Portrait of the Week – 15 October 2011

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The Bank of England launched out on a further £75 billion worth of quantitative easing, but refused to buy government bonds maturing in 2017 because traders had driven up the price. Typical households will not return to the level of income they enjoyed in 2009 until 2015, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. The Olympic stadium is to remain in public ownership after the Games, the government confirmed, and not sold to West Ham. Unemployment rose by 114,000 from May to August to 2.57 million. The BBC decided to cut 2,000 jobs as part of savings of £670 million a year. Dave and Angela Dawes from Wisbech won £101,203,600.70 in the Euromillions lottery, the third largest jackpot for British winners.

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Liam Fox, the Defence Secretary, was pursued by political enemies who asked why his friend Adam Werritty had often visited the Ministry of Defence without security clearance and had been present at a meeting between Dr Fox and a defence supplier at the Shangri-La hotel in Dubai, when ministry civil servants were not present. The attack later focused on exposure of Dr Fox’s private life. He told the Commons that ‘it was a mistake to allow distinctions to be blurred between my professional responsibilities and my personal loyalties’ but added that Mr Werritty had told him he was ‘not dependent on any transactional behaviour to maintain his income’. Mr Roy Wyre, aged 66, was fined £75 for brushing his Alsatian, Spencer, in a park in Nottingham.

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In a shadow Cabinet reshuffle, Stephen Twigg went to education, from which Andrew Burnham moved to health, from which John Healey departed to leave the front bench. Caroline Flint moved to energy. John Denham left business to become PPS to Ed Miliband, the leader of the opposition.