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Euro 2016 How To Spend It Simon Kupers alternative guide The latest cars from Rolls-Royce and Bentley Magazine LIFE & ARTS Europe edition House & Home LGBT special issue | Big Read The story of a jihadi recruiter SATURDAY JUNE / SUNDAY JUNE 2016 Art treasures saved as Paris floods worsen Briefing i Noble Groups chairman to step down Beleaguered Hong Kong-based commodities trader Noble said that founder Richard Elman would quit as chairman as it also revealed plans for a $500m rights issue to cut its debt load PAGE 10 Artworks from the Louvre museum store rooms in Paris were packed in boxes yesterday among ancient statues after they were evacuated from the basement to avert the risk of flooding from the River Seine The museum was closed as it carried out the first such evacuation of artefacts since the Louvre underwent renovation in 1989 The Seine, which flows directly past the museum, rose to the highest levels seen since 1910 after a week of heavy rain that swept across large parts of France and Germany i Japans womenomics push all at sea Miho Otani, Japans first female captain of a destroyer-class warship, is a success story of the countrys gender equality drive, although she sees it as a work in grindingly slow progress PAGE i Clinton aide in the spotlight Hillary Clintons principal adviser, Huma Abedin, is to be thrust into the spotlight with the release of a film on the political comeback of Anthony Weiner,her disgraced husband PAGE i JPMorgan chief rails against Brexit Louvre removes treasures page Geoffroy van der Hassel/AFP/Getty Images Blatter and Fifa chiefs paid $80m US probe alleges problematic bonuses Football body keen to highlight reform drive MURAD AHMED LONDON Fifas disgraced former president Sepp Blatter was among a group of football chiefs who secretly paid themselves $80m in a co-ordinated effort to enrich themselves, an internal investigation at the sports world governing body says Attorneys hired by Fifa to probe alleged widespread corruption at the organisation found that Mr Blatter, former secretary-general Jerome Valcke and former deputy general Markus Kattner, approved a problematic series of bonuses, contract changes and exceptional payments over five years Although the US justice department indicted more than two dozen top Fifa executives on corruption charges last year, the new revelations include some of the most detailed allegations to date against Mr Blatter He was not charged as part of the US investigation, but he was removed from Fifa and banned from football last year The US firm Quinn Emanuel said some of the actions represented evidence of breaches of fiduciary duty and could be in breach of Swiss law Mr Blatters lawyers said: We look forward to showing Fifa that Mr Blatters compensation payments were proper, fair and in line with the heads of major professional sports leagues around the world. Fifa released the details as part of its effort to show its commitment to reform, but its current leadership continues to face allegations of interference with investigations into its conduct It is facing the most serious corruption investigation in its history In addition to the US charges, Swiss authorities have also launched a criminal inquiry into alleged bribes paid to football executives Fifa said it would pass on the latest information it has found in the internal probe to US and Swiss investigators Quinn Emanuel said it found that Mr Blatter, Mr Valcke and Mr Kattner had received retroactive special bonuses worth a total of SFr23m ($23.5m), four months after the World Cup in South Africa in 2010, apparently without an Its almost as if these payments materialised out of thin air underlying contract provision stipulating such bonuses Its almost as if these payments materialised out of thin air, said a person close to Fifas internal investigation The men also received bonuses related to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil and the 2018 tournament in Russia, as well as contact enhancements that lifted the total to $80m, Fifa said The probe found that in April 2011 Mr Valcke and Mr Kattner were given contract extensions until 2019, with large increases in base salaries and bonuses Two new clauses were also inserted into contracts, including guarantees of the full value of contracts even if terminated for just cause Weak jobs growth is smack in the face for US economy and Fed rate increase SAM FLEMING WASHINGTON ADAM SAMSON NEW YORK The woman looking to win Rome and shake up Italy Populist trouble i PAGE Austria Bahrain Belgium Bulgaria Croatia Cyprus Czech Rep Denmark Egypt Finland France Germany Gibraltar Greece Hungary India Italy Kazakhstan Kenya Kuwait