Portrait of the week | 1 October 2011

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Ed Miliband, the leader of the Labour party, asked its conference: ‘Are you on the side of the wealth creators or the asset strippers?’ He criticised ‘predatory’ companies, and said that when it came to social housing we should not ‘treat the person who contributes to their community the same as the person who doesn’t’. Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, sketched a five-point plan to invigorate the economy: to repeat the bank bonus tax; to undertake infrastructure projects; to reduce VAT; to reduce to 5 per cent VAT on home improvements; and to remove National Insurance for a year from new posts appointed by small businesses. He also apologised, rather narrowly, for ‘what we failed around the world to see’ before the economic crisis, and that ‘we didn’t spend every pound of public money well’. The wreck of the SS Gairsoppa, a British cargo ship sunk in 1941, was found 300 miles off Ireland, and plans were made to salvage its 200 tons of silver, worth £150 million, from 15,000ft beneath the sea.

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George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said that European leaders had ‘weeks not months’ to sort out the crisis in the eurozone. A miner died when a roof collapsed 2,600ft underground at Kellingley colliery, Yorkshire. Six men from Birmingham appeared in court charged with terrorism offences including a suspected suicide bombing campaign. Sikhs protested in London at being asked to remove their turbans at airports even after passing through security scanners.

BAE Systems cut nearly 3,000 jobs, mainly at factories in Lancashire and East Yorkshire. A man accused of contaminating packs of Nurofen Plus painkiller with powerful anti-psychotic drugs was remanded in custody by West London Magistrates’ Court. David Croft, the co-writer of Dad’s Army, died, aged 89.