Portrait of the Week - 21 August 2004

Eight men, arrested two weeks ago, were charged with planning to commit murder and to launch radiological, chemical, gas or bomb attacks. A-level candidates did better than ever; Mr David Miliband, the schools minister, said evidence from reports he had seen did not suggest ‘dumbing-down’. Mr Richard Thomas, the independent Information Commissioner, criticised the Home Office’s plans for identity cards, saying, ‘My anxiety is that we don’t sleepwalk into a surveillance society.’ Mr Peter Mandelson was made trade commissioner by Mr José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission. A sudden flood washed through Boscastle, Cornwall, destroying several houses and carrying away 50 cars; dozens of people trapped in houses were rescued by helicopter. Police found two men they suspected of separate murders hiding in the same square mile of woodland near Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire; one had been there about a month, the other for about a fortnight. More than 500 revellers in 200 cars arrived at an all-night rave in a clearing in woodland on the Sandringham estate, Norfolk; police monitored the party, but no arrests were made. The event was audible from Sandringham House, but the Queen was at Balmoral. Mr Shaun Brady was dismissed as general secretary of the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen by its left-wing executive. Rail delays fell for the tenth consecutive month, leaving about 15 per cent of trains late. British Airways check-in staff threatened to strike over the bank holiday weekend at the end of August. Merrill Lynch, the investment bankers, decided to stop sponsoring the Chelsea Flower Show after five years. The remains of a 40-acre fortified Roman settlement dating from the 1st century ad, which once had a population of 1,000, was found under farmland near Rangeworthy, Gloucestershire.