Latvia Lebanon Lithuania Luxembourg 4.50 Din2.0 4.50 Lev8.75 Kn29.50 3.95 Kc120 DKr41 EÊ25 5.30 4.50 4.50 Ê3.50 4.00 Ft1190 Rup220 4.00 US$7.00 Kshs300 KWD1.50 7.59 LBP9000 5.00 4.50 Macedonia Malta Morocco Netherlands Nigeria Norway Oman Pakistan Poland Portugal Qatar Romania Russia Saudi Arabia Serbia Slovak Rep Slovenia South Africa Spain Sweden Switzerland Tunisia Turkey UAE Den240 4.00 Dh50 4.50 Naira715 NKr39 OR2.00 Rupee 320 Zl 22 4.00 QR20 Ron19 5.00 Rls15 NewD480 4.50 4.00 R60 4.00 SKr50 SFr6.90 Din9.00 TL12.75 Dh20.00 Hiring by US employers slowed last month to the weakest pace since 2010, clouding the economic picture and dealing a blow to the prospect of a Federal Reserve rate increase this month Non-farm payrolls rose by a seasonally adjusted 38,000 in May, below a revised 123,000 figure for April and well below expectations for growth of about 160,000 Employers took on 59,000 fewer workers in March and April than previously reported The unemployment rate slid to 4.7 per cent from per cent but the declines were driven by people quitting the labour force, rather than hiring The number of people working part time because they could not find a full-time post rose by 468,000 Stocks sold off and the dollar fell on the report, which also sent 10-year bond yields sliding from 1.7938 per cent to 1.728 per cent The latest payrolls numbers were affected by a strike by 35,000 Verizon Communications workers that began in late April and stretched through May But even excluding that effect, the jobs report was poor and contrasted sharply with the robust gains that have been seen for much of the decade This is a smack in the face for the US economy, said Diane Swonk of DS Economics They [the Fed] need to see a much better June number to keep July on the table When you are losing momentum going into the meeting, that is not when you raise rates. The strength of the USs labour market recovery has sat at the heart of Fed chair Janet Yellens case for higher interest rates, and a single months number STOCK MARKETS 1DVGDT&RPSRVLWH Printed in London, Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin, Frankfurt, Brussels, Milan, Madrid, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington DC, Orlando, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul, Dubai 2  SUHY FKJ  -XQ INTEREST RATES SUHY -XQ  SHUộ  SHUe   ộSHU    eSHU   eSHUộ  gSHU   ộSHUe    'RZ-RQHV,QG   )76(XURILUVW   (XUR6WR[[   )76(   )76($OO6KDUH   &$&   ;HWUD'D[    -XQ SUHY 1LNNHL     +DQJ6HQJ    2LO:7,  2LO%UHQW       )76($OO:RUOG 770174 736166 CURRENCIES -XQ 6 3 â THE FINANCIAL TIMES LTD 2016 No: 39,181 Fed Brexit warning page Global overview page 14 World Markets Subscribe In print and online www.ft.com/subscribetoday email: fte.subs@ft.com Tel: +44 20 7775 6000 Fax: +44 20 7873 3428 will not force the bank completely to ditch its assessment of the economy The central banks anecdotal Beige Book report on Wednesday indicated that tight labour markets were widely noted in most of the Feds dozen districts around the country Yesterdays data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that average hourly earnings grew 2.5 per cent compared with the previous year, marking a bright spot But the jobs data make a Fed move on rates this month highly unlikely and the odds were already very low given market risks surrounding Britains referendum on its EU membership Traders now also see a July move as less probable, given that the downward revisions to March and April numbers suggest a broader slowing in hiring  gSHUe  ộLQGH[   gSHUộ   eLQGH[    6)USHUộ  COMMODITIES  *ROG  LQGH[  6)USHUe SUHY SULFH \LHOG FKJ                   SULFH SUHY FKJ )HG)XQGV(II    FKJ 86P%LOOV  (XUR/LERUP           86*RY\U  8.*RY\U  *HU*RY\U   -SQ*RY\U   86*RY\U   *HU*RY\U    8.P  3ULFHVDUHODWHVWIRUHGLWLRQ 'DWDSURYLGHGE\0RUQLQJVWDU Jamie Dimon said Britains exit from the EU would be a terrible deal for the British economy, the latest top business leader to highlight risks facing service industries. PAGE 6; EDITORIAL COMMENT, PAGE i Myanmar probes jade fraud claims Myanmar has launched a probe into the possible disappearance of almost $100m linked to its flagship annual jade auction. PAGE i Walmart pilots Uber grocery deliveries Walmart is raising the stakes in grocery delivery, announcing a tie-up with car-hailing services Uber and Lyft in a pilot scheme PAGE 10 Datawatch UK sporting attendances Most popular spectator sports, (2015, m) Football 43.4 Equestrian Rugby Union Cricket Rugby League Greyhound racing Motorsport Tennis Golf Other Source: Deloitte A huge crowd is expected today for the Epsom Derby, perhaps exceeding last years record 125,000 The number of spectators at horseracing and equestrian events is