Portrait of the week
The cost of borrowing money rose to its highest level, in real terms, for 150 years, interest rates reaching 14 per cent:
the pound had fallen yet again to record depths and concern was growing that oil
prices would fall, Opec ministers arguing with each other at their meeting in Geneva instead of devising joint action to stabilise the market. Mrs Thatcher reiterated that for the British coal industry to prosper, an 'awful lot' of heavily loss-making pits would have to be closed. Mr Kinnock accused Mrs Thatcher of an 'instinct for malice nothing short of evil'. The NCB said it would not resume negotiations with the NUM until it was given a written response accepting the closure of uneconomic pits.
But then talks about talks were arranged without any written commitment, and opti- mistic commentators said the strike would soon be over. After these talks the NUM executive met to decide whether it could tolerate giving a written acceptance of pit closures. Mr Ian MacGregor promised working miners that the 500 miners sacked for various offences during the strike would not be reinstated. Mrs Janet Fookes's Sexual Offences Bill, which makes kerb-crawling illegal, received an unopposed second reading. Mr Nicholas Fairbairn used the debate to tell a story of doubtful relevance about the Prime Minis- ter being propositioned by a drunken grandee at Holyrood House. Sir lain Mon- crieffe said he would sue the Daily Star for suggesting it was him. The trial began of Mr Clive Ponting, a civil servant who admits revealing defence secrets to an MP, but denies that he broke the Official Secrets Act. Mr Jonathan Aitken, MP for Thanet South, was sued for comparing a constituent, Mrs Pinder-White, to Sue- Ellen, a television character described by Mrs Pinder-White as 'a high-class prosti-
tute who drank heavily'. She wanted Mr Aitken to apologise by kneeling on Broad- stairs beach and telling 'the entire popula-. lion of East Thanet how sorry he was'. A gunman besieged in Streatham by the
police shot himself dead. A CID detective was stabbed to death while watching a house in Kent, in connection with the £26 million Brinks Mat bullion robbery. Scot- land Yard said they had recovered gold worth £300,000. Sixteen people were help- ing with enquiries.
president Chernenko's health was said 1 to have deteriorated sharply. Mr P. W. Botha, President of South Africa, announced some softening of the effects of the apartheid system on the ten million blacks living and working in 'white' South Africa. The Pope began a tour of Latin America by condemning the deformed use of the Gospel message 'in the search for an illusory earthly liberation'. General Ariel Sharon lost his $50 million libel suit against Time, because although Time's journalists had been negligent and careless, they had not acted with malice or reckless disregard for the truth. The Austrian Defence Minis- ter was attacked for going to the airport to meet a former SS major, Walter Reder, who was returning to Austria after serving
33 years in Italy for war crimes. In Washington, it was asked how a tourist had managed to enter President Reagan's din- ing room.
Dimitris Thomasinas hid in some bushes near Salonika and made such convincing imitation duck calls to attract birds that two companions shot at the bushes and killed him. The Prince and Princess of Wales went on a skiing holiday. Captain Charles Shawcroft said he had rescued Prince Michael of Kent after he had fallen from a windsurfer into the sea off Antigua. At Oxford, 275 dons signed a petition against the proposed awarding of an honorary doctorate to the Prime Minis- ter, and the proposal was voted down by 738 votes to 319. President Bhutto, later hanged, is the only other candidate to have been thus rejected. Lord Harlech, former- ly British ambassador to Washington and president of the British Board of Film Censors, died in a car accident in Shrop- shire. James Cameron, one of the most widely-travelled of all journalists, died in London. Two climbers were killed on Ben
Nevis, and one on Snowdon. AJSG 'If drunk, would you prefer to chat up Mrs Thatcher, Janet Fookes MP or the leader of the Labour Party?'
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