Portrait of the week: Rising inflation, electric car targets and a tax on flatulent livestock

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Thousands of farmers protested in Westminster against inheritance tax on farms. Tesco, Amazon, Greggs and 76 other chains belonging to the British Retail Consortium said that costs introduced by October’s Budget ‘will make job losses inevitable and higher prices a certainty’. The annual rate of inflation rose to 2.3 per cent from 1.7 a month earlier. The British economy grew by 0.1 per cent in the third quarter, but shrank during September; in the second quarter it had grown by 0.5 per cent. Beth, the Queen’s Jack Russell, died.

An additional 50,000 pensioners will live in relative poverty next year as a result of cuts to the winter fuel allowance, the government estimated. A home using a typical amount of gas and electricity will pay £1,736 annually from the new year, according to the normally reliable consultancy Cornwall Insight. Louise Haigh, the Transport Secretary, insisted that the mandate which stipulates that electric vehicles must make up 22 per cent of a company’s car sales ‘will not be weakened’; the current proportion was put at 18 per cent by manufacturers.