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FT: Olympics

Olympics chief tells west not to hector China

By Roger Blitz in London and Richard McGregor in Beijing

Published: April 25 2008 09:41 | Last updated: April 26 2008 02:29

The west must stop hectoring China over human rights, the Olympics chief has warned, even as Beijing on Friday showed the first signs of bowing to international protests by saying it would hold talks with aides to the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader.

“You don’t obtain anything in China with a loud voice,” said Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee. This was the “big mistake of people in the west”.

“It took us 200 years to evolve from the French Revolution. China started in 1949,” he said, a time when the UK and other European nations were also colonial powers, “with all the abuse attached to colonial powers”.

“It was only 40 years ago that we gave liberty to the colonies. Let’s be a little bit more modest.”

Mr Rogge was speaking to the Financial Times ahead of Beijing’s announcement on Friday that it would resume talks with representatives of the Dalai Lama, whom the Chinese government has previously blamed for triggering last month’s violent protests in Tibet.

Pro-Tibet protests have since overshadowed the Olympic torch relay in Europe, the US, India and Australia, which has in turn provoked a backlash in China against the west and calls to boycott foreign goods.

Xinhua, China’s official news agency, quoted an unnamed official saying the government hoped the Dalai side would “take credible moves to stop activities aimed at splitting China, plotting and inciting violence and disrupting and sabotaging the Beijing Olympic Games”.

The announcement of the talks coincided with a visit to Beijing by a Brussels delegation led by José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, who met Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, on Friday.

Mr Barroso welcomed the news of the talks, as did the White House and other western governments.

Mr Rogge also told the FT the IOC always believed awarding the 2008 Games to Beijing would “open up China”, and that in time this would happen.

“The Games we believe, over time, will have a good influence on social evolution in China, and the Chinese admit it themselves,” he said.

Mr Rogge questioned whether media attention on Tibet would be as strong if the Games were not taking place in Beijing. “I wonder if Tibet would be front page today were it not that the Games are being organised in Beijing. It would probably be page 4 or 5,” he said.

Mr Rogge said China had given significant ground to the IOC by opening access to foreign media for the Olympics, which he expected to be extended beyond 2008 and believed would be a key factor in the social evolution of the country. China had also responded to IOC concerns about pollution in Beijing and child labour, he added.

“We have been able to achieve something. I am not quite sure that heads of government have achieved much more than we have done,” Mr Rogge said.

The Games would continue to be awarded to cities with the best technical bids, and were for the benefit of athletes rather than for international political evolution, but “if at the same time they can bring something for the region of the country, yes, fine”.

South Korea, he pointed out, was a military dictatorship when it was awarded the 1988 Games, and became a vibrant democracy soon after staging them. “The Games played a key role, again by the presence of media people,” he said.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

IOC’s Rogge asks for more time for China

By Roger Blitz in London

Published: April 26 2008 01:31 | Last updated: April 26 2008 01:31

If the International Olympic Committee wants to get the message over that sport should be kept separate from politics, someone had better tell its president.

In the armchair of his Lausanne office, Jacques Rogge is in full flow, discussing Mao, the Cultural Revolution and Europe’s colonial record – even the role of the IOC beyond sport as a force for social change.

Mr Rogge has endured a torrid three weeks since protests on the international torch relay in London set off what he later called a “crisis”, the biggest in his six-year presidency of the IOC.

Struggling to deflect criticism from human rights groups that he had turned a blind eye to China’s crackdown on riots in Tibet, Mr Rogge kept insisting the IOC was a sporting and not a political body.

Now, this Olympic yachtsman appears to be changing tack. Not once mentioning that sport and politics should be kept apart, he concedes in an FT interview that taking politics out of the Olympics was going to be “an eternal difficulty” for the games.

“There will never be a solution whereby the political world or the pressure groups will not try to leverage the games. You cannot stop that because of the prestige of the games and what they represent for mankind,” the president says.

Like most sportsmen, politics barely featured in his upbringing. The 65-year-old Belgian combined a career as an orthopaedic surgeon with an aptitude for yachting that took him to three successive Olympics.

When he was elected IOC president in 2001, three days after the body awarded the 2008 Olympics to China, Jacques Rogge represented for the IOC a clean break from the scandal-plagued regime of his predecessor, Juan Antonio Samaranch.

Olympic events

Berlin 1936
Games used for Nazi Aryan supremacist propaganda. Black US athlete Jesse Owens won four gold medals
Mexico 1968
US sprinters expelled for giving black power salute
Munich 1972
Eleven Israeli athletes killed by Palestinian terrorists
Moscow 1980
Boycott over Soviet intervention in Afghanistan
Atlanta 1996
Bomb killed one person and hurt 110

Mr Rogge has steered the IOC through internal reform, cleaning it of corruption and tightening up on doping control.

He has busied himself with more prosaic matters such as a cap on the number of Olympic sports and the setting up of a youth games.

But the torch relay debacle demands a rethink, and the president is sounding more like one of the Sino specialists he consulted in preparation for his talks with the Chinese leadership.

Mr Rogge says while he understands the depth of emotion in the west on China’s human rights record, public expectations about the country’s pace of change are unrealistic.

“It took us 200 years to evolve from the French Revolution. China started in 1949. At that time it was a country of famine, epidemics, floods and civil war. It had no economy, no health care, no education system and there was 600m of them,” he says.

“They had to build that and it was a bumpy road. We all know that there were abuses under Mao and the Cultural Revolution was not a nice period. But gradually, steadily, over 60 years, they evolved, and they were able to introduce a lot of changes.”

