Portrait of the Week – 4 February 2006

The government was twice defeated in the Commons in votes on the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill, making its provisions less broad. The government produced a form with a box to tick for people who wanted to prevent life-saving treatment being given them in future; this was according to the Mental Capacity Act, 2004, which comes into effect in 2007. A White Paper on health proposed treating more people outside large hospitals; but a question of funding remained. Mr David Blunkett, the disgraced former Cabinet minister, said his ‘sense is that there is a new understanding’ between Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, and Mr Gordon Brown about the latter replacing the former; ‘So good on them,’ Mr Blunkett said. Mr Simon Hughes, a candidate for the leadership of the Liberal Democrats, became the latest MP of his party to say that he had had homosexual experiences, days after he said he hadn’t. An 11-year-old girl fell ill at her primary school in Glasgow through taking too much heroin, which she was reported to have been buying for two months in £10 bags from a dealer outside a shopping centre in Pollok. Mr Pete Doherty, the singer, was remanded in custody in Pentonville prison, north London, after admitting possession of heroin; he will be sentenced on 8 February. The Arctic Monkeys’ ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not’ became Britain’s fastest-selling debut album, with 360,000 being bought in a week. Christopher Lloyd, the gardening writer, died, aged 84. The government devised a code of ‘freedoms’ for animals, to be provided by their owners on pain of imprisonment; they cover diet, living conditions, companionship or solitude, freedom from signs of abnormal behaviour and from pain, suffering, injury and disease. Animal activists daubed with threatening messages the home of the company secretary of GlaxoSmithKline, which tests drugs on animals before human beings.