Portrait of the week | 13 November 2010

Home

David Cameron, the Prime Minister, visited China with four Cabinet ministers and 43 business leaders. He said he hoped for ‘greater political opening’ in the country. A £750 million order for Rolls-Royce engines and a £45 million order for pigs were announced during the trip. A Special Immigration Appeals Commission upheld an appeal by Abu Hamza, who is in jail, against an attempt to remove his British citizenship. There were three nights of rioting at Moorland prison, south Yorkshire. The bishops of Fulham, Ebbsfleet and Richborough, and two retired bishops, announced that they were joining the Catholic Church as members of an ordinariate allowing the use of ‘liturgical books proper to the Anglican tradition’. Twinings, the tea blenders, is to close its factory in North Shields and open one in Poland, with a €12 million EU grant.

Two High Court judges sitting as an election court, the first for 99 years, declared the election (by 103 votes) of Phil Woolas, the Labour candidate, as MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth was void, because of false statements in his election leaflets, and they ordered a fresh election. Mr Woolas was barred from Parliament for three years, and dropped like a hot brick by the Labour party, but the Speaker decided against a by-election until legal proceedings are completed. The Supreme Court ruled that the Labour ex-MPs David Chaytor, Elliot Morley and Jim Devine must stand trial in a Crown court, not in Parliament, on charges regarding expenses.

BBC journalists struck for two days over pensions, depriving the middle classes of the Today programme over breakfast. Mark Thompson, the director-general of the BBC, apologised for signing a letter opposing Rupert Murdoch’s planned buyout of BSkyB.