Back in 1949, Mr Rogge pointed out, the UK was a colonial power. So too were Belgium, France and Portugal, “with all the abuse attached to colonial powers. It was only 40 years ago that we gave liberty to the colonies. Let’s be a little bit more modest”.

China may not be a role model in the west, Mr Rogge concedes, but “we owe China to give them time”.

Mr Rogge says his relations with Beijing are “excellent”, although “they have their priorities and we have ours”. Sometimes those priorities contradict each other, he admits.

But the relationship has yielded two policy changes by Beijing, the IOC president claims: a media law allowing 25,000 foreign media access during the games, and environmental measures to tackle the city’s chronic pollution problems.

The media law, Mr Rogge contends, will most likely be extended into 2009 – and while there are still loopholes in it, there is little point in bellowing at the hosts for action.

“You don’t obtain anything in China with a loud voice. That is the big mistake of people in the west wanting to add their views. To keep face [in Asia] is of paramount importance. All the Chinese specialists will tell you that only one thing works – respectful, quiet but firm discussion.

“Otherwise, the Chinese will close themselves. That is what is happening today. There is a lot of protest, a lot of very strong verbal power, and the Chinese, they close themselves.”

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

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FT: The deal that linked breakfast tables and babies' bottoms

The deal that linked breakfast tables and babies' bottoms

By Jonathan Birchall in New York

Published: April 25 2008 03:00 | Last updated: April 25 2008 03:00

In the breakfast cereal aisle of a Manhattan supermarket, a box of General Mills' Cheerios is advertising a special offer. A small green panel offers the chance to save $1.50 on a box of Pampers disposable

nappies, made by Procter & Gamble.

Over in the babycare aisle, packs of Pampers return the favour - with an image of a small round Cheerio linked with the brand's heart logo, and a coupon to save $1.50 on any packet of the cereal.

The on-pack coupon promotions are part of the "together for bright mornings" marketing campaign the two brands launched at the start of the year, highlighting a relationship bet-ween breakfast cereal and babies' bottoms that might not otherwise have been apparent.

Pampers, says the panel on the cereal packet, can help babies sleep better by helping to stop "leaks", while Cheerios, the wheat cereal, has been recommended by one in five US paediatricians as a first "finger food" for toddlers.

The campaign is the latest example of the consumer product industry's pursuit of what it calls "customer focused" innovation, bringing together two companies that might not otherwise have realised their complementary relationship. Just as Nike and Apple looked at joggers listening to music and teamed up in 2005 to create the Nike+ running system, which combines running shoes and iPods, so Cheerios looked at its customers and saw the wisdom of a tie-up with Pampers.

The initiative, says Becky O'Grady, marketing director for Cheerios, was about "being very consumer focused, really trying to be led by insights into their needs, and putting that into the marketing".

Behind the alliance lay an effort by Cheerios to look more closely at its consumers. It started segmenting them at the end of last year into four distinct groups: health-conscious adults, families, children and young parents, the target of the joint promotion with Pampers.

"The foundation of the brand is the first finger-food moment - which means moms [with children] in the one to two age group - and if you talk to consumers . . . where they first and most emotionally connected with the brand, that life stage is at the centre," says Ms O'Grady.

Cheerios' marketing campaign includes a parents' section of the brand website that lists tips and articles on parenting, as well as a gallery of users' photos, with their own brief anecdotes or tips.

The children's section, in contrast, provides cartoons and computer games.

In the supermarkets, Cheerios has also started appearing alongside baby food. General Mills has created a new refillable plastic "toddler pack", holding just over an ounce of cereal. The new packages appeared shortly after Nestlé's baby food company Gerber launched its Fruit Puffs, cereal-style finger food. The re-usable containers, says Ms O'Grady, were created after observing parents putting Cheerios in plastic bags as a portable snack for their infants.

The tie-up with Pampers came through their mutual advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi Americas. Saatchi, says Ms O'Grady, "was at the core of bringing the two groups together and saying, here's a non-competitive area where you can get together and really understand the moms and what they want," she says.

The idea occurred, according to Mary Baglivo, chief executive of the advertising division, when two groups working on the separate accounts happened to start talking to each other. "They arrived at the thought that we could do some co-marketing together . . . that it would be fantastic for the business, and drive sales while contributing to each others' brand equity."

Saatchi, whose advertising philosophy currently focuses on building emotional relationships with customers, argues that the tie-up "pushed forward" the emotional equity in the brands, which in Ms Baglivo's view, "have a connection not just from the fact that they target the same group . . . but a connection in emotion and tonality".

For Cheerios, however, parents are only one of its target customer groups, and the link with Pampers has to work alongside its other targeted marketing.

Ms O'Grady says the brand, which was first launched in 1946, needs to perform "a balancing act, and to talk about how to address to those consumers in the right way, and not to do anything that would alienate any particular group at any particular time".

"I think we've balanced that in a way that is true to the brand," she says of the Pampers link-up.

Ms Baglivo argues that emotion is the key, which is why it is acceptable to read about Pampers on the back of a breakfast cereal packet.

"I think most people, when they see anything to do with a baby, tend to go to the cute and sweet side and not the down

and dirty side . . we have never had any polarising comments," she says.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

FT: Courage, money and essential brass bells

Courage, money and essential brass bells

By Luke Johnson

Published: April 22 2008 19:44 | Last updated: April 22 2008 19:44

I am a compulsive buyer and reader of business periodicals. As the son of a one-time magazine editor, perhaps it was inevitable. I get news, inspiration, ideas and contacts from them, and even contribute the occasional article. And now one of my retailers sells a wider range of titles than anyone else. So I’m excited to see that, in spite of the pressure on print publications from digital media, there is a rash of launches here and in the US.

