Britain in tit-for-tat with Russia and food is off the table for record breakers
On this week in 1989 the Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, said he hoped the latest titfor-tat expulsions of British journalists and diplomats from Moscow would end a row that soured relations with the Soviet Union. Three well-known British Moscowbased journalists, Ian Glover-James of ITN, the BBC’s Jeremy Harris, and Angus Roxburgh of The Sunday Times, plus eight diplomats, were told they had less than two weeks to return to Britain. The Soviet action was in retaliation for the expulsion of 11 Soviet citizens, thought to include journalists, diplomats, and military attaches who had been ordered out of Britain for spying. Three Soviet citizens, then in Russia, had been barred from returning to Britain and declared “persona non grata”.
Also this week, a planeload of holidaymakers angered by a series of delays “hijacked” their aircraft. The 120 holidaymakers staged a four hour sit-in protest when their airliner was diverted because of fog. The protest followed two troubled journeys between Britain and the greek island of Zakynthos – and a night in a “seedy” hotel. There were angry scenes aboard the Paramount Airways plane on both the outward and return trips.
In other news, police investigating the bombing in December of the Pan Am jet over Lockerbie said that they were being kept informed of the arrests in Sweden of five people suspected of guerilla attacks.
And finally, Donald McFarlan, editor of the Guinness Book of Records, announced this week that in the interests of good health he would drop gluttony from the next edition of the worldfamous record-breaking book. He said: “The gluttony records are unrepresentative of the rest of the book, and I am fed up of them. Gluttony records are really out of tune with the times, when people are more conscious about health, and many people in some parts of the world haven’t got a chance to try gluttony because there is a food shortage.”