Portrait of the week
Snow and ice covered most of Britain on Tuesday, resulting in the usual chaos on roads and railways. In the West of England there were floods as well. From. the Cabinet, on the other hand, only the merest leaks about the prolonged discussions on the coming cuts: conjecture favoured an early withdrawal from Singapore and Malaysia.
Mr George Thomson was given the delicate task of presenting the facts to Mr Lee Kuan Yew, Prime Minister of Singapore—who refused to accept the British proposals and decided to pay a weekend visit to Mr Wilson. Meanwhile Mr Healey quietly landed the Government with a bill for an estimated 100 million for the Anglo-French Jaguar aircraft. Miss Jennie Lee was firmly entrenched as chief defender of sacred cows (her resignation next week was rumoured) and one lobby was agitating to preserve plans to raise the school leaving age in 1970-71. It was announced that the Commons would be recalled a day early.
Mr Gunter told leaders of 77,000 municipal bus- men that they wouldn't get the £1 a week rise nego- tiated with their employers: the employers agreed to cooperate. BEA announced that its Comet crash three months ago off the coast of Turkey was caused by sabotage, eleven people died when a train ran into a heavy lorry on an automatic level- crossing barrier at Hixon, Staffordshire, and Mr Michael Levey was appointed Keeper of the National Gallery. A record football transfer fee of £125,000 was paid by the Spurs for Martin Chivers.
In America the world's fifth heart transplant took place. Surveyor VII made a soft landing on the moon. The four young Russians accused of pro- ducing a 'White Book' defending Sinyavsky and Daniel came up for trial and a Red Army general was amongst those who petitioned for 'open' pro- ceedings. North Vietnamese troops infiltrated the Mekong Delta for the first time and Congress was angry with Britain for allowing ships flying the
Red Duster to trade with North Vietnam. Senator John Gorton was sworn in as Australia's Prime
Minister, and Mr Richard Nixon, ex-Vice-President and would-be Republican President of the us, was voted Good Scout of the Year and presented with a silver statuette.
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