The blockbuster is a monthly called Portfolio, from Condé Nast in New York. Launched last year, it attempts to bring Vogue content quality to the dry world of business magazines. While it looks spectacular, and is full of advertisements for luxury goods, Portfolio is almost too bulky to read and the costs of producing it must be huge.

I fear it will struggle to compete against the established triumvirate: Forbes, Fortune and BusinessWeek. Each is outstanding in its way, though Fortune is my favourite. These days it seems harder-hitting than Forbes. But they are all full of the glorious parade of super-entrepreneurs, corporate bigwigs and rotters who make up American capitalism.

Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch now publishes the US daily version of the Wall Street Journal in London. It is a vastly superior newspaper to the European edition, and serious financiers may well feel the need to buy it. At £2.50 ($5) a copy, News Corp must surely lose money on it, but my colleagues on this paper will not be overjoyed at the sight of WSJ’s tanks on their lawn.

The Financial Times itself is “refreshing” its Saturday magazine this week. And not before time: there remains a gap for a feisty, well-informed British business magazine. Perhaps this can fill it.

The Barclay brothers appear to be bringing out a monthly offshoot of the Spectator called Spectator Business. I am underwhelmed by the business coverage in the Speccie. It somehow lacks the sophistication, humour and range of the main part of the magazine. The contributors are mostly sound, but the section is patchy in length and substance each week. With luck the new title will be an altogether more coherent and consistent product. Of course, it comes from the same stable as the defunct Business (which I unfortunately owned in a previous incarnation). I trust they will create a new product rather than rehash the old one.

Possibly the Spectator has been emboldened by Money Week, the spin-off from Felix Dennis’s wildly successful The Week. This is a handy summary of the week’s business information in digest form. But I find the tone all too often gloomy, and I imagine its readers are more likely to be investors than those who run companies.

For entrepreneurs the best British read is Real Business. However, it could learn from its US counterpart Inc, which is a really excellent manual for those who run their own show. Its editor at large is Bo Burlingham, who in his first-rate book Small Giants, tells the story of Bernard Goldhirsh, the entrepreneur who founded Inc. Apparently he was encouraged by working with Edwin Land, who invented Polaroid.

Another legendary publisher-entrepreneur is Lord Heseltine, whose Haymarket empire publishes Management Today. This is aimed at corporate man and is readable fare, though I find its availability erratic.

For heavyweight general coverage of world affairs and business, nothing beats the Economist, a sister title of the FT. Its authority and scope are unrivalled, and its continued growth and influence are a remarkable British achievement. And I am delighted to note that it appears to be run by a mafia from my old Oxford college – Magdalen.

To start up a new magazine at this point in the economic cycle takes, as they say, “balls like brass bells”. Each will have to find new things to say, and deliver good-looking print and online editions. Capturing the attention of readers and advertisers is never easy. My older brother enters the fray next month with a cultural (rather than business) title called Standpoint. I wish him and all the other enterprising types a wonderful adventure, and I hope I’m still reading their output – on paper or electronically – in 10 years’ time.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

