Portrait of the Week – 27 August 2005

The news blackout that Downing Street had asked newspapers to impose about the whereabouts of Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, on holiday, supposedly for reasons of security, was broken by the man himself when he popped up at a VJ Day commemoration on Barbados, where he had stayed previously at a house belonging to Sir Cliff Richard, the 64-year-old singer. There was a shuffling about for reasons to ask for the resignation of Sir Ian Blair, the Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. The brother of Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian shot dead on 22 July by police who took him for a suicide-bomber, criticised the police for offering his family an ex gratia payment of £15,000; ‘They thought we were poor people, stupid people,’ he said. Mr Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, said, ‘I am very happy with the conduct not only of Sir Ian Blair, but the whole Metropolitan Police in relation to this inquiry;’ Mr Blair sent word that this was his opinion too. Mr Clarke then said, ‘This week I will be publishing and then acting upon new ways of dealing with preachers of intolerance and hatred.’ A family that ran a guinea-pig farm gave up their business in the face of animal terrorists who had dug up the body of a close relative. About 200 loyalists and 200 nationalists fought each other in east Belfast until the early hours of Sunday morning without much intervention from the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Gay policemen were provided with a room in which to have meetings, at the Garnerville training college in east Belfast. ‘Northern Ireland does not do a great deal to support the gay community,’ said deputy chief constable Paul Leighton. Mr Ben Bradshaw, the minister for animal welfare, said he would not be emulating measures in Holland to move chickens indoors lest they catch avian influenza from migrating birds.