Portrait of the week | 6 November 2014

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Fiona Woolf, the Lord Mayor of London, resigned as the head of an inquiry into historical child sex abuse three months after Baroness Butler-Sloss, the former president of the family division of the High Court, resigned from the same appointment. Both had been criticised for having establishment links. ‘It is really going to be hard to find someone with no connections,’ Mrs Woolf said. ‘A hermit?’ Exploitation of vulnerable children has become the social norm in some parts of Greater Manchester, according to a report by Ann Coffey, the Labour MP for Stockport. The Serious Fraud Office opened a criminal investigation into accounting irregularities at Tesco. A report into alleged fraud at Tower Hamlets Council revealed a ‘culture of cronyism’; Eric Pickles, the Communities Secretary, sent in three commissioners to work with the council for three years. Two people died in a fire at a fireworks warehouse in Stafford that took 50 firemen to put out.