FT: A curiously English vision of design

A curiously English vision of design By Jonathan Guthrie Published: April 22 2008 19:32 | Last updated: April 22 2008 19:32 Isn’t it time for a tidy-up? Sir Paul Smith, the designer and fashion retailer, has probably the most cluttered office of any well-known British businessman. The contents of the long, narrow room include: ● a model scooter ● a bicycle ● some female nudes in oils ● men’s wear designs ● several thousand books, including Enid Blytons and a volume on Russian mafia tattoos ● a statue of Godzilla. But slinging Sir Paul’s detritus into black bin liners would be philistinism in the order of whacking Michel­angelo’s Pietà with a ham­mer. This is not junk. It is an autobiography. It tells how a Nottingham youth with a taste for mod fashion dreamt of becoming a racing cyclist but had to change his plans after an accident. Video Paul Smith Sir Paul Smith talks to Jonathan Guthrie about about the differences in starting up in fashion today compared with his early days, and why he would never float his company Falling in love with a student called Pauline, who became his partner, opened Sir Paul’s eyes to the visual arts. He embarked on a career as a men’s wear designer and retailer. His business flourished, fed by an eclecticism that Japanese customers particularly appreciated. Sir Paul says: “I’m quite good at business and quite good at design, but I’m not particularly fantastic at either.” The paradox is that, had he been driven more by money and less by his curiously English vision, he would “definitely not have been so successful and definitely not been so happy”. That does not mean the wiry 62-year-old is a whimsical dreamer who somehow bumbled his way into creating a retail business with more than 400 outlets and profits last year of £17.5m ($34.8m) on sales of £330m. It is “vital to be financially successful”, he says. But this has mattered more in allowing him to have fun – by making footballs in pastel colours, for example – than as an end in itself. If you want to wind him up, suggest that he should float his business. Then Sir Paul starts making the sign of the cross like a Transylvanian peasant menaced by vampires. The financiers who have approached him “were offering things that meant absolutely nothing”. Capital, in other words. He says: “Why would I need to open 20 shops a year that have no character and mean nothing, when I can open two or three that are really interesting and give people goosebumps?” The most recent, at Heathrow Terminal Five, had a busy opening last month. British Airways passengers had time to kill by going shopping, it turns out. A recipe for a start-up souffle Sir Paul Smith says that getting a business off the ground is “like making a souffle – if you don’t put all the right stuff in, it doesn’t rise”. ● In fashion, this means “having the idea for the product, making it beautifully at the correct price, delivering it on time and getting paid”. ● The important thing for any business is to have what Sir Paul calls “a point of view” or unique raison d’être. If you can find this “way through the reeds to the sea”, starting up is “as easy or [as] hard now as it ever was”. ● In fashion “you’re only as good as today and tomorrow: no one cares how good you used to be. You’re on the conveyor belt: give it 100 per cent or get off”. ● Young designers face two main traps, he says. They can over-estimate the importance of successful shows, which are just “part of the process, not the be-all and end-all”. Also, they can sacrifice their perspective “by believing their own press and surrounding themselves with Yes people” ● The key to successful fashion retailing, Sir Paul adds, is “to keep humble and remember who’s paying the wages: the guy or the lady who comes in the shop. If you take care of them you’ll be fine.” Sir Paul likes to invite young rock bands – the Kaiser Chiefs, Franz Ferdinand – in for lunch around the table in his Covent Garden headquarters. That is more fun than brunch in the City of London. But he is seriously underwhelmed by the whole corporate thing: the pie charts, the focus groups, the standardised shop fronts. Sir Paul says: “I completely understand the big public company strategy and the corporate roll-out and the aggressive marketing that they all do. It’s just not what I do. So many streets around the world – Bond Street, Madison Avenue – already look so similar.” He has always been more interested in cultivating a vision, what he calls “a point of view”. Like many designers, Sir Paul has used his brand on products such as luggage and perfume. He has even helped produce Paul Smith bicycles, although this reflects his love of cycling rather than commercialism, given the degree of brand stretch involved and the toughness of that market. Paul Smith is that rare thing, a fashion brand British men do not suspect of being show-ponyish or effeminate. The theory goes that you can look the business in a Paul Smith suit without getting laughed at in the pub after work. The Japanese also get it. That is down to “the clothes and the Britishness”, and a lot of hard work. Sir Paul has been to Japan nearly 100 times and has about 200 outlets there. He says that many European designers have failed in Japan “because they just didn’t roll their sleeves up and try to understand the market”. Sir Paul has struggled in China, however, where he closed stores in Shanghai and Beijing. Rents were exorbitant and demand for western designer goods thinly based, he found. His advice to fellow retailers tempted by China, Russia or India is to be “very, very careful”. He is grateful, as the world economy slows, that he has no external shareholders, except the Japanese conglomerate Itochu, which is “calm, trusts us and has no involvement in the business”. Had he sold shares to some of the “predators” he has met, Sir Paul says, he would have “jumped off a roof” by now. Fashion was already becoming a tough business before the credit crunch began to hurt, “because imitation can be so quick now”. New fashion ideas pop up in low-cost chains just weeks after they have appeared on the catwalk. Sir Paul says: “Years ago when you did catwalk shows there was no coverage until a lot later. But now everyone sees what you are doing straightaway. That makes the character of the brand much more important ... customers are buying into the sexiness of Gucci or the bohemian aspect of Prada.” He is inured to piracy of the many-coloured stripes that are his signature design. He also feels ambivalent towards them, saying: “Sometimes I’d like to stop using the stripes but they have become my logo, a bit like Ralph Lauren’s polo player.” Talking in his magpie’s nest of an office, Sir Paul displays contradictions that encompass astuteness, naivety, humility and pride. As with many self-made men who left school in their mid-teens, his mind ranges more freely than is sometimes the case among executives with the tram rails of a university education to guide them. Some of his success must be down to charisma, an attribute helpful to entrepreneurs and salespeople, but which no business school can inculcate. Sir Paul says he learnt a “way of being able to talk to people” from his father, a Nottingham draper and amateur photographer whose creativity also rubbed off on his son. Dad evidently never taught young Paul to tidy his room, though. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

hobbes

Telegraph: Book Shelves

Interiors:  Rooms that lose none of their shelf life

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 15/04/2008

In this digital age, it may surprise you to read that more people want libraries than cinemas in their homes. Sarah Lonsdale reports

There is something distinctly elegant about the library in Jeffery Bates's Georgian house in Leeds. Light streams through the tall windows illuminating oriental carpets, plaster busts, ancient leather club sofas and wicker plantation chairs, and of course, the hundreds of books that line its faded terracotta walls.

	Escapism: Jeffery Bates gets away from it all in the library of his home in Leeds

Jeffery, an auctioneer and historian, admits to being a "bit of an obsessive" about his shelves of antiquarian books - many of them charting the history of India and the East India Company, as well as volumes on English country houses and art. "I like to come here on my own, put on some classical music, spread out an old map on my desk and escape from the busy world outside," he says. "My books are part of who I am, I can't imagine living in a house without them."

In this age of digital information, books have lost none of their appeal, with many people carrying "old friends" they have loved reading from house to house.

"People feel a unique attachment to the books they own," says Joel Rickett, deputy editor of The Bookseller magazine. "From that highlighted copy of The Great Gatsby we read at the age of 13 to the tattered, almost spineless edition of Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy that has been round all our friends, books remind us of pivotal times of our lives. To have a place in the home with no television, phone, computer or Blackberry - where we don't need to be in continuous 'response' mode - just shelves of old friends around the walls, is a wonderful thing."

So it comes as no surprise that according to a new report - The Changing Face of British Homes, compiled by insurers Legal & General - more people would like a library or reading room in their home than either a home cinema, gym or music studio. In the survey of 4,000 people, 15 per cent said they would like a library compared to 13 per cent wanting a gym, 9 per cent a music studio and just 8 per cent a home cinema. Although "library" is not usually on the list of requirements for home buyers, a room with plenty of bookshelves is always a plus, says Mario Volpi of agents Jackson-Stops & Staff.

