Portrait of the week | 29 August 2013

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The nation settled down to watch the Paralympic Games on television. Some 2.5 million tickets had been sold for events. The government reconsidered building a third runway at Heathrow after all. Grant Shapps, the housing minister, said that ‘all options should be considered’, even though the Transport Secretary, Justine Greening, whose constituency is under the flight path, has campaigned against it. The former minister Tim Yeo asked whether David Cameron, the Prime Minister, was a man or a mouse. Ms Greening said that there was no reason to delay signing a contract with FirstGroup to run the West Coast main line; Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Trains lost the franchise, called for a reconsideration by Parliament and then went to court. The British economy contracted by 0.5 per cent in the second quarter, not the 0.7 per cent announced in July, according to revised figures. Nick Clegg, the deputy Prime Minister, suddenly said that rich people should pay a special tax during the economic downturn. The security company G4S said its failure to supply enough security staff for the Olympic Games had cost it £50 million.

Photographs of Prince Harry in a Las Vegas hotel wearing no clothes, next to a woman wearing no clothes either, appeared on an American website. St James’s Palace told the Press Complaints Commission it was worried about intrusion into the Prince’s privacy, against the editors’ code of practice. The Sun published a front-page picture of staff members dressed up, or down, as the prince and the woman, and then the next day published the real thing. Rupert Murdoch then tweeted: ‘Prince Harry. Give him a break.’ Police spent a day looking for a lion near St Osyth, Essex.