Portrait of the week | 15 January 2011

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David Chaytor, the Labour MP for Bury North from 1997 to 2010, was sentenced to 18 months for false accounting under the Theft Act 1968 regarding his claims for parliamentary expenses. Eric Illsley, the Labour MP for Barnsley, who was re-elected last May with a majority of 11,000, was convicted of fraudulently claiming more than £14,000 in parliamentary expenses. A sixth-former was jailed for 32 months after admitting throwing an empty fire-extinguisher from the seventh floor of the Millbank building during student protests last November. Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, declared his support for ‘alarm-clock Britain’. Stuart Wheeler, who gave £5 million to the Conservative party in 2001, joined Ukip as its treasurer.

To mark the visit to Downing Street of Li Keqiang, who is expected to be the premier of China in two years’ time, British and Chinese firms signed commercial agreements worth perhaps £2.6 billion. Two giant pandas are to be sent to Edinburgh Zoo and Scotland signed a deal to provide China with technology for the production of energy from refuse. Virgin Atlantic withheld fees from BAA until the airport operator finishes its inquiry in March into what went wrong at Heathrow in December, when thousands of flights were grounded by snow, costing BAA £19 million, it said. Rochdale Council has bought 3,000 tons of salt from Peru, 6,000 miles away, though it is only 45 miles from Britain’s biggest salt mine at Winsford, Cheshire.

The European Union Bill returned to the Commons amid doubts that it would provide any certainty of a referendum over future treaties. The government tabled amendments to the Postal Services Bill to preserve the Queen’s head on stamps after privatisation of Royal Mail. Jack Straw, the MP for Blackburn and a former home secretary, said: ‘There is a specific problem which involves Pakistani heritage men… who target vulnerable young white girls.’ He was speaking after the conviction of Abid Siddique, 27, and Mohammed Liaqat, 28, who led a gang that gave girls in Derby drink and drugs before sexually assaulting them. The case against six campaigners charged with conspiring to shut down the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire was suddenly stopped when an undercover policeman offered to give evidence on their behalf.

Abroad

Gabrielle Giffords, a Democratic Congress-woman, was shot in the head and critically wounded at a public meeting in Tucson, Arizona, and six others were shot dead. The crime was immediately discussed in terms of party politics. The US District Court in Virginia subpoenaed the web service Twitter for details of people connected to WikiLeaks, the online pressure group. The headless bodies of 15 men aged between 15 and 25 were found on the beach at Acapulco, Mexico, as drugs gangs fought for control of the city. The Dominican Republic deported 950 Haitian illegal immigrants in a week, a practice suspended after last year’s earthquake.

In southern Sudan, people voted in a week-long referendum on independence. The streets of Jos in Nigeria were deserted after riots between Muslims and Christians left 16 dead. Men and women were banned from shaking hands in Jowhar, a town in a region of Somalia controlled by the Islamist group al-Shabab. Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, visited Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. In his first speech since returning to Iraq from four years in Iran, Moqtada Sadr called on his followers to support the new government, in which members of his movement have seven ministries. A griffon vulture was arrested in Saudi Arabia and accused of spying for Israel, since it carried a GPS transmitter and an identity bearing the name of Tel Aviv University.

Thousands of houses were flooded in Brisbane. Pakistan’s coalition government staggered on after the MQM movement restored its support following the government decision to defy the International Monetary Fund by shelving tax reforms and price increases on fuel. Police in Bangladesh dispersed angry investors with tear gas when the stock market fell by 9.25 per cent in an hour. Pressure on Portugal increased as the cost of its borrowing reached a new high of 6.6 per cent. Johan Vande Lanotte, the mediator attempting to get Belgium parties to form a government after seven months, resigned, but the king rejected his resignation. In Johannesburg, thieves stole the Subscriber Identity Module (Sim) cards from 400 traffic lights fitted with them to alert traffic authorities to faults, and used the cards to run up high telephone bills. CSH