If short on space opt for bookshelves lining the walls in a sitting room or playroom, which also act as an insulator

"Sadly, often when we move house, a lack of shelves in the new home means heart-breaking trips to the charity book shop. 'Where am I going to put all my books?' is a surprising concern for many home buyers." It is just this concern that is troubling Maureen Metzger, who is looking to downsize from her large home in East Sheen, south-west London, now that her children have grown up. "I love my books and have kept all of them since childhood, plus ones I have inherited from my grandparents. I have a book-lined reading room where the telephone is banned and although I am downsizing I still need a house with enough shelves for my books."

Richard Brooks of agents Strutt & Parker says that "as well as furnishing a room, books confer a certain elegant ambience on a property".

He adds: "However the room is actually used, its very existence suggests a manner of life more spacious and leisured than our own, of bridge and backgammon rather than laptops and DVDs."

Installing libraries and reading rooms in homes does not belong to yesteryear either. The British Interior Design Association reports many of its members converting second sitting rooms into libraries. Robert Carslaw, a designer, is currently installing 50 metres of mahogany bookshelves plus silk-shaded reading lights and antique brass "library lights" into a house in Sevenoaks, Kent, for his lawyer client.

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"I get asked to install libraries quite a lot," he says. "With everyone so busy and hectic at work, it's nice to have a haven of calm at home."

In today's environment-conscious world, they also have another valuable function. "Books are the original insulator. A shelf of books along an outside wall works well to prevent heat escaping," says Joel Rickett. "If all the books were removed from the homes in Britain, our energy bills would rocket."

Top tips on installing a library

You need plenty of natural light, but avoid sunlight falling directly on to your books as this can damage them. Either have closed curtains or shutters on your windows for when you are not using your library, or don't install bookshelves directly opposite a south or west facing window.   Well-directed reading lights are essential, with an adjustable arm over a favourite chair. On the shelves themselves, well-shaded barshaped library lights will help you find your chosen volume.   Books and paper are prone to decay and mould in the wrong conditions, with excess warmth and damp and too much dust the main culprits. Keep your library cool and dry and dust books regularly, from the spine outwards using a soft brush. When installing shelves, use natural wood, simply waxed, or if painted, use organic paints to minimise chemical damage. Cooking fumes are not good for books so, if you can, use a room far away from the kitchen. You don't have to have a dedicated library. Install bookshelves in a room such as a playroom or small sitting room. Use this room for music practice or board and card games, to encourage children to have a room where television and computer games are banned. Depending on the wood you use and the finish, installing a bay of books costs from £400 for a plain pine bookcase to several thousand pounds for mahogany. Ensure the shelves are at least an inch thick and no more than four feet long otherwise they will bow under the weight of books. Taller shelves for heavier books should be along the bottom, with paperbacks at the top. Useful contacts Installers: The British Association of Interior Designers (www.bida.org) can find a designer with experience of fitting entire libraries. Fitted furniture maker Neville Johnson (www.nevillejohnson.co.uk, 0161 873 8333) crafts bespoke shelving units. For fitted shelving try Hammonds (www.hammonds-uk.com, 0800 251505). If you only require a few bookcases, use a local cabinet maker or joiner. Joiners: Yarra Valley, www.yarravalley.co.uk, 0870 770 8313; JK Evans & Sons, www.jkevansandsons.co.uk, 0151 342 1801; Canterbury Joinery, 01227 700011. Antique book ends and slips: www.buycollectableantiques.com Book binders: www.societyofbookbinders.com. Library steps: Lavender Blue, www.lavenderbluelondon.co.uk, 02920 860 325

FT: A final prognosis

A final prognosis

By Margaret McCartney

Published: April 19 2008 03:00 | Last updated: April 19 2008 03:00

This is my last column for FT Weekend so, taking the opportunity to look forward, here are 10 health-related subjects to watch.

1)The pharmaceutical industryBoth Vioxx, the anti-inflammatory drug subsequently withdrawn from the market, and SSRI antidepressants were widely in use before side-effects became apparent. In spite of this, the industry has still not agreed to publish all the results of its clinical trials. This means that patients cannot be sure that their treatment is effective, and that the benefits of many of the drugs we use may be outweighed by detrimental effects. The industry needs to prove it has a conscience; government to legislate. There is no excuse for non- publication of clinical trials.

2) Caring Most people do not mind where they get their medical care for minor illnesses. But when people are truly unwell, they are often in pain, in distress or fearful. They do not just need rapid access to a doctor. They need continuity of care from staff who know them and their needs. In the UK, we have already seen problems generated by fragmented out-of-hours care. The same will occur in in-hours care if the large polyclinics that are planned go ahead.

3) Check-ups If you decide to go for one of the "check-ups" including blood pressure, cholesterol and kidney tests, promised recently by prime minister Gordon Brown, do ask what your chances are of benefiting from being on cholesterol-lowering, blood pressure-lowering or "renal-protective" medication. Do not accept a percentage of how much these will lower your risk unless they can also tell you what your risk was to start with. The first number is meaningless without the second. You may learn that your chances of benefiting from any of these are likely to be rather small.

4) Privatisation I believe there will be further privatisation of the NHS and have concerns about the quality of services that will result. Despite little evidence for Independent Sector Treatment Centres being anything except more expensive and less good than the NHS, private providers are allowed to persist.

