Portrait of the Week – 13 December 2003

Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, found new ways of increasing taxes to cover government deficits in his pre-Budget report; but he declared that he wanted to help small enterprises. British Gas is to raise prices for its gas and electricity by 5.9 per cent from next month. Rail fares will go up by an average of 4 per cent in January, with higher examples such as the company c2c increasing by 10.3 per cent peak-time travelcards between south Essex and London, and WAGN increasing cheap day returns for journeys between Cambridge and King’s Cross by 9.1 per cent, bringing the fare to £19.10. The United States dollar fell against the pound so that it was possible to buy more than $1.74 for a pound; this was the cheapest rate since 1992. Nicholas van Hoogstraten, the property developer jailed for the manslaughter of a business rival, cleared his name and was freed after serving a year because an appeal judge found he could not have foreseen that the attack by his henchmen would inevitably end in the death of the victim. In London 750,000 gathered to see the England rugby team go past in open-topped buses on their way to tea with the Queen to celebrate their victory in the World Cup. The Advertising Standards Authority forbade Barnardo’s publishing again images of a new-born baby with a cockroach in its mouth because it would ‘cause serious or widespread offence’; a spokesman for Barnardo’s said: ‘We make no apologies because we have raised the debate on child poverty.’ Sir Stephen Tumim, a former chief inspector of prisons, died, aged 73. David Hemmings, the film actor, died, aged 62. The Birmingham Northern Relief Road, a 27-mile toll-road alternative to the M6, was opened. Ozzy Osbourne, the Birmingham-born heavy-metal singer and much-loved television father-figure, broke a vertebra, collarbone and several ribs in a quad-bike accident on his Buckinghamshire estate.