Portrait of The Week

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The gross domestic product of the United Kingdom was 0.8 per cent greater in the third quarter of the year than in the previous quarter, which had seen a growth of 1.2 per cent; the new figure was higher than expected. A Sovereign Support Grant will replace the Civil List from 2013, derived from part of the income of the Crown Estate, perhaps limited to £30 million a year. Switzerland agreed to withhold from British savers an amount representing the tax they would have paid at home. Investment in building wind turbines would bring 70,000 jobs by 2020, the government said. The owners of the Independent, which sells for a pound, launched a thin newspaper called i, selling for 20p. London firemen said they would go on strike on 5 November.

Five members of the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty were sentenced to between six years and 15 months in prison for intimidating companies linked to Huntingdon Life Sciences. An agency nurse working for the NHS was filmed by a closed-circuit camera turning off the ventilator of a quadriplegic patient, leaving him with serious brain damage. The Gangmasters Licensing Authority and West Mercia Police found seven Romanian children between the ages of nine and 16 at work picking spring onions in a field near Malvern, Worcestershire. Coca-Coca ended production of bottled Malvern water. In the first quarter of 2010 the consumption of beer fell by 9.7 per cent.

Martin Broughton, the chairman of British Airways, said there should be an end to ‘kowtowing’ to the United States with unnecessary checks on passengers’ shoes. Police were issued with extra ammunition against the threat of a terrorist attack of the kind experienced in Bombay in 2008. The 33 police helicopters maintained by 30 police forces in England and Wales are to be replaced by 23 helicopters at 20 bases run by a new National Police Air Service.