Portrait of the week | 27 March 2004

Liberal Democrat delegates at the party’s spring conference in Southport voted in favour of 16 year olds being allowed to appear in explicit pornography and of doctors being allowed to assist suicides. Mr Charles Kennedy broke into a sweat during his speech to the conference, following his sudden absence during the budget debate the week before with a stomach disorder. Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, flew to Madrid for a requiem Mass for those killed in the train bombings. He then flew for talks with President Gaddafi of Libya. A Nottingham brain surgeon was suspended while an investigation was ordered into allegations that he had failed to pay for an extra helping of croutons for his soup in the hospital canteen. Shell cut figures for its oil and gas reserves for a second time on discovering that they had been erroneous; its annual general meeting was delayed by two months. The office of Mr John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, fiddled with planning policies to give out-of-town shopping centres a better chance of being built. Of children given classes in mathematics intended to help them make up ground lost at primary school, less than half reached the level expected at the age of 11 by the end of their first year at secondary school, according to Ofsted. Lifeboatmen had to rescue 34 people from the Thames when a rowing competition on the Boat Race course was hit by a sudden storm. A survey on behalf of the Surrey trading standards department found that 57 per cent of the county’s curry houses were using illegal levels of dye in their chicken tikka masala.