The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 18 September 2014

issue 20 September 2014

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People living in Scotland voted in a referendum that asked: ‘Should Scotland be an independent country?’ A great deal of ill feeling had been generated as the referendum campaign went on. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, was told by backbench Conservative MPs that he faced a ‘bloodbath’ for joining the United Kingdom leaders of the Liberal Democrats and the Labour party in offering continued high levels of funding for Scotland. Two days before the vote, Inigo Mendez de Vigo, the European affairs minister of Spain (which faces demands from the region of Catalonia for independence), contradicted Alex Salmond, the First Minister of Scotland and leader of the Scottish National Party, by saying that an independent Scotland would have to wait at least five years to join the European Union, and would then have to adopt the euro. Sixty dogs died in a fire at Manchester Dogs’ Home; within 24 hours, £1 million had been donated.

The Islamic State, also known as Isis, posted online a video purporting to show the beheading of David Haines, a British aid worker who had been taken captive in Syria in March last year.

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