Mr Michael Howard, the leader of the opposition, speaking at the Conservative party conference, summarised Tory plans in ten words: ‘school discipline, more police, cleaner hospitals, lower taxes and controlled immigration’. Neither he nor Mr Oliver Letwin, the shadow chancellor of the exchequer, would make specific promises on tax, on the grounds that former promises had been broken. In a video, Dr Liam Fox, the party’s co-chairman, said his favourite pop group were the gay post-modernist Scissor Sisters. Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, had an operation via a catheter to ablate a troublesome spot in his heart responsible for giving him recurrent superventricular tachycardia. Just before going into hospital he announced that he would serve a full third term as prime minister; Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was out of the country at the time. Mr Blair also set about buying a house in Connaught Square, off the Bayswater Road, for more than £3 million. After the by-election at Hartlepool, in which the UK Independence party came third, ahead of the Conservatives, Mr Robert Kilroy-Silk, an MEP, demanded at its annual conference to become its leader. Mr Paul Sykes, a rich Yorkshireman, who has given £1 million to Ukip, said he would give no more after their decision to field candidates against Eurosceptic Conservatives. Mr Malcolm Glazer, a rich American who owns the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, an American football franchise, said he wanted to buy Manchester United. A big aggressive American ladybird called the Harlequin, with lots of spots, was found in Essex, causing alarm lest it drive into extinction native ladybirds, such as the Seven-Spot.
Mr Paul Bremer, the former head of the US occupation in Iraq, said the United States did not have enough troops in Iraq after bringing down Saddam Hussein, and this allowed ‘horrid’ looting: ‘we paid a big price for not stopping it because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness,’ he said in a speech to insurance executives in West Virginia.
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