Portrait of the week | 10 January 2013

Home

David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that, for the ‘coalition government with a full tank of gas, it’s full steam ahead’. He announced a ‘mid-term review’, but an audit that showed which pledges had not been met was held back. ‘We are married, not to each other,’ he said at a joint press conference with Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, ‘So, to me it’s not a marriage, it is, if you like, a Ronseal deal — it does what it says on the tin.’ He promised details in coming weeks on such things as ‘capping the potentially huge cost’ of social care, and extending the HS2 high-speed rail line from Birmingham to the north of England. He said he favoured televised debates between party leaders before the general election. Lord Strathclyde resigned as Leader of the Lords, after 25 years on the Conservative front bench. He was replaced with Lord Hill of Oareford. Lord Marland resigned as business minister to spend more time in business.

The government cut increases in benefits such as Jobseeker’s Allowance and Income Support by means of a parliamentary bill. Under earlier provisions, families with one parent earning more than £60,000 lost their child benefit, although families with two parents each earning £49,000 lost none. More than 500,000 who missed a deadline to opt out of receiving the benefit will have to fill in complicated self-assessment tax returns. Shares in international banks rose in response to laxer than expected global liquidity rules (the second plank of the Basel III reforms).  Three fire crews succeeded in coaxing a squirrel from an island in a pond in Watford High Street.

In east Belfast, protests that had been going on since early December, against the reduction of days that the Union flag would be flown above the City Hall, turned into nightly riots.