Portrait of the Week – 23 October 2004

The United States asked for British forces to be sent from the south of Iraq around Basra to positions further north to cover for American troops required to attack Fallujah, where insurgents have been in control; the government decided to send soldiers of the Black Watch. They would come under American command but retain British rules of engagement. Abu Hamza al-Masri, the well-known hook-handed Muslim cleric, was taken to Belmarsh magistrates’ court to answer ten charges of soliciting or encouraging the murder of others, ‘namely a person or persons who did not believe in the Islamic faith’. Mr Mike Tomlinson, a former chief inspector of schools, proposed in an official report that A-levels and GCSEs should be replaced over a 10-year period by a diploma; ‘teacher-led assessment should be the predominant mode of assessment’ in place of GCSEs. But Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said, ‘GCSEs and A-levels will stay’. The Lambeth commission set up by the Archbishop of Canterbury, chaired by the Most Revd Dr Robert Eames, the Primate of All Ireland, recommended in the so-called Windsor report that the Episcopal Church of the USA should ‘express its regret that the proper constraints of the bonds of affection were breached’ when it consecrated the practising homosexual Dr Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire; but the Primate of Ecusa, the Most Revd Frank Griswold, would only express ‘regret that there are places within our Communion where it is unsafe for them [homosexuals] to speak out the truth of who they are’. Sainsbury’s said it would actually make a loss, taking into account half a billion pounds wasted on a useless information technology system. The Office of National Statistics said that though spending on the National Health Service has risen since 1997, productivity has fallen. The government prepared to hurry through the Gambling Bill, allowing more casinos.