British Rail’s new trains are going full speed ahead
DURING THIS week in 1976, a convicted killer was being hunted by police in connection with the brutal murder of his 25-year-old niece.
Police were appealing to John George Robinson to come forward, following the death of Mary Batty, whose body had been found at her home in Deighton, Huddersfield.
When Robinson was convicted in 1962 of stabbing to death a nine-yearold boy, the judge recommended he should spend the rest of his life in prison. However, he was released on licence from Wakefield top security prison four months before the death of Mary Batty, who was three months pregnant at the time.
Mrs Batty’s four-year-old son was found huddled near her body, which had suffered multiple stab wounds. Robinson, a married father of five, had been a regular visitor to the house and was known to have spent the evening with Mary Batty and a friend before her body was discovered the following afternoon.
The UK briefly overtook other nations this week when, with relatively little fanfare, British Rail’s new 125 mph High Speed Train service was launched at Paddington station. The first HST from London to Bristol arrived three minutes early.
The so-called Inter-City 125 would provide a choice of regular services between Cardiff, Bristol and London, and British Rail intended to extend it to other major cities in the following two years.
In trial runs, the new train, which was powered by two diesel motors, reached a top speed of more than 140mph, making it the fastest diesel train in the world – although other countries were using newer technology.
The introduction of a new offence of mercy killing, carrying a maximum sentence of two years imprisonment would be “letting in euthanasia by the back door”, according to one of Britain’s leading methodists.
The Rev John Atkinson, general secretary of the Methodist Church’s social responsibility division, said mercy killing was “a licence to kill”. He was commenting on a call for the new offence to be introduced by the Criminal Law Revision Committee.
He said the short sentence proposed meant the new offence would not be taken seriously.
Rate rises of between 15 and 29 per cent were on the cards this week, for people living in the country’s 47 “shire counties” or non-metropolitan county councils in England and Wales.
This gloomy forecast came from a spokesman for the Association of County Councils, who also warned that there would be cuts in services across the councils in the following year. Among those facing a dramatic rates rise would be North Yorkshire County
With relatively little fanfare, British Rail’s new 125mph High Speed Train service
was launched
Council, where the hike looked set to be from 52p to 60p in the pound.
The urgent need for governments to stop over-spending was highlighted at the opening of the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Manila.
In a passage of his speech clearly directed at Britain and Italy –both seeking big IMF loans – fund managing director Johannes Witteveen said demand must be curbed if inflation was to be defeated.
Later in the week three Britons held since May 7 by separatist guerrillas in Ethiopia were released and were being cared for by Sudanese authorities. The three volunteers – an engineer, a teacher and a forester – had been seized after setting off into the Danakil Desert in northern Ethiopia. Their captors were members of the Eritrean Liberation Front.