Portrait of the Week - 5 November 2005

Mr David Blunkett resigned as the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions after it was revealed that he had taken a directorship in a DNA-testing company called DNA Bioscience, after resigning from his previous Cabinet post, without consulting the independent Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, as the ministerial code of practice stipulates. He had sold some shares he’d bought in the company, saying he wanted ‘to protect family and friends from further intrusion’. After a delay caused by a rift in the Cabinet, the government announced a Bill to criminalise tobacco-smoking in enclosed public spaces, apart from pubs not selling food and private clubs. Mrs Patricia Hewitt, the Secretary of State for Health, said it would be ‘only a matter of time’ before a complete ban on smoking was enforced. The government then threatened to make illegal the consumption of alcohol on buses and trains. O2, the mobile telephone company, agreed to a takeover by the Spanish telecommunications company Telefonica for £17.7 billion. The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall flew off on an eight-day tour of the United States, beginning with the laying of flowers to commemorate the 67 Britons who died in the 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York. Five teenagers, two of them girls, died when a stolen car they were in crashed into a wall at St Leonards on Sea, Sussex, as it was being followed by police; a 15-year-old convicted of muggings, burglary and theft was said to have been at the wheel. Kingston Prison, Portsmouth, began to pay for a pagan minister to act as a chaplain to three life prisoners who said they had converted to his religion. Best Mate, the treble winner of the Cheltenham Gold Cup, collapsed and died during the 2.40 at Exeter on 1 November.