Portrait of the week | 27 September 2012

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The European Court of Human Rights approved the extradition of Abu Hamza al-Masri, Babar Ahmad, Syed Talha Ahsan, Adel Abdul Bary and Khaled al-Fawwaz to the United States, where they are wanted on suspicion of terrorism. The BBC then had to write to the Queen to apologise for Frank Gardner, its security correspondent, reporting what he said she had told him in a private conversation about her anxieties over Abu Hamza before his arrest. A 49-year-old man, transferred to a London hospital by air ambulance from Qatar, was found to be suffering from a viral disease similar to Sars; another man with the disease died in Saudi Arabia. Hundreds of houses were flooded, and England was cut off from Scotland by the east coast rail line. The streets of Aberdeen were filled with sea foam.

For a week the nation discussed what Andrew Mitchell, the Chief Whip, said when a police officer told him to wheel his bicycle through a pedestrian gate from Downing Street instead of having the vehicle gate opened for him. A police account said that he had repeatedly used an expletive beginning with F, and had called police ‘plebs’. Mr Mitchell would not say whether he used that word but said that the officer involved had accepted his apology. John Terry, the former England captain cleared in court of racially abusing Anton Ferdinand during a match, announced his retirement from international football the day before a Football Association disciplinary hearing over the matter.

The Liberal Democrats, at their party conference, heard members of the coalition government say that richer people would be more heavily taxed. Nick Clegg, the party leader, said that millionaire pensioners should not receive bus passes. A video made by Mr Clegg, apologising for having made a pledge on tuition fees and broken it, was remixed into a song called ‘I’m Sorry’, with the aid of an Auto-Tune processor, and entered the singles charts at 143.