Portrait of the week | 24 September 2015

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In a speech at the Shanghai stock exchange, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced a feasibility study into the trading of Chinese and British shares in both countries. At least half of all British banknotes in circulation are held overseas or used in the black market, a Bank of England report suggested. The political impasse in Northern Ireland continued. Sir David Willcocks, the director of choirs, died, aged 95. Brian Sewell, the art critic, died aged 84. Jackie Collins, the author of titillating blockbusters, died aged 77. An outbreak of highly drug-resistant gonorrhoea was detected in the north of England, from Oldham to Scunthorpe.

Lord Ashcroft, who says he resents not being given a ‘significant’ government job in 2010, wrote a disobliging book about David Cameron which included a claim by an MP that at an event held by the Piers Gaveston society when Mr Cameron was at Oxford, he ‘inserted a private part of his anatomy’ into the mouth of a dead pig’s head resting in the lap of a club member. Mr Cameron’s response in an after-dinner speech was to remark that he had just had an injection, before which the doctor said: ‘Just a little prick, just a stab in the back.’ The Metropolitan Police set about creating a team of 90 officers and staff to work on allegations of historical child abuse. The High Court undertook a judicial review of whether it was reasonable for Sport England to have ruled that bridge was not a sport.

Special measures were imposed upon Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, after the Care Quality Commission found that staff shortages and long-standing serious problems had not been addressed. WH Smith said it will cut the cost of some items sold in hospital outlets at higher prices than in the high street, such as a 750ml bottle of water for £1.89