Portrait of the Week - 29 October 2005

In the Lozells district of Birmingham, Isaiah Young Sam, a black man aged 23, was fatally stabbed as he returned from the cinema in an attack by ten or 11 men. The murder came amid fights and rioting by black Caribbeans and South Asian youths. The violence came after a rumour had gone round, and was retailed on a pirate radio station, that a 14-year-old black girl had been raped by 19 Asians after being caught shoplifting. Another man was shot dead nearby the next day. A White Paper on education set out plans to free schools from the control of local authorities and give them power to expand, change curriculum and set admission policies. Mr John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, was said not to like it. The Cabinet was also riven by plans to ban smoking in private clubs as well as public places; a Bill on the matter was delayed. Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said before a meeting of European Union heads of government at Hampton Court Palace that it would prepare for a summit in December ‘to make a push for a finance deal that will allow the European budget issues to be resolved’. The BBC World Service is to start an Arabic television channel funded mainly by reducing broadcasts to Eastern Europe. Marks & Spencer’s name is to appear on the order of service for the enthronisation of Dr John Sentamu as the 97th Archbishop of York, for which the company would supply 3,500 packed lunches at a reduced price. A parrot imported from Surinam was found to be suffering from the avian influenza virus H5N1, apparently caught from another bird in quarantine; but then it emerged that test samples might have been mixed up. Mrs Lilian Blackmore, aged 75, was having lunch in a hospital ward at Barrow Gurney, north Somerset, where she was being treated after a nervous breakdown, when the ceiling fell on her, bruising her legs, ‘You go to hospital expecting to recover from your illness,’ she said, ‘You don’t expect the ceiling to come down on your head.’