Portrait of the week

Home Teachers went on strike for a day. The National Association of Head Teachers strongly advised heads not to allow parent volunteers to keep schools open. Public-sector workers chose the same day to strike, also in a dispute over pensions. The UK Border Agency advised against flying that day. Ed Miliband, the leader of the Labour party, said he wanted to choose members of the shadow cabinet instead of being bound by elections by the party conference. All but Habitat’s three central London shops went into administration. Thorntons decided to close at least 120 of its sweet shops, transferring many to franchisees. The average person has to use ten personal identification numbers or computer passwords every day, researchers found.

Home The government accepted the recommendations of the NHS Future Forum, which had spent two months reviewing the government’s plans for reforming the National Health Service. The Health Secretary is to remain responsible for the service; private companies are to be prevented from cherry-picking; the regulator, Monitor, will not be required to promote competition; hospital doctors and nurses will be included in the task of commissioning and the 2013 deadline for GPs to form consortiums will be dropped. Southern Cross, the financially beleaguered company that runs homes for 31,000 old people, met the many landlords of the properties it leases in an attempt to carry on.

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, gave five ‘guarantees’ about the National Health Service, including a pledge not to endanger universal coverage and to increase spending on the NHS. He also said that hospital doctors and nurses would be involved in new consortiums to plan and buy care, not just GPs. Wayne Rooney, the 25-year-old footballer, had a hair transplant. Ryan Giggs, the 37-year-old footballer, was said to have spent £30,000 on hair replacement. A man, part of whose skull was blown off when he tried to steal some live cabling, was given a 12-month community order by Leeds magistrates. Energy prices rose again. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are to make their home at Kensington Palace when they are in London.

Home President Barack Obama arrived in Britain for a state visit, having fled Ireland a day early lest the ash cloud from the Grimsvötn volcano in Iceland engulf his aeroplane. In Ireland he met his eighth cousin at Moneygall, where he drank a pint of Guinness, said ‘I’ve come home to find the apostrophe we lost somewhere’, and got his armour-plated car stuck on a bump in the road. In London he stayed at Buckingham Palace, attended a state banquet and addressed Parliament. In a joint newspaper article with David Cameron, the Prime Minister, he wrote: ‘Ours is not just a special relationship, it is an essential relationship — for us and for the world.’ Hundreds of flights were cancelled in Scotland as the ash cloud blew into its airspace.

Home Police decided to investigate an allegation that Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary, had persuaded someone else to take penalty points for speeding that he should have incurred. In parliament, Mr Huhne outlined plans for Britain to halve carbon emissions by 2027. Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, outlined plans for a new House of Lords to contain 300 members, 80 per cent of them elected. Two teenagers were convicted of murder and three of manslaughter for the killing of Sofyen Belamouadden, aged 15, at Victoria Station in London last year. Mothercare announced the closure of a quarter of its shops. Catholics in England and Wales were told by their bishops to abstain once more from eating meat on Fridays from 16 September.

Home Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader and deputy Prime Minister, said: ‘People want a louder Liberal Democrat voice in government,’ after his party did very badly in local elections and saw its proposal of the alternative vote defeated in a national referendum. Mr Clegg said there would be ‘substantial and significant changes’ to the stalled NHS reform Bill. Vince Cable, the Lib Dem Business Secretary said that the Conservatives had emerged as ‘ruthless, calculating and thoroughly tribal’. The Conservatives were left controlling 157 councils of the 279 contested (an increase of four), Labour 57 (an increase of 26) and the Liberal Democrats ten (a decrease of nine). In the AV referendum, 13,013,123 voted no and 6,152,607 yes.

Home Prince William was created Duke of Cambridge, Earl of Strathhearn and Baron Carrickfergus on the morning of his wedding to Catherine Middleton at Westminster Abbey. The Duchess’s dress was designed by Sarah Burton of Alexander McQueen. It did not rain and a million or so people cheered in the streets, with 25 million in Britain watching on television. During the wedding a Union flag was burnt by republicans in Chetwynd Court in King’s College Cambridge. The Duke and Duchess returned two days later to their house on Anglesey. April was found to have been the warmest for 350 years. Wildfires broke out on heathland in England and Scotland, sweeping through the estate at Balmoral.