exceeded only by those at football matches FTWeekend June/5 June 2016 INTERNATIONAL Migrant crisis Emerging markets Breakthrough in EU-Turkey talks on visas South Africa avoids rating downgrade to junk status Ankara mood change on antiterrorism laws aims to meet Brussels concerns ALEX BARKER BRUSSELS Negotiations to grant 80m Turks visafree travel to Europe are back on track, with Turkey this week signalling its willingness to reform its broadly drafted terrorism laws to meet EU conditions The overture has broken a stalemate in talks that endangered a crucial EU deal with Turkey that has dramatically cut migrant flows to Greece, according to senior officials involved If the breakthrough is matched by substantial concessions, the stage is set for Ankara to meet some remaining visa waiver conditions and for the European Commission to make a positive recommendation on granting travel rights, potentially within weeks 80m Turks set to be granted visa-free travel to Europe in effort to cut migrant flows 72 Conditions for visa rights set for Turkey by the European Commission The travel rights are Turkeys main upside from the EU migration deal But its fulfilment has become bogged down inpolitics,asAnkararefusedtheEUconditions attached, immigration-wary European politicians fretted over the electoral consequences, and fears mountedoverAnkarasauthoritarianism Even taking account of recent progress, some diplomats warn there is still only a small chance of EU members and the European Parliament being ready to vote on travel rights for Turks by early July But the path to a final deal by the autumn is open again, teeing up a fraught and unpredictable debate within the EU, where unease over the deal is mounting on both left andright The mood has changed, were talking seriously, its much more positive, said a senior diplomat involved One Turkish official said that despite recent setbacks were now back to business The progress came despite a highly charged diplomatic spat between Berlin and Ankara over this weeks Bundestag vote recognising an Armenian genocide by Ottoman-era Turkey The thaw over visas started last week when Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkeys president, told Angela Merkel, German chancellor, he intended to uphold the migration deal and work to find a solution to the stand-off over visas Mr Erdogan also retreated on a threat to retaliate against European foot-dragging over visas and allowed a planned EUTurkey migrant returns deal to come into force on June asplanned Further headway was made in Brussels this week in meetings with Omer Celik, Turkeys newly appointed Europe minister, an ally of Mr Erdogan who is more straightforward in seeking a deal to ensure Turkey meets the final conditions demanded by the EU Mr Celik said in Brussels that he made clear that we would not make changes We are not short of tough terror laws in Europe [for the Turks] to copy to Turkeys antiterrorism law But officials are in discussions on reforms to satisfy the EUs concerns about catch-all terrorism definitions and the pre-trial detention of journalists or academics The compromise hinges on changes that can be cast as strengthening Turkeys antiterrorist toolkit As long as it doesnt hurt antiterrorism, we may tweak things here and there, said an officialfamiliarwithTurkeysposition One option is reform of Turkish terrorism legislation to strengthen parts, such as curbs against foreign fighters, while refining the definition of terrorism to be more EU-compliant We are not short of tough terror laws in Europe to copy, said a senior EU diplomat However, Turkey is yet to meet five of 72 conditions for visa rights, including on terrorism laws, data protection rules, anti-corruption efforts and the framework for co-operation with European law enforcement agencies Europe floods Louvre removes treasures to escape rising Seine ADAM THOMSON PARIS JAMES SHOTTER FRANKFURT Staff at Pariss Louvre moved to evacuate 150,000 objects from the museums priceless collection yesterday as water levels in the Seine river were expected to reach their highest point since 1910 The evacuation from the museums store rooms, where the majority of the Louvres collection is kept, took place as city authorities battled against the highest water levels in living memory Marion Benaiteau, Louvre press officer, said it was the first such evacuation since the museums 1989 makeover, when it acquired its glass pyramid Its a first, she told the FT The Louvres doors were closed to the public yesterday, as were those of the Musộe dOrsay on the opposite bank of the river After days of intense rain, the interior ministry said that 20,000 citizens had been evacuated from their homes across France Franỗois