THIS WEEK IN 1990:

THE Metropolitan Police are not to prosecute a Worcestershire doctor who carried a fake bomb on to a British Airways flight at Heathrow in order to expose security lapses.

Home Secretary Cecil Parkinson has ordered an inquiry into how Dr Jim Swire – whose daughter was killed in the Lockerbie bomb disaster 18 months previously – managed to take his fake radio bomb aboard a jumbo jet.

After interviewing Dr Swire, who acts as spokesman for relatives of Lockerbie victims, the police said that a letter of caution was being sent to him.

Dr Swire has had a meeting with Cecil Parkinson which he says was “extremely friendly and very frank”.

THIS WEEK IN 1980:

ONE of Worcester’s few remaining glove firms has been forced to hand out redundancy notices for the first time in its 45-year history. Milore of St George’s Square is sacking three workers and also telling two craftsmen over retirement age to leave.

Kurt Helwing, the production manager, said: “It is a great pity that this has to happen but it’s due to a general decline in the glove trade.”

Milore has been noted for its gloves since moving to Worcester in 1940. Royalty, actresses, top golfers and mountain climbers have been among its customers, and the firm has exported all over the world. Milore gloves cost from £12 to £70 a pair but these prices have proved too high since the industry collapsed dramatically about 15 years ago.

Mr Helwing said: “We still make the best gloves in the world and will carry on. We are not prepared to compromise.”

THIS WEEK IN 1970:

THE “junior gourmets” in Worcestershire schools are posing a problem for the authorities who provide school meals.

Since the cost of a school meal went up from 1s.6d to 1s.9d in April, the number of children taking meals has dropped, especially in secondary schools. Many senior pupils now prefer to dine at the local fish and chip shop rather than sit down with their fellow scholars.

Councillor Mrs CW Potter, chairman of the county education committee’s school meals sub-committee, said: “The senior children are certainly getting choosy about school meals. I am very concerned about the waste in some schools. The extension of the canteen system operating in some schools would be well worth considering.

“Pupils in these schools are served with their meals from a hatch and can tell the server whether they want more of one food and less of another.”

A further problem, she said, was that some senior pupils preferred to spend their dinner money in sweet shops and cafes and do without a midday meal.

THIS WEEK IN 1960:

THE type of film which ends on a happy note, showing the hero and heroine in each other’s arms with wedding bells just around the corner and, apparently, a life of bliss together, is blamed for the increasing number of young couples who find themselves running into marital difficulties.

Dr Godfrey O’Donnell, Worcester’s medical officer of health, when addressing members of the Worcester and District Marriage and Family Guidance Council, said: “All teenagers see is the romantic concept of love, never the tremendous difficulties of tying themselves to someone for the rest of their life.

“I believe if you showed them the same couple from the screen four months later, some of their romantic ideas would be shattered.

“People expect a tremendously high standard from marriage – sharing their income, mutual satisfaction from sexual relationship, and companionship.

“Unfortunately, if these things are not always obtained, it frequently leads to disillusionment.”

Dr O’Donnell said that nationally there were now 27,000 cases of divorce or petitions before the divorce courts every year and the figures did not take into account the petitions for separation.