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In London more than 2,000 had so far been arrested in connection with the August riots, of whom 1,135 had been charged. Nationally, 70 per cent of those who appeared in court were remanded in custody for trial. In more than half of Britain’s postcode areas, the Royal Mail failed to meet its aim of delivering 91.5 per cent of first-class letters the next day, between March and June. BT was given planning permission to remove disused dish-shaped aerials from high up on the BT Tower before they fell off. Scratched depictions of reindeer made more than 12,000 years ago were found in a cave in the Gower peninsula. NF Simpson, the author of One Way Pendulum, died, aged 92. Sally Bercow, the wife of the Speaker of the House of Commons, having joined the Celebrity Big Brother television show, was the first housemate to be voted out. Children walking to school in Kent were made to wear high-visibility clothing.
John Cridland, the director general of the Confederation of British Industry, called steps to separate high-street from investment banking during a slowdown in the economy ‘barking mad’. Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, called the response ‘disingenuous in the extreme’. Andrew Mitchell, the International Development Secretary, was photographed holding a memorandum saying that Britain should ‘publicly and privately’ welcome the decision by President Hamid Karzai not to seek another term in 2014, as it would improve the country’s prospects ‘very significantly’. This summer was found to have been the coolest since 1993. At the Notting Hill carnival, only one man was seriously stabbed.
Essex police investigating claims that Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary, tried to evade punishment for speeding resubmitted their file to the Crown Prosecution Service. Alex Salmond, the First Minister of Scotland, said of the man released in 2009 from prison, where he was serving a sentence for his part in the Lockerbie bombing, that ‘it might be time as far as Mr Megrahi is concerned to draw a line under that part of the Lockerbie issue and perhaps allow this man now to die in peace’.
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