Portrait of the week
Following a record pile-up of 22 vehicles on the M25, survivors spoke of hearing screams of agony through the fog. Too much emphasis on speed in car advertise- ments was condemned in a report by the Advertising Standards Authority. One ex- ample said: 'Wickedly quick cap- able of taking you from nought to criminal status faster than you can say, "Officer".' The discovery of a 980-million ton coalfield on the Nottinghamshire-Lincolnshire bor- der was announced. Mr Arthur Scargill was fined £250 with £750 costs for obstruc- tion while picketing. He said he would not appeal because 'in this political climate I have no faith in getting a fair trial.' At a bus station in Nuneaton, Mrs Annie Mitch- ell, the wife of a working miner, was held down by three youths while a teenage girl scrubbed her face raw with a Brillo pad. A rail-speed record from Euston to Glasgow was set when the Advanced Passenger Train covered the 401 miles in 232 minutes. (In 1936 the Coronation Scot did it in 344 minutes.) Workers at an Hitachi television plant in South Wales were called upon by their elderly Japanese managing director to retire at 35. Mrs Helen Hough, the author of children's books and a murder mystery, was jailed for nine months for helping a frail, 83-year-old friend, Miss Anneta Harding, to commit suicide with a plastic bag. Judge Tom Pigot QC said: 'I have no desire to punish you, but I must bear in mind public policy. I must have in mind the need to deter others less altruistic than you who wish to accelerate death in different circumstances.' Mr Mikhail Gorbachev, heir apparent to the Russian leadership, and his wife Raisa, began a week's visit to Britain. On a tour of Clerkenwell and Bloomsbury, he saw Ginger, the oldest mummy in the British Museum. A hacksaw blade was found in the cell of mass murderer Denis Nilsen at Wakefield Pris- on. The Government Chief Whip, Mr John Wakeham, a victim of the Brighton bomb- ing, returned to a warm welcome in the Commons, while Debenhams and Habitat Mothercare decided to obey the law and not open on Sundays.
Some 100,000 people fled from Bhopal after an announcement that the remain- ing 30 tons of poisonous gas would be used to restart the Union Carbide pesticide plant. New dolls called `Stinkies' were reported to be selling well in America this Christmas. They cost two dollars and have names like Rotten Egg, Bad Breath, Sewer and Outhouse. On a Radio Moscow youth programme a psychologist said Western
Cover by Lawrence Mynott, drawings by Nicholas Garland, Michael Heath, David Austin, John Springs and Stephen Calloway.
video games incalculated anti-Communist hatred and aggression in young people. In Dublin three men caught smuggling arms to the IRA in the trawler Marisa Anne were jailed for 10 years each. A convicted murderer, Alpha Otis Stephens, defied Georgia's electric chair by living for six minutes after a two-minute, 2080-volt charge had failed to kill him. In Stras- bourg, Mrs Barbara Castle and a group of British Labour Euro-MPs went carol sing- ing and raised £1,000 'for striking miners. Mrs Christine Crawley, Euro-MP for Birmingham East, was dressed as Father Christmas.
The Golden Bull Statuettes for gob- bledegook were awarded by the Plain English Campaign to the Birkenhead and Southampton offices of the DHSS and to British Airways for low-flying prose in an Enterprise Holidays brochure. Two hun- dred balloons were released over London to symbolise bureaucratic windbags. A report said one in four Britons now drinks champagne. Elizabeth Taylor is to marry for the eighth time. Her husband-to-be, Mr Dennis Stein, a New York film tycoon, said: 'Liz has a magic wand of happiness she has struck me with.' An artist, Mr Robert Lenkiewicz, refused to give up the body of a tramp called Diogenes, whom he had promised to embalm as a paperweight. Plymouth's environmental health officer said: 'We don't like the idea of a corpse being trundled round Devon in this way.' Mr Ronald Braithwaite, the Headmaster of Newington Green Primary School, North London, said his school would be taking a low profile' approach to Christ- mas. Instead of a Nativity play, the chil- dren would take part in an old Chinese fable, Mi Ling and the Magic Paintbrush. The trial began of Mr Christopher Lock, a Birmingham dentist accused of putting his private parts into a female patient's mouth.
AFS
`I can assure you that you are as sane as the president of the miners' union.'
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