The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 31 December 2015

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Thousands of houses were flooded in York, Leeds, Manchester and other parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire, after weeks of repeated flooding in Cumberland and Westmorland. On the River Foss in York, a flood barrier was lifted to avoid even more houses being flooded by keeping it in position. Tim Peake, the British astronaut in the International Space Station, tweeted a photograph of northern England as he passed overhead and said that his ‘thoughts are with all those affected by flooding’. After a fund-raising drive, two brothers from Leicestershire, aged 11 and seven, born without toes, were given silicone ten-toed feet to wear like galoshes over their own.

The growth of Britain’s economy in the third quarter of 2015 was revised to 0.4 per cent from an earlier 0.5 per cent estimate by the Office for National Statistics, bringing the growth over the previous year to 2.1 per cent. Mr Speaker Bercow’s salary rose to £150,236, compared with the £149,440 accepted by the Prime Minister. Among the New Year honours leaked early were a knighthood for the Conservatives’ election mastermind Lynton Crosby and a damehood for the actress Barbara Windsor. Lemmy (Ian Kilmister), lead singer of the band Motörhead, died, aged 70.

The Department for Education said in new guidelines that religious education should ‘reflect the fact that the religious traditions in Great Britain are, in the main, Christian’. The Ministry of Justice disclosed that prisoners have been released by mistake 505 times in the past ten years. One man, charged with murder, was released by mistake in 2014 but returned to custody after waiting at a nearby bus stop for three hours; he was later convicted. The Crown Prosecution Service announced a High Court hearing on 11 January, following the death on 21 December of Greville Janner, who had been unfit, through dementia, to face charges of sexual abuse of children.

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