Portrait of the Week – 11 December 2004

The Army Board approved a scheme to amalgamate all 19 single-battalion regiments into ‘super regiments’. The BBC is to get rid of 3,000 staff in three years to save £320 million. The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution called for a ban on fishing in a third of British waters. The Department of Health told Britain’s 1,184 hospitals how to clean floors and lavatories in an attempt to reduce infection by Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, which kills thousands a year. Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor, demanded in a five-year plan that the Crown Prosecution Service and the courts should convict, fine or caution 1.25 million people a year by 2008, an increase of 170,000; Lord Falconer also admitted that attempts to abolish the post of Lord Chancellor had been dropped. Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, and Mr Bertie Ahern, the Irish Taoiseach, tried very hard to get Mr Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, and the Revd Ian Paisley, the leader of the Democratic Unionist party, to kiss and make up. The Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill had its second reading; among its provisions is a seven-year jail sentence for anyone judged to have stirred up religious hatred through threatening, abusive or insulting behaviour. Mr George Galloway won £150,000 damages from the Daily Telegraph, which had suggested he was in the pay of Saddam Hussein after documents were found in the Iraqi foreign ministry in Baghdad at the time of the US invasion; the paper was also left with a legal bill of £1.2 million. W.H. Smith, which made a pre-tax loss of £130 million last year, disclosed that it had increased directors’ pay by 77 per cent in the same period. Two farm-workers died when a 40-minutes-late train struck their van on an open level-crossing on the line from Peterborough to Lincoln near Helpringham, Lincolnshire.