mirror holding a glass. Later he said: ‘Our country is in a crisis. Our country is in a real hole.’ Mr Cameron refused to promise a referendum in the event of the Lisbon Treaty being ratified by all EU members before the general election. Mr Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, provokingly popped up to Manchester to suggest that a referendum should be held anyway. Mr Tony Blair, the former prime minister, was expected soon to become the first permanent president of the European Union. ‘I think he would be an excellent choice,’ said Mr David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary. Mr Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, agreed to hold television debates with Mr Cameron; Mr Alex Salmond, the leader of the Scottish Nationalists, said he wanted one too. Mr Brown visited Northern Ireland to conciliate the coalition of Sinn Fein and Democratic Unionists there by promising them £600 million to fund policing. Mr Bob Ainsworth, the Secretary of State for Defence, visited Afghanistan and, on asking a sergeant in Helmand what he needed most, was told ‘More troops on the ground.’ The replacement for the Law Lords, the new Supreme Court, in the former Middlesex Guildhall (designed by James Gibson, 1913), heard its first case. British Airways said it was cutting 1,700 cabin crew jobs. Hilary Mantel, who won The Spectator’s Shiva Naipaul prize in 1987, won this year’s Man Booker prize for Wolf Hall, her novel about Thomas Cromwell. The global price of tea was blamed for supermarket prices of teabags rising 50 per cent in a year. Dust featured prominently in the Turner Prize shortlist, with Roger Hiorns spreading out dust from an atomised jet engine and Lucy Skaer displaying 26 sculptures made from coal dust.
In a referendum in Ireland on the Lisbon Treaty, 67.1 per cent voted in favour. The turnout was 58 per cent of the 3,132,475 registered voters. Donegal, which lies in Ulster but is not part of Northern Ireland, voted No. Mr Brian Cowen, the Taioseach of Ireland, said: ‘It is a good day for Ireland, it is a good day for Europe.’ Mr Gordon Brown, after careful thought, said: ‘The treaty is good for the UK and good for Europe.’ President Václav Klaus of the Czech Republic, who has refused to ratify the treaty pending a lawsuit, said: ‘I’m afraid that the people of Britain should have been doing something really much earlier.’ General Stanley McChrystal, the American commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, who has recommended 40,000 extra US troops to be sent there, said in a speech in London that the policy favoured by Vice-President Joe Biden of relying on smaller forces would lead to ‘Chaosistan’. He later had what was said to have been an awkward meeting with President Barack Obama of the United States. Mr Obama, who is to visit China next month, refused to meet the Dalai Lama in Washington this week. After a visit by Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, North Korea said it would resume six-party talks on its nuclear programme, if prior talks with the United States throve. Rio de Janeiro was awarded the 2016 Olympic games, not Chicago, Madrid or Tokyo. In Tokyo, Mr Shoichi Nakagawa, who resigned as Japan’s finance minister after appearing to be drunk at a G7 meeting last year, was found dead at his home. The film director Roman Polanski, aged 76, was refused bail by a judge in Switzerland, where he is facing an extradition application from the United States, where he was convicted in 1977 of unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl. An earthquake in Sumatra killed perhaps 3,000. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, a noted enemy of Israel, was found to come from a Jewish family after pictures of him holding up his identity card confirmed that his parents had changed their name from Sabourjian when he was a boy. A McDonald’s is to open next month in the underground entry to the Louvre. The Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe was won by the first horse also to have won the 2,000 Guineas and the Derby: Sea The Stars, an Irish colt.
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