Portrait of the Week - 11 September 2004

Mr Andrew Smith resigned as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. This added interest to a Cabinet reshuffle by Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, and provoked reheated speculation about his rivalry with Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Queen gave a donation for the people of Beslan, through the British Red Cross. Mr Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said of the murders by terrorists at Beslan: ‘There are some things which happen amongst human kind which are almost inexplicable according to any basic moral norms — Nazism was and this is.’ Mr Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, the editor of the al-Arabiya satellite network, said on BBC radio that the majority of terrorists in the world today are Muslim; in response Mr Straw said: ‘At the moment, it is principally those of the Islamic faith that claim in a totally perverted way to justify their actions by reference to the faith.’ Mr Alex Salmond resumed his post as leader of the Scottish Nationalist party. The Scottish Parliament, built at a cost of £430 million, opened; in 1997 its cost had been predicted at between £10 and £40 million. The committee on standards in public life said in a report that, with regard to public appointments, ‘there is a widespread perception that formal procedures are often bypassed in favour of cronyism’. A letter to the Times from 755 Roman Catholic priests said that the Mental Capacity Bill before Parliament would legalise ‘euthanasia by omission’. Mr Charles Clarke, the Secretary of State for Education, told schools: ‘Pupils should be permitted to carry water with them and consumption encouraged both in class and during break.’