Portrait of the Week – 6 November 2004

The people of the north-east of England voted in a referendum on whether they wanted a regional assembly; they didn’t. Forty-seven Labour rebels voted for a complete ban on parents’ smacking when the Commons passed a Bill limiting chastisement of children. Mrs Tessa Jowell, the Secretary of State for Culture, told the Commons during the debate on the gambling Bill, ‘There will be no new casinos if local people don’t want new casinos.’ About 160 Crown post offices in high-street sites could be closed or sold off because the Royal Mail lost £70 million on them last year. The borough of Macclesfield was found to have the lowest concentration of cinemas, theatres and libraries in Britain. A 580ft transmitter mast at Morborne, Cambridgeshire, caught fire and collapsed. Residents of Corby, Northamptonshire, population 53,000, were disappointed to learn that there was no prospect of its railway station, closed in 1966, being reopened by 2021.