Hollande, Frances Socialist president, declared a natural catastrophe The emergency measures in Paris, just days before the country prepares to host the Euro 2016 football tournament, came as Europe endured a week of heavy rains In Germany the worst damage was in Bavaria, where houses and roads have been wrecked, and at least seven people have died, according to local media Angela Merkel, chancellor, expressed her condolences for the victims We mourn those for whom help came too late, she said on Thursday, adding that she was following the situation closely In the Bavarian town of Simbach am Inn, houses were flooded and roads were damaged after local rivers burst their banks, while in nearby Triftern, about 30 children had to sleep in their schools sport hall on Wednesday night after bridges became impassable Siegfried Schmied, managing director at the town hall in Triftern, said that the River traffic was suspended as water filled the normally spacious arches of the citys bridges clean-up exercise was in full swing and the weather had improved, although the forecast for the weekend was uncertain In North Rhine-Westphalia, the river Issel rose from its normal depth of half a metre to over 2m on Thursday Local officials said yesterday morning that water levels were falling However, Germanys weather service had warned of further rains last night The GDV trade body for Germanys insurance industry said that the insured losses caused by storm Elvira, which caused localised flooding in BadenWỹrttemberg last weekend, would come to about 450m It added that this did not include the subsequent damage in Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia In the French capital, traffic was thrown into chaos as authorities closed inundated tunnels and the road running along the side of the river The RER C, a rapid transit line serving Paris, was closed and authorities opened two gym- JOHN AGLIONBY NAIROBI NOVEMBER 2015 High profits and relatively low detection rates are driving a sharp increase in global environmental crime, with corporates and organised gangs becoming increasingly involved, according to the UN and Interpol Spain; Fabripress, C/ Zeus 12, Polớgono Industrial MecoR2, 28880 Meco, Madrid Legal Deposit Number (Deposito Legal) M-32596-1995; Publishing Director, Lionel Barber; Publishing Company, The Financial Times Limited, registered office as above Local Representative office; C/ Infanta Maria Teresa 4, bajo 2, 28016, Madrid ISSN 1135-8262 UAE; Al Nisr Publishing LLC, P.O.Box 6519 Dubai Editor in Chief: Roula Khalaf Origin of publication, twofour54, Media Zone, Abu Dhabi France; Publishing Director, Dominic Good, 40 Rue La Boetie, 75008 Paris, Tel +33 (0)1 5376 8256; Fax: +33 (01) 5376 8253; Commission Paritaire N 0909 C 85347; ISSN 1148-2753 Turkey; Dunya Super Veb Ofset A.S 100 Yil Mahallesi 34204, Bagcilar- Istanbul, Tel +90 212 440 24 24 ROLLING IN THE DEEP Subscriptions & Customer service: Tel: +44 207 775 6000, fte.subs@ft.com, www.ft.com/subscribetoday Advertising: Tel: +44 20 7873 3794 asiaads@ft.com, emeaads@ft.com Letters to the editor: Fax: +44 20 7873 5938, letters.editor@ft.com Executive appointments: Tel: +44 20 7873 4909 www.exec-appointments.com Published by: The Financial Times Limited, Southwark Bridge, London SE1 9HL, United Kingdom Tel: +44 20 7873 3000; Fax: +44 20 7407 5700 Editor: Lionel Barber Belgium; BEA Printing sprl, 16 Rue de Bosquet, Nivelles 1400 Germany; Dogan Media Group, Hurriyet AS Branch Germany, An der Brucke 20-22, 64546 Morfelden Walldorf Responsible Editor, Lionel Barber Responsible for advertising content, Dominic Good Italy; Poligrafica Europa, S.r.l, Villasanta (MB), Via Enrico Mattei 2, Ecocity - Building No.8 Milan Owner, The Financial Times Limited; Rappresentante e Direttore Responsabile in Italia: I.M.D.Srl-Marco Provasi Via G Puecher, 20037 Paderno Dugnano (MI), Italy Milano n 296 del 08/05/08 - Poste Italiane SpA-Sped in Abb.Post.DL 353/2003 (conv L 27/02/2004-n.46) art comma 1, DCB Milano 361_Cover.PRESS.indd Standard & Poors, the rating agency, affirmed South Africas foreign currency bond rating at one notch above subinvestment grade, or junk status, citing improvements in the energy sector, pending labour and mining reforms, and the governments resolve to reduce fiscal deficits at a faster-than-expected pace S&P, however, maintained its negative outlook, noting low gross domestic product growth, rising political tensions and warning it could lower its ratings this year or next if policy measures not turn the economy around A rating downgrade, which could raise the countrys borrowing costs, has loomed over Africas most industrialised nation all year Government officials and business leaders have been