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30-12-2002 Scotsman Review of the year:July-December Loss of innocence and a winter of discontent By Gethin Chamberlain July SETTING the mood for international relations for the rest of the year, the US's plans to attack Iraq are revealed. Saddam Hussein, the president of Iraq, warns George Bush, the US president, he will never win. Rowan Williams is named as the new Archbishop of Canterbury, at 52 the youngest man to be appointed to the post in 200 years. US planes accidentally bomb an Afghan wedding party after their pilots mistake the celebratory firing of guns into the air as anti-aircraft fire. Their bombs kill 30 people in the village of Oruzgan. Cannabis is downgraded from a class B to a class C drug after David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, argues it will free up police to concentrate on serious drug offenders. A mix-up at a fertility clinic is uncovered when a white couple ends up with black twins. August JESSICA Chapman and Holly Wells, both aged ten, fail to return to their homes in the Cambridgeshire village of Soham after going out to play together. As pictures of the two in Manchester United tops dominate the news, prayers are said for their safe return. A massive police hunt fails to find them but, eventually, 13 days after they disappeared, their bodies are discovered in a ditch 18 miles away. Ian Huntley, a caretaker at the girls' school, is charged with murder and his girlfriend, Maxine Carr, is charged with perverting the course of justice. Mr Bush says Saddam must get rid of his weapons of mass destruction. Proof that some people will watch anything on television as Big Brother returns. Jade fails to win and Kate Lawler, an affable young woman, takes the prize. Disgraced peer Lord Archer is allowed out of prison on day release to work at the Theatre Royal, Lincoln. September A NATION squirms as Edwina Currie uses the publication of her diaries to blow the lid off her four-year affair with John Major, the former prime minister who had to off-load several colleagues during his "Back To Basics" campaign after they failed to toe the line. Mr Major calls it the "most shameful event of his life". A nation chokes in disbelief as Mary Archer announces: "I am surprised ... at the temporary lapse in John Major's taste." Victoria Beckham gives birth to a second son, named Romeo. Reports surface of a plot to kidnap the Beckhams and a £5 million ransom demand. Security is tightened at the couple's luxury home and little more is heard of the alleged plot. More than 400,000 country dwellers descend on London for the Liberty and Livelihood march. Opponents dismiss them as pro-fox hunting, upper-class twits. Marchers say they are fighting to save their way of life. Lord Archer loses his place in an open prison, and his theatre job, after breaking the rules governing day release by attending a party with his wife, Mary, at the home of Gillian Shephard, the former Tory education minister and current deputy chairman. The government is handed a £650 million electricity bill after British Energy warns it will go under without help. October SNIPER attacks bring Washington and a large part of the US eastern seaboard to a standstill. The gunman - or gunmen, as it later emerges - taunts police by claiming to be God. Ten people are shot as they go about their daily business, with petrol stations a particular favourite. Criminal profilers confidently predict a white loner. Two black men, John Lee Malvo and John Allen Muhammad, are finally arrested and may now face the death penalty. A bomb explodes in a nightclub in Bali, killing 182 people, most of them young Australian tourists. Jemaah Islamiyah, a south-east Asian group linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, is blamed. There is anger after it is revealed that security services were aware of a threat but failed to pass on the information. Aid agencies working in southern Africa warn of a famine of biblical proportions. Up to 18 million people are said to be at risk of starvation after harvests failed. Paul Burrell, a butler who served the late Diana, Princess of Wales, goes on trial accused of stealing hundreds of personal items belonging to his former employer. The trial provides an illuminating insight into life as a palace retainer, with tales of gifts presented to the Royal Family being passed on to staff to sell. The trial does little for the reputation of the Spencer family, but, before the same fate befalls the Windsors, the trial is stopped dramatically when the Queen remembers that Mr Burrell told her he was planning to keep some of letters belonging to the princess. Mr Burrell then sells his story to a tabloid newspaper, guaranteeing that the more lurid details of his private life will be splashed all over the pages of its rivals. Chechen gunmen storm a Moscow theatre and hold more than 500 people hostage for three days, demanding that Vladimir Putin, the Russian premier, withdraws his troops from Chechnya. Mr Putin responds by sending in anti-terrorist forces, who pump a poisonous gas into the theatre to sedate the gunmen. The gas kills 116 people but the army refuses to tell medics what the gas is to enable them to treat the dozens of injured. Most of the gunmen are killed and public opinion in Russia backs Mr Putin. Iain Duncan Smith, the leader of the Conservatives, urges party members at their conference in Bournemouth: "Never underestimate the determination of a quiet man." Later, after underestimating the determination of the noisier elements of his party, he warns them: "Unite or die." Nine die as 100mph winds hit Britain. Insurers pick up a £50 million bill. November FIRE strike divides the country into those who hoot their horns (their supporters) and those who don't. Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, and John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, are firmly in the non-hooting camp, insisting that there is no more cash on the table; the firefighters insist that a 40 per cent pay rise is a reasonable demand and begin a series of strikes. The army insists that it would like to stop trundling out to fires at 30mph in ancient Green Goddess appliances equipped with ladders incapable of reaching the upper floors of buildings, and to be allowed to get back to training for a war with Iraq. Myra Hindley, the Moors murderer, dies of respiratory failure at the age of 60, taking with her to the grave the secret of where she and Ian Brady, her accomplice, buried the body of Keith Bennett, 12. Keith's mother, Winnie Johnson, says: "I just hope she goes to hell." The BBC sacks Angus Deayton after allegations that the presenter took drugs and had sex with prostitutes, revelations which made Have I Got News For You compelling, but ultimately excruciating, viewing. An oil slick off the coast of Spain threatens to create the worst ecological disaster since Exxon Valdez. Thousands of Christian pilgrims flock to Bangalore, India, after the face of Jesus is spotted in a chapati. And Michael Jackson, the self-styled "King of Pop", apologises for dangling his son from a hotel balcony. He got carried away, he claimed, before taking two more of his children for a stroll, both of them wearing veils. December CHERIE Blair finds sorry is the hardest word to say after using a convicted conman to broker the purchase of two flats in Bristol. "I'm not superwoman," she points out, claiming that her problems were balls, and an inability to juggle all of them. Part of Edinburgh's Old Town is devastated by a fire which starts in the heart of a building on the Cowgate. The fire rages all night and into the next day before firemen eventually get it under control, but, despite pleas by conservationists, it is too late to save most of the damaged buildings, including the Gilded Balloon Festival Fringe venue. Two months after Ulrika Jonsson uses the publication of her autobiography to claim she was raped by a celebrity colleague, a former Blue Peter presenter, John Leslie, is questioned by police over alleged sex attacks.
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................................................................................................................. Copyright ©2004 Gethin Chamberlain. All rights reserved. |
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