Portrait of the week | 21 July 2012

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The Armed Forces were called upon to supply 3,500 men to look after security for the Olympic Games after GS4, a security company, failed to recruit enough staff. Nick Buckles, its chief executive, agreed before a Commons committee that it had been a ‘humiliating shambles’ but said that the company would keep its £57 million management fee. The UK Border Agency had laid off 1,000 more workers than it intended, the National Audit Office found. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, appearing at a rail depot in Smethwick with Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, said that he was ‘even more committed’ to the coalition, and announced new rail schemes costing £4.2 billion, such as the electrification of the line to Sheffield, where Mr Clegg has his constituency. The Mayor of London’s cycling was an example of virtue, according to a petition to the Pakistan High Court by Hafiz Saeed, the founder of Laskar-e-Taliba, who has a $10 million American bounty on his head.

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Jerry del Missier, the former chief operating officer of Barclays, asked by the Treasury select committee whether a telephone call in 2008 from Bob Diamond, the chief executive, was an instruction to cut its London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) rate submissions, replied: ‘Yes it was.’ Eleven other banks linked to rigging the Libor rate are expected to pay a total of $22 billion in regulatory penalties and damages, according to estimates by Morgan Stanley. The annual rate of inflation fell to 2.4 per cent (by the CPI) from 2.8, or to 2.8 from 3.1 (by the RPI). Unemployment fell by 65,000 to 2.58 million. The government began a scheme to underwrite £50 billion of investment in infrastructure and exports. British arms companies operating under government licences were still exporting equipment to Syria, including bulletproof vehicles.