working to boost confidence in the economy since President Jacob Zuma in December sacked a wellrespected finance minister and replaced him with a little known backbencher, sending the rand plummeting The drive has been led by Pravin Gordhan, the finance minister brought in after the tumult The government welcomed the S&P decision The rating outcome demonstrates that South Africans can unite, especially during difficult times, to achieve a common mission, the Treasury said Its a reprieve, certainly, said David Faulkner, economist at HSBC Africa, who said it gave time to see if growth measures set in motion this year, including improvements in the energy, mining and tourism sectors, would have an effect But he added: To durably remove the risk of a downgrade, you need more aggressive structural reforms that significantly raise the countrys growth potential. South Africas rand strengthened to a three-week high yesterday, to 15.14 per dollar Yet international investors remain wary of South Africas dysfunctional economic and political environment Foreign portfolio flows into the country have been volatile and equity funds in South Africa suffered larger outflows than any other emerging market in late May But international investors have been net buyers of the countrys bonds in the past week, helping to send the yield on benchmark 10-year government bonds, denominated in rand, to a three-week low of 9.19 per cent yesterday While the S&P decision gives politicians and business leaders time, some doubt whether they will be able to turn things round quickly enough to avoid a downgrade later this year The economy is forecast to grow 0.6 per cent in 2016 The political backdrop is also fraught, with the governing African National Congress facing a tough fight in August municipal elections with an energised opposition and increasingly pessimistic voters Additional reporting by Elaine Moore in London UN and Interpol detect big jump in environmental crime Subscribe to the FT today at ft.com/subscription Southwark Bridge, London SE1 9HL Philippe Wojazer/Reuters nasiums to shelter the citys homeless The tip of the Seines two main islands in central Paris, traditional picnic spots for tourists during the summer months, were under water yesterday as the rivers swirling brown water partially covered benches and trees River traffic, including the citys famous bateaux mouches open-air tourist boats, was suspended as water levels filled the normally spacious arches of the citys numerous bridges Anne Hidalgo, Paris mayor, said that the river levels were not a threat to the population but conceded that the state of alert remained very very high By yesterday evening, the water in the Seine was expected to reach 6.5m, one of the highest readings since the great Paris flood of 1910 Ms Hidalgo told journalists water levels were expected to subside from today But she added: What we expect is that the decrease is going to be very slow and very long. South Africa yesterday avoided a downgrade to its credit rating to junk status in a reprieve to officials who have been trying to restore confidence in one of the worlds most traded emerging markets Organised gangs MAKE A SMART INVESTMENT FINANCIAL TIMES Paris yesterday: after days of intense rain, 20,000 citizens have been evacuated from their homes across France KRISTA MAHR JOHANNESBURG 21/10/2015 10:51 âCopyright The Financial Times 2016 Reproduction of the contents of this newspaper in any manner is not permitted without the publishers prior consent Financial Times and FT are registered trade marks of The Financial Times Limited The Financial Times adheres to a self-regulation regime under the FT Editorial Code of Practice: www.ft.com/editorialcode Reprints are available of any FT article with your company logo or contact details inserted if required (minimum order 100 copies) One-off copyright licences for reproduction of FT articles are also available For both services phone +44 20 7873 4816, or email syndication@ft.com The value of environmental crime is growing by 5-7 per cent annually and is worth $91bn-$259bn a year, 26 per cent more than the previous estimate in 2014, the two agencies conclude in The Rise of Environmental Crime, a report published today It is now the fourth largest area of criminal activity behind drugs, counterfeit crimes and human trafficking but few governments see it as a priority, the study says Forestry particularly the pulp and paper industry in China and Southeast Asia fisheries and mining are the largest areas of illegal activity Davyth Stewart, a senior Interpol investigator who contributed to the report, said: These three industries have a legal component to them so the sheer volume passing through their