The Week

Portrait of the week

Portrait of the Week – 28 May 2005

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, unveiled a £1 billion scheme to help first-time buyers purchase shares of new homes. He also announced plans to ‘cut red tape’ by merging 29 regulatory bodies into seven. It was revealed that four out of ten prisoners released early end up back in jail after reoffending. The

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Feedback | 28 May 2005

French lessons Peter Oborne (Politics, 21 May) finds it curious that British and French opponents of the European constitution find precisely opposite faults in what it would impose upon their countries. As he correctly observes, the French see it as the imposition of Thatcherism on France while the British see it as the imposition of