The mechanism for selecting companies to manage doctors' surgeries is not concerned with qualifications of staff. So far, mainly short-term locums have been employed, making it difficult for patients and doctors to get to know each other. It is the most unwell, immobile and disadvantaged who have most to lose. 5) DeathSome deaths are better than others. Though our final exit can never be completely planned, some people are able to decide whether they would prefer comfort and palliation to futile overmedication and intervention. Some health professionals worry about being reported to regulatory authorities if they do not "do everything" - even when "everything" makes no one any better or more comfortable. Timely discussion, and determining priorities, can in themselves be a consolation.

6) Privacy With patients' medical records being put on to the NHS Spine, confidentiality is in danger of being obliterated as thousands of NHS staff gain access to this web-based database. I know many doctors who have refused to have their records stored here because they do not feel their privacy will be sufficiently respected (for more info see www.nhsconfidentiality.org ).

7) Professionalism Along with words such as "service" and "vocation", this term no longer seems important for someone contemplating a career in medicine; the only interest from regulators seems to be in "competencies". This is sad for doctors, because professionalism and goodwill used to ensure morale was good. It is sad for patients, because their care is more fragmented and delivered by doctors who spend a lot of time jumping through political hoops. The NHS needs to harness professionalism and set priorities based on clinical not political need.

8) Over-the-counter testing If you are tempted to buy a genetic test on the internet, or a CT body scan for a "check-up", may I recommend a booklet called "Sense about Testing" (I confess I have contributed to it), available free from www.senseaboutscience.org.uk

9) Testing treatments I will be helping to write the second edition of Testing Treatments, a book about medical interventions. The first edition is available in full and at no cost at http://www.jameslindlibrary. org/testing-treatments.html.

10) Finally, thank you The best thing about writing this column has been the e-mails I have received in response. I also must thank Hazel Thornton, a quite amazing "lay person" and independent advocate for quality in health and research, whose piercing insight into medical matters has furthered mine.

Margaret McCartney is a GP in Glasgow

margaret.mccartney@ft.com More columns at www.ft.com/mccartney

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

FT: Girls Allowed

Excerpt

After the karate class, five teenagers – between them they have won championships in Qatar, Malaysia, Slovenia and Italy – describe why they love karate. Like teenage girls everywhere, they break into fits of giggles and insist that someone else answers first.

“It makes me feel really tough and strong,” says Farnaz, a bespectacled 14-year-old who wears a headscarf when she practises, even though it is not required in this women-only centre. “And it’s also good for my physical wellbeing.”

“Yeah,” chime in the other girls, laughing and prodding each other. These girls are Iran’s next generation, who travel abroad and who have dreams that don’t involve weddings, or at least not yet.

All five name maths or science as their favourite subjects. “I want to be like Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi,” says Farnaz, referring to the famous Iranian scholar from the Middle Ages, the father of chemistry and mathematics. Zakiyeh, also 14, pitches in: “I like Marie Curie.”

= = =

Girls allowed

By Anna Fifield

Published: April 18 2008 20:11 | Last updated: April 18 2008 20:11

On a dingy suburban street in southern Tehran, cats pick daintily through piles of rubbish, and black-swathed women walk past low-hanging electrical wires and graffiti-decorated walls. Anonymous among them, Zohreh fits the western image of the repressed Iranian woman. Not a strand of hair strays from her headscarf, and she tops her scarf and coat with a head-to-toe black chador.

But inside her small, immaculate apartment it becomes clear that life for Zohreh – as for the vast majority of Iranian women – is much more complicated than the western world believes. “Of course you know Iranian women normally win at home,” she laughs. A large woman, she wears her dyed brown-and-blonde hair in long layers. Her black trousers and brown patterned top are accented by a big gold pendant.

“I don’t feel restricted in any way,” she says, carefully peeling a kiwi taken from a huge fruit platter she brought out from the kitchen. “I think that everywhere in the world, even in countries where there is talk about freedom and democracy, you can always find women who are oppressed in some way. And here in Iran there are women who can equal 10 men in terms of decision-making and being strong.”

Zohreh married at 16, and a decade later remains very happy. Her parents were reluctant to see her wed at an early age. But when she set eyes on Mustafa, in a carefully engineered meeting, she knew that her neighbour’s uncle was the right husband for her. “It wasn’t only his appearance – although I really like tall men with broad chests – it was his character too,” she says. Twelve years older than Zohreh, he explained during those first meetings that they would move into one of the rooms in his two-room family house, and she would help care for his mother, who lived in the other room.

Zohreh considers herself lucky. “I have a very good relationship with my husband and I think I have a very successful marriage. We have some kind of special chemistry. He got married late because it took him that long to find the right woman.”

She would love to have a job, but her husband will not let her work anywhere she might come into contact with men. “Although my husband has some prejudices, he also wants me to make progress,” she says, describing how she has been going to hairdressing classes and will soon receive her qualification. “Mustafa says he will buy me a shop and all the equipment so that I can have my own salon. And only women could come,” she says.

What’s startling about ordinary Iranian women like Zohreh is how accepting they are of their lives. They seem to be the inheritors of an age-old, traditional way of married life. But the traditions are very modern. Iran has had a women’s movement since the mid-1800s. Bibikhatoon Astarabadi founded the first school for girls and in 1895 published Failings of Men, the first declaration of women’s rights in Iran.

