PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Overweight Chancellor of Exchequer to yuppie-type who's bitten off more than he can chew: `I've just put up the interest-rate again.' In an impromptu show of hands the Conservative conference displayed im- mense support for the re-introduction of hanging. Mr Douglas Hurd remained im- pervious, however, and announced a pilot scheme to tag electronically minor crimin- als. The conference closed to ecstatic applause for Mrs Thatcher, who called for Tory rule to extend into the 1990s. Also scheduled for the 1990s is the Conservative Government's privatisation of coal-mining. Labour expelled three Militant members in Scotland. Mr Clive Jenkins announced his imminent retirement to Tasmania to work for rain forest preservation. His confirmed successor as boss of the amalgamated ASTMS-TASS union looked likely to be Mr Ken Gill, a former British Communist Party member who left when the party grew too moderate. The law lords ruled that newspapers could publish Spycatcher extracts but suggested that copyright over Mr Peter Wright's revelations might rest with the Crown. The Sun published an allegedly privately snapped royal photo- graph, provoking legal action from the Palace and a Scotland Yard investigation.
The Princess of Wales, addressing Dr Barnardo's (now relaunched as `Barnar- do's'), spoke of her concern about the break-down of family life. Dr Graham Leonard, Bishop of London, instituted an inquiry into women priests conducting Anglican communion services in a London University chapel. Sir James Black, dis- coverer of substances for treating gastric ulcers and heart disease, became a joint Nobel laureate in medicine. Vandals felled saplings of seven oaks in Sevenoaks planted to replace those destroyed in last year's tempest.
IN AMERICA'S presidential race, follow- ing his second and final television debate with Mr Michael Dukakis, Mr George Bush gained a 17-point poll lead. In Chile the 16-party opposition coalition announced it would field a single candidate for the presidential election due in Decem- ber and President Pinochet's support started ebbing. The Soviet foreign ministry admitted that the old-guard representative Mr Yegor Ligachev was now no longer Mr Gorbachev's deputy, indeed that there was no such position. In Yugoslavia the de- teriorating politico-economic crisis brought two resignations from the ruling politburo. The Queen began a state visit to Spain, with Anglo-Spanish cordiality apparently unmarred by the Gibraltar problem. The Brussels trial of the Heysel stadium rioters began chaotically with legal representa- tives threatening to walk out and the judge actually doing so at one point. The head of Pakistan's inquiry into the August plane crash that killed General Zia identified sabotage as the cause. President Botha of South Africa visited President Houpbouet- Boigny of the Ivory Coast in a move to break black African hostility towards Pre- toria. Meanwhile, first South African rug- by representatives then soccer ones confer- red with the ANC, which began to soften its stance on sporting boycotts. Five en- closed Carmelite nuns in Wisconsin con- tinued to barricade themselves into their convent in protest against innovations, such as videos, there. It was revealed that anyone can buy a machine gun over the counter in Woolworth's in Miami.
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