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, made a joint statement on Libya with President Barack Obama of the United States and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, saying that ‘so long as Gaddafi is in power, Nato and its coalition partners must maintain their operations’. British and French military officers were being sent to Libya to train opposition forces. The frigate Cumberland, which had evacuated hundreds of people from Libya, arrived at Devonport to be decommissioned. The Ministry of Defence posted on the internet secret information about Britain’s nuclear submarines, by not properly blanking out sections of the documents. The Commons Education Committee recommended that Ofsted should be split into two inspectorates, for education and children’s care.

Home Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, told the Commons that the government was delaying plans to reform the National Health Service that would give GPs responsibility for commissioning health services. ‘It is not just a question of presentation,’ said Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister. ‘This is also a question of making substantive changes to the legislation.’ After announcing government policy on social mobility, Clegg mentioned that informal internships for young people in Whitehall would be banned because it should not be a matter of ‘someone who’s met somebody at the tennis club or the golf club’, even though he had once benefited from a intern placement. The government announced that the full state pension of £97.

Home At a conference on Libya held in London, representatives of more than 40 nations and international bodies declared that Colonel Gaddafi’s regime had ‘lost legitimacy and will be held accountable for their actions’. Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, told delegates that attacks would continue until Colonel Gaddafi met UN terms, and that supplying arms to the rebels was not prohibited. Outside, 100 protesters chanted: ‘Go to hell, Cameron.’ HMS Ark Royal was advertised for sale online. In Northampton a cat called Smokey was found to purr at 73 decibels. About 250,000 people marched through London in a TUC demonstration against spending cuts. Ed Miliband, the leader of the opposition, told them: ‘I am proud to stand with you.

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that attacks on Libya to protect civilians from Colonel Gaddafi were ‘necessary, legal and right’. He told the Commons that the UN resolution authorising them ‘explicitly does not provide legal authority for action to bring about Gaddafi’s removal from power by military means’. MPs voted by 557 to 13 in support of the military action. The moon came within 221,565 miles of the earth, its closest since 1993. In a budget that he called fiscally neutral, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced consultation on unifying income tax and National Insurance. He removed 43 tax relief measures to simplify the system.

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said, with regard to the crisis in Libya, ‘It is right for us to look at plans for a no-fly zone.’ Earlier, during his tour of the Middle East, he had apologised for the slow evacuation of British citizens from Libya. Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, on being asked if he was in charge during Mr Cameron’s absence, said, ‘Yeah, I suppose I am. I forgot about that.’ He hurried back from a family skiing holiday. The British embassy in Tripoli was abandoned. HMS Cumberland, a British frigate on its way back to Britain to be scrapped, rescued 207 people from Tripoli and returned for more.

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, visited Egypt, speaking to Mohamed Tantawi, the head of the armed forces supreme council, and to Ahmed Shafiq, the caretaker Prime Minister. Later, in Kuwait, he said that ‘denying people their basic rights does not preserve stability, rather the reverse’. Before leaving Britain, Mr Cameron had written about the government’s plans to allow private and voluntary groups to run almost every kind of public service. Foreign migrants accounted for a net increase of 3.2 million in the United Kingdom population between 1997 and 2010, according to the Office for National Statistics. Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, gave new criteria for adoption to allow white couples to adopt black children.

Home Inflation rose to an annual rate of 4 per cent in January from 3.7 per cent in December, far above the Bank of England’s target of 2 per cent. The rate according to the Retail Prices Index rose to 5.1 per cent from 4.8 per cent. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, defended his idea of the Big Society and the government’s economic policy, saying: ‘We have to make these cuts, we have to raise those taxes,’ even though ‘it will make me unpopular’. Unemployment rose to 7.9 per cent, with 965,000 16- to 24-year-olds without jobs. Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, said that big banks should be split up to prevent them making too much profit and developing a bonus culture. Barclays announced profits of £6.1 billion for 2010.

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, called for Islamist extremism to be countered by ‘a clear sense of shared national identity that is open to everyone’. Speaking at a security conference in Munich, he said that ‘under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives’. About 1,500 supporters of the English Defence League and 1,000 of Unite Against Fascism marched through Luton. Three Muslims serving life sentences went on trial charged with the attempted murder of a Bosnian war criminal held in Wakefield jail. The Queen caught a train from King’s Lynn to King’s Cross at a cost of £47.20, or £31.50 with a senior citizen’s railcard.