Iranian women started attending university in the 1930s, gained the right to vote in 1963 – earlier than in some European countries – and were a major force in the Islamic Revolution that toppled the Shah in 1979. But the history of women in Iran is complicated. While the Shah was in power, women had more freedom and greater legal rights, but the openness in society led traditional families to keep their daughters at home because they did not want them living in that kind of modern society. With the revolution, women’s legal rights decreased markedly, and they were forced to wear the hejab, or Islamic cover. Ironically, this gave new opportunities to many young women who were previously kept at home. Veiled women from traditional families could study and work – to such an extent that women now comprise about two-thirds of university students, a level that has led to calls for quotas for men.

The hejab is the most obvious sign of the status of Iranian women. But for most women, having to cover hair and hips is the least of their worries. And so it is for me. Now that I have figured out how to keep my headscarf in place while eating and interviewing, my bigger concern is making sure I that I have the same access and opportunities as a male journalist. In the relatively short time I’ve been here, I’ve been struck by the dynamism and strength of Iranian women. Whether they are artists or government officials or everywoman like Zohreh, the people I have met have had a clear idea of what they want, and how to work around the system to get it.

Feminist activists suggest the current situation of women in Iran is part of the wider struggle to rebuild Iranian society after the trauma of the revolution and the war with Iraq in the 1980s. “Women have become like the canaries in the mine,” says Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, the bestseller about women who gathered to secretly read banned novels in the Iranian capital. “If you want to know how much society is changing, look at the women.”

Although women began to feel more relaxed during Mohammad Khatami’s reformist presidency, things have changed since the arrival of Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, who was elected president in 2005 on a pledge to revive revolutionary values and who has initiated a widespread clampdown across society.

Ahmadi-Nejad’s government has been trying to quash discussions about women’s rights and has put down demonstrations using violence. (An 80-year-old poet was beaten at one rally). Following the parliamentary election last month, Ahmadi-Nejad will have to work with a more moderate – though still overwhelmingly conservative – legislature. But women performed miserably in the parliamentary election, with only a handful making the cut in the first round in March, suggesting that the next parliament will contain even fewer women than the previous one.

In the face of violent opposition and poor representations, women’s rights campaigners have adopted new tactics, and have launched a petition that aims to collect one million signatures calling for greater rights for women. Activists won’t say how many they have collected until they get to their target number (which rather suggests that the number is still low).

Nahid Keshavarz, 34, is one of the petition’s organisers. In her apartment, over chocolates and espresso, she tells me in a mix of French and Farsi that feminism is not just the preserve of Iran’s educated elite. She comes from a normal family – her father is a farmer, her mother a housewife – in the southern city of Bushehr. It was going to university that opened her eyes to the idea of women’s rights.

Now studying for a doctorate in women’s studies in France, she says that the women’s movement has grown stronger since the clampdowns. “When Ahmadi-Nejad became president a lot of people predicted that the women’s movement would be marginalised, but over the last two years the movement has shown surprising growth,” she says.

A year ago she was arrested and put into prison for two weeks for collecting signatures in Tehran’s Laleh Park. But even prison has a positive side. “Every time one of us gets arrested, the issues of women’s legal rights are taken deeper into society,” she says. “And when I was in prison, even the guard said to me ‘Hey, you, the feminist.’ The concept of feminism has now become so widely known that even male prison guards know what it is.”

Keshavarz was in a cell with 25 women, 10 of whom had killed their husbands. “The situation of these women helped us prove our point. Most of them had been married off at very young ages and had been in violent marriages. They had come from the margins of society, but neither society nor the law protected them – so they took matters into their own hands. For all of them, the killing of their husbands was their first crime.”

Keshavarz was released, but her trial – on charges of taking action against national security by distributing propaganda against the system – goes on. The trial has never been completed: the authorities just leave it hanging, a reminder that if she puts a foot wrong, the court system could easily swing back into action. She continues to collect signatures, though she says she has to be discreet, collecting in taxis, shops and hair salons, rather than in public places.

The campaign has taken the issue of women’s rights to very remote areas, with workshops in almost 20 regional cities, from Kurdistan in the north to the remote southern provinces. “Middle-class women like me can find a way round the laws, but they are unjust and have to be changed because they are applied more strictly to women in lower classes,” Keshavarz says.

“Take polygamy. That’s not so acceptable here in Tehran but in the border regions, it’s a big issue,” she says. “I went to a village in the south of Iran and I met all these young, beautiful women who signed the campaign petition, and their first priority was to abolish polygamy because it is so widespread in that area.”

Under Iranian law, girls are considered adults at the age of nine and can be tried as an adult and sentenced to death for murder from that age (boys do not legally become adults until 15). A woman’s testimony in court is worth half that of a man’s, and if a man and a woman are injured in an accident, the man gets double the punitive damages. Women receive only half the inheritance of men, and if a man dies without having children, his entire inheritance goes to his parents, not to his wife.

Although Morocco, Egypt and Turkey provide better protection for women, Iranian women still fare better than those in many countries in the Gulf. Women here have the right to vote, to drive, and to become members of parliament.

There have been some improvements in recent years. Women have won the right to custody of children until the age of seven. Previously, custody automatically went to the father in all circumstances.

Divorce reform is now the most pressing issue for many women’s rights activists. Men still have the exclusive right to end a marriage, except in specific circumstances or if it is expressly written into the marriage contract that the woman can herself seek a divorce.

In Zohreh’s apartment I ask her about these issues. She tells me she will receive 250 gold coins if Mustafa ever divorces her. But it did not occur to her to ask for the right to call an end to the marriage. “I didn’t even think about it. I think most Iranian girls are like that when they are getting married – they are thinking about love and being together forever, not getting divorced,” she says.

. . .

