This week’s Portrait of the week
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William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, said there was ‘not a remote possibility’ of using force against Syria, even with United Nations backing. The Commons defence committee said that cuts to the Armed Forces might prevent their doing whatever was needed after 2015. Mike Clasper, the chairman of HM Revenue & Customs, apologised for its poor performance last year in answering telephone calls and replying to letters. Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, said the government saved £3.75 billion from May 2010 to March 2011 by cutting the Civil Service and renegotiating contracts with suppliers. Lord McFall of Alcluith, in a report for the Workplace Retirement Income Commission said that millions of people face a ‘bleak old age’, with 14 million not saving into a workplace pension scheme at all. Jake Davis, 18, from the Shetland Islands, appeared in court charged with conspiracy to carry out a distributed denial of service attack on the Serious Organised Crime Agency’s website; he was granted bail.
The International Monetary Fund said that Britain’s economic growth would come close to missing the Chancellor’s planned deficit reduction target in this parliament. Barclays reported pre-tax profits of £2.6 billion for the first six months of the year, down by a third from last year, partly because of provision of £1 billion to settle claims for mis-selling of payment protection insurance. It said that the 1,400 staff cuts made this year would be doubled. HSBC reported pre-tax profits for the first six months of the year of £7 billion, up 3 per cent from last year, and it announced job cuts of 25,000 by 2013, none of them in Britain. A BBC survey found that Blackburn Rovers offered a ticket for a Premier League game with a pie, a programme and a cup of tea for just £17.50, while Liverpool’s cheapest offer was £46.95. Zara Phillips, the Queen’s grand-daughter, married Mike Tindall, the rugby player, in Edinburgh.
Lady Buscombe said that next year she would relinquish her position as head of the Press Complaints Commission. Stuart Kuttner, a former managing editor of the News of the World, was arrested by appointment and later bailed. Police told Sara Payne, the mother of Sarah Payne, murdered in 2000, that her details had been found among the notes of the News of the World’s investigator Glenn Mulcaire. Charles Allen, the former chief executive of ITV, is to help the Labour party put itself on a more professional footing. Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, had a National Health Service operation on a deviated septum, to help him breath at night. In an operation at Papworth hospital, a 40-year-old man was given an artificial heart, the size of two fists and driven by a motor in a backpack.
ABROAD
The United States Congress passed a bill to save the country from defaulting on its debts. The bill raised the amount that could be borrowed by $2,400 billion and stipulated savings of $2,100 billion over ten years. But the US, Asian and European markets fell at the prospect of Italy and Spain not being able to manage their debts. Kings of Leon cancelled their US tour amid talk of dissension among the three brothers and a cousin who make up the band.
The Syrian government spent the first day of Ramadan shelling the city of Hama, where thousands had been massacred by the government in 1982; tanks then moved in. President Bashar al-Assad blamed a foreign conspiracy for sowing sectarian strife; the Muslim Brotherhood blamed the regime for waging war ‘on Arab Muslim Syria’. In Cairo, troops cleared Tahrir Square of hundreds of protesters before Hosni Mubarak, the former president, appeared in court on a stretcher to face charges of ordering the killing of protesters in February. Nato sent extra troops to Kosovo in response to tension on the border with Serbia.
Abdel Fattah Younes, the military commander of the rebels against Colonel Gaddafi, the ruler of Libya, was killed, apparently by a member of the Obaida Ibn Jarrah Brigade, an Islamist faction in his forces. In the engine room of a small boat carrying 271 refugees fleeing Libya, 25 men were found dead from asphyxiation when it reached the Italian island of Lampedusa. The Australian government decided to post footage on YouTube of boatpeople being turned away and sent to Malaysia, in an effort to deter asylum seekers. Taxi drivers went on strike for more money in the Chinese city of Hangzhou. CSH
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