PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
`Move along now, haven't you seen a reshuffle before?'
In an unexpected Cabinet reshuffle, de- signed chiefly to split responsibility for the Department of Health and Social Security into two Cabinet posts, Mr John Moore lost half his job. He retained Social Secur- ity while Mr Kenneth Clarke became the new Secretary of State for Health. Mr Tony Newton entered the Cabinet for the first time as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Mr Leon Brittan was appointed by the Prime Minister to replace Lord Cockfield as a European Commissioner. Mr Edward Heath, among others, sounded off against this, and followed it up by attacking the talents of the Cabinet. The mortgage lending rate went up to 11.5 per cent. The Government announced that it would no longer back the development of Hotol, a revolutionary British space plane. A family returning from holiday were blown up by a huge bomb on the Dublin to Belfast road. The IRA, admitting that it had been their bomb, said that they had made a mistake; this brought the total number of people killed by them 'in error' since the Enniskillen bombing to 17. An inquest jury found that passengers who died when a train crashed into the swollen river Towy in Wales last October were unlawfully killed; British Rail could now be charged with manslaughter. Proposals to transfer BBC2 and Channel 4 services to satellite were scrapped: this was taken as a rebuff for Lord Young who had vigorously promoted the scheme. England was utterly defeated in the fourth Test Match against the West Indies. Richard Luce, the arts minister, admitted that he had failed to woo the trustees of the Thyssen collection into having the Baron's Old Master paint- ings in Britain.
THE Secretary-General of the United Nations announced a timetable for nego- tiations which he hoped would end the Gulf War. The Iraqis, however, continued to launch substantial attacks against the Iranians. Reports from the Nagorno- Karabakh Autonomous Region indicated that the two-month long general strike had come to an end. A Soviet General who served in Afghanistan warned that Islamic fundamentalists could take over from the faction-ridden ruling communist party. Talks in Indonesia between the parties and factions involved in the so-called 'Cambo- dian problem' went ahead without the active participation of Prince Norodom Sihanouk: Cambodia's former monarch predicted a 'new holocaust' in his country now that the Vietnamese were withdraw- ing. U Ne Win, who held power in Burma since a coup in 1962, was removed as leader of the ruling Socialist Programme Party following his request to resign. Fol- lowing victory in Thailand's general elec- tions, Chatchai Chunhavan said that his Thai Nation Party endorsed Prem Tinsula- nonda to stay on as Prime Minister of a new coalition. A 25-year-old white South African student was jailed for six years for refusing to perform compulsory national service in an army which he said protects and enforces apartheid. What was de- scribed as the `world's largest drugs ring', allegedly led by Mr Dennis Howard Marks, an Oxford graduate, was broken by British, American and Spanish police. It emerged that Lord Moynihan, half-brother of the British Sports Minister, went 'under- cover to help expose the ring'. MStJT
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