In the huge Zeitoon gymnasium in western Tehran, 25 women and girls in white karate suits – many of them tied with black belts – perform their warm-up.

“Ichi, ni, san, shi,” the teacher puffs, counting in Japanese as the girls kick their legs in the air, exhaling sharply as they do so. The girls, aged seven, take their routine as seriously as the women in their early twenties, stern faces checking their posture in the mirrors that line the practice hall.

Karate is one of the most popular female sports in Iran, and one of the few women’s sports to be shown on television. (Topped with a headscarf, the karate suit constitutes good Islamic covering.)

In the gym, women with bouffant hairdos and tiny lycra outfits listen to their iPods as they run on treadmills, while mothers in full chador sit knitting, waiting for their daughters to finish working out in their sports classes.

After the karate class, five teenagers – between them they have won championships in Qatar, Malaysia, Slovenia and Italy – describe why they love karate. Like teenage girls everywhere, they break into fits of giggles and insist that someone else answers first.

“It makes me feel really tough and strong,” says Farnaz, a bespectacled 14-year-old who wears a headscarf when she practises, even though it is not required in this women-only centre. “And it’s also good for my physical wellbeing.”

“Yeah,” chime in the other girls, laughing and prodding each other. These girls are Iran’s next generation, who travel abroad and who have dreams that don’t involve weddings, or at least not yet.

All five name maths or science as their favourite subjects. “I want to be like Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi,” says Farnaz, referring to the famous Iranian scholar from the Middle Ages, the father of chemistry and mathematics. Zakiyeh, also 14, pitches in: “I like Marie Curie.”

Asked about the prospect of their getting married, they shriek, almost in unison, “We’re too young.”

“There are still more important things for us to think about,” Zakiyeh says. “I’m not saying I don’t want to get married, just that it’s not an issue for us now.”

These girls in the gym represent the activists’ best hope. Political change may be hard, but demographic change is unstoppable. Seventy per cent of the 70 million population is under 30 years old. The potential collective power of young people to resist regulations they do not like – and shape their own lives in defiance of official regulations – is huge.

Young people watch bootleg DVDs of the latest Hollywood films, write blogs about their social lives and pass phone numbers through car windows during interminable traffic jams. In the wealthy suburbs of northern Tehran, women go out wearing long coats over mini-skirts and low-cut tops as they make their way to the wild parties that take place almost every night.

Mona Zandi Haghighi is a 35-year-old film director whose first film, On a Friday Afternoon, has won prizes in Germany, France, Greece and the US, as well as in Iran’s Fajr film festival. Of the recent clampdown, she says: “It is like we have returned to the period before Khatami but the difference is that people started to become more relaxed – and they won’t be able to silence them anymore.”

She’s a confident, cosmopolitan woman with short dark hair and large silver earrings, and lives a privileged existence in northern Tehran, making films in her stylish modern office during the week, and doing pilates and going to parties at the weekend. “Now people complain more, they resist more. I think the nature of our society is such that it’s very unpredictable – you can never tell what is going to happen next.”

Even forward-thinking Iranian women like Haghighi don’t disapprove of everything President Ahmadi-Nejad has done. “Some things – such as the economy and living conditions – have become worse,” she says, “and the crackdown on arts, books and films, all happened when Ahmadi-Nejad came to office. But I think some parts of it are not bad. Only someone like Ahmadi-Nejad could stand up to George Bush.”

But Azar Nafisi, the author, is optimistic – like most of the women I speak to in Iran. “Living in Iran is like the month of April – there are always periods of sunshine followed by showers,” she says. “You get through the periods of repression and closing and crackdowns. But because society is still advancing, it won’t hold: things will always be opening up again.”

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

Magnum Photos: Chien-Chi Chang

_{TAIWAN. Taipei. 1999. A bride at a photo studio. © Chien-Chi Chang/Magnum Photos}

It was a little past three o'clock, and the day hadn't dawned yet. Unable to sleep, Kuo-hsun Chen decided to get up and wait for the cosmetician. On this day of great joy, her bridegroom would arrive here at the auspicious hour of five o'clock in the morning to marry her. By then, she must be done with the makeup, dressed in the white lacy gown and the expensive ornaments, and waiting quietly, sitting on a chair. An 80-table banquet would already be laid out by the roadside near her future husband's house to welcome her.

Driving down to the countryside after the wedding, they became stuck in traffic. The bouquet of flowers in her hands soothed her. The nervousness and excitement of the morning has dissipated for the moment and she couldn't help feeling drowsy. Waken by the laughter of the bridal pages, her first thought was: "Am I drooling?" She was not, fortunately. Later, when she saw the photograph of herself, she said, "I look like a Barbie doll."

= =

Find this image in: I do, I do, I do: by Chien-Chi Chang The Taiwanese wedding pictures in Chien-Chi Chang's I do, I do, I do are not the celebratory nuptial norm that are the bread and butter of photographers everywhere. Rather, Chien-Chi Chang reveals a jaundiced look at the institution and the industry of marriage. A couple is caught in a net of spray-string confetti; a bride poses among ruin; a chain of wedding couples kisses in a zoo with caged elephants behind them; and a post-nuptial couple, in all their Western finery, sleep soundly, and separately, in the back of a limousine. “I do, I do, I do” reveals conflicts that the artist, at the time a 41-year-old unwed man with three younger sisters and no brothers, felt about the notion of marriage and all the traditional family pressures that it entails. Buy the book View inside the book

Copyright © 2008 Magnum Photos. All rights reserved

 

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Calvin and Hobbes

Calvin and Hobbes