Portrait of the week | 5 November 2011

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St Paul’s Cathedral decided not to take court action against anti-capitalist demonstrators who, since 15 October, had kept 200 tents pitched outside. The Corporation of London suspended its own legal action. The Rt Rev Graeme Knowles resigned as Dean of St Paul’s, a post he had held since 2007. His resignation followed that of Dr Giles Fraser, who, as Canon Chancellor of the cathedral, had at first asked police not to clear protesters from its precincts. The Archbishop of Canterbury said that the protesters had a point. Sir Jimmy Savile, the disc jockey, died, aged 84. The government said that unemployed people sentenced to pay a fine would have to do so at a rate of up to £25 a week instead of the present limit of £5. Metal thieves prised plaques bearing the names of 700 men from a war memorial at Carshalton, Surrey.

The government allocated £950 million of the regional growth fund to 119 companies. Britain’s gross domestic product grew by 0.5 per cent in the third quarter of 2011, according to the Office for National Statistics, slightly better than the 0.1 per cent for the previous quarter. Antonio Horta-Osorio, the chief executive of Lloyds Bank, took extended leave, being ‘physically and mentally exhausted’. The Scottish government began another attempt to bring in a bill to set a minimum price for a unit of alcohol. It was ‘highly probable’ that shale gas test drilling caused two little earthquakes in Lancashire, according to a report commissioned by the drillers, Cuadrilla. London boroughs opposed a scheme by Thames Water to build a £3.6 billion great sewer beneath the Thames, from Acton to Tower Bridge.

Any daughter born to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge would have the same right of succession as a boy, under changes in the law to which, at a meeting of Commonwealth heads of government, David Cameron secured the agreement of 16 countries of which the Queen is head of state.