The Spectator’s portrait of the week
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Ed Miliband, aged 40, was elected leader of the Labour party by 50.65 per cent of the vote, to 49.35 per cent for his brother David, aged 45. Ed Miliband had gained 15.522 per cent from MPs, 15.198
from party members — both lower figures than his brother, but 19.934 from unions. His speech to the Labour party conference used the words ‘new generation’ 15 times but invoked
without apparent irony ‘the optimism of Harold Wilson and the white heat of technology’. David Miliband repeatedly called his brother ‘special’, but, during the passage in
the speech disowning the Iraq war, he said to Harriet Harman next to him: ‘You voted for it. Why are you clapping?’
The International Monetary Fund said the British economy was ‘on the mend’ and described the coalition government’s plans to cut spending as ‘essential’. A leaked letter to David Cameron, the Prime Minister, from Liam Fox, the Defence Secretary, said that he refused to back any substantial reduction to the Armed Forces. A leaked letter dated 26 August, by Francis Maude, a Cabinet Office minister, suggested that 180 quangos would be abolished, 124 merged, 338 retained; and 100 more were yet to be decided upon. Among those to go would be the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and the Churches Conservation Trust. Jimi Heselden, 62, the owner of the company that makes the Segway motorised scooter, died after crashing one off a cliff at home at Boston Spa, West Yorkshire.
A survey of 450,000 people by the Office for National Statistics found that 1 per cent said they were homosexual; half of 1 per cent that they were bisexual. The names and addresses of 5,300 people thought by a law firm, ACS:Law, to be infringing copyright by sharing pornographic films were leaked without its knowledge on to the internet. The Middlesex-based United Biscuits, which makes Jaffa Cakes, was in talks with China’s Bright Food, which might buy it. A man making sandwiches for his children from a loaf bought at Tesco, Bicester, found a dead mouse lodged in it; Premier Foods was fined £16,821.14 for failing to maintain standards at its London bakery. The tail was not found.
Abroad
Israel ended a 10-month moratorium on building settlements in the West Bank jeopardising peace talks with the Palestinians. Kim Jong-un, aged about 27, the third son of North Korea’s failing
Kim Jong-il, was made a general and attended the first Workers’ Party Congress in 30 years. China investigated allegations that a security company took money from local governments to abduct
and imprison people who travelled to Beijing to complain about local injustices. China imposed a duty of 104.5 per cent on chickens imported from the United States. Opposition parties in
parliamentary elections in Venezuela reduced the majority enjoyed by the party led by President Hugo Chavez to below two thirds, thwarting some planned legislation. A landslide buried 300 houses at
Santa Maria Tlahuitoltepec, in Oaxaca state, Mexico. A 20in wide capsule arrived at the mine in Chile where 33 miners are trapped 2,000ft underground; it would be sent down when an escape shaft is
ready.
The gross domestic product of the Republic of Ireland fell 1.2 per cent in the second quarter of 2010. Ministers wondered what to do with the stricken Anglo Irish bank. Spain approved a budget that cut 5 per cent from the pay of public workers. The trial began of 95 people, including two former mayors of Marbella, accused of misusing public funds. The Spanish government was still waiting for ETA, the Basque separatist terrorist organisation, to renounce all violence. Peter Jackson, the film producer, threatened to take filming of The Hobbit to eastern Europe from New Zealand. Temperatures in Los Angeles reached 113°F.
Athletes bravely arrived in Delhi for the Commonwealth Games, which the Prince of Wales was due to open on behalf of the Queen on 3 October. There had been complaints of dirty rooms, and the Times of India published a front-page picture of a cobra found in the tennis stadium. Yawar Saeed, the manager of Pakistan’s recent tour to England, resigned. President Barack Obama of the United States described as ‘offensive’ a claim by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran at the UN that most people believe the US government was behind the attacks of September 11, 2001. Pope Shenouda III, the Coptic patriarch, apologised after one of his bishops suggested that some verses of the Koran might have been added after Mohammed’s death; ‘The simple fact of bringing up the subject was inappropriate,’ he said on Egyptian state television. CSH
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