The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 17 September 2011

issue 17 September 2011

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The Independent Commission on Banking, headed by Sir John Vickers, recommended that there should be insulation of high street banking from investment banking. George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, accepted the commission’s call for its recommendations to be introduced by 2019. The report received cross-party support, although it would cost banking £7 billion a year, and some said it would make lending scarcer and lead to banks leaving Britain. The annual rate of inflation (by CPI) rose to 4.5 per cent, from 4.4 in the previous month; and (by RPI) to 5.2 from 5 per cent. Unemployment rose by 80,000 to 2.51 million. A shopping centre with 300 shops and 70 food outlets opened at Stratford near the Olympic site in London. London was found to have the highest tuberculosis rate of any capital in western Europe.

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Bernard Hogan-Howe, the former chief constable of Merseyside, was appointed the new Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.

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