legal channels provides the corporate infrastructure to hide illegal activity and illicit proceeds. Christian Nellemann, the reports chief editor, said forestry-sector crime highlighted how sophisticated corporate criminals were becoming Unlike 10 to 15 years ago when they were just cutting down trees illegally, these networks are becoming so organised they ensure their activities have some form of legal permit. Up to 86 per cent of all suspected illegal tropical wood entering the EU and US arrives as paper, pulp or wood chips and not, as previously thought, in the form of roundwood (logs), sawn wood or furniture products, the report says It gives a case study of an investigation last year by environmental group WWF Germany, which tested 144 paper products Tropical timber was found in almost 20 per cent, despite most of the companies having ruled this out The scale of organised gangs involvement in environmental crime is demonstrated by the illegal mining in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Mr Nellemann said Of the estimated $660m accrued in illegal activity annually from the region only per cent is kept by the groups fighting there, with the rest going to criminal syndicates Its now seen more as a criminallydriven conflict than a political one, he said, adding there was evidence of fighting breaking out between gold-smuggling cartels in neighbouring countries Mr Stewart said environmental crime had proliferated largely because of the lack of political will to address it There are enough international agreements, An open-pit mine in the southern Democratic Republic of Congo there are enough laws on the books, he said What theres a lack of is capacity and willingness to treat it as a high-priority crime. Julian Newman, campaigns director of the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency, welcomed the report but said law enforcement agencies need to use new tactics Why cant institutions follow the money? he said Youre not going to get the bosses by targeting the guys on the ground because theyre replaceable You need to use anti-money-laundering and other financial legislation. Corruption is also a key enabler of environmental crime, Mr Newman said We dont see many places where anticorruption laws are being used against port officials or customs agents. The Amazon is one place where law enforcers have succeeded in tackling environmental crime, Mr Nellemann said There Brazilian police used satellites to monitor deforestation, deployed swat teams to arrest gangs and threatened supermarkets with prosecution for selling goods that they could not prove came from environmentally sound sources Saturday June 2016 FINANCIAL TIMES INTERNATIONAL Populist aims to serve large slice of trouble to Italys establishment Victory in Romes mayoral election for Five Star candidate could raise concerns over PMs prospects Referendums Swiss Yes vote on non-profit groups would hit fat cat pay RALPH ATKINS ZURICH JAMES POLITI AND DAVIDE GHIGLIONE ROME Virginia Raggi was cheerfully serving pizza last month to a packed house at the Giapasi restaurant in a middle-class area of north-eastern Rome But the 37year-old was no ordinary waitress Instead, the lawyer was rallying dozens of supporters who had paid 20 each to back her populist campaign for mayor of the Italian capital in a race that could raise concerns about the political prospects for Matteo Renzi, the countrys centre-left prime minister Rome is a disaster Public transport is completely destroyed, garbage is everywhere and schools are breaking down, Ms Raggi told the Financial Times as she headed back to the kitchen to grab another tray of pizza Liberals or Democrats, they dont really care about us They only care about their interests, the lobbies The citizens dont really count. Though unreliable, polls suggest Ms Raggi will come first when Romans vote in the first round of municipal elections tomorrow She would then face a run-off on June 19, which could crown her as the first female mayor of Rome But the significance of her possibly becoming the first woman to govern the capital is being overshadowed by her threat to Italys political establishment Ms Raggi represents the Five Star Movement, the populist party led by comedian Beppe Grillo Drawing support from left and right, it has grown to be Italys second strongest political force in recent years and is expected to be the main challenger to Mr Renzis government in national elections due in 2018 In the short term a Raggi win would be an immediate success for the Five Star Movement and an immediate hit for Renzi, says Giovanni Orsina, professor of political science at Luiss university in Rome But then we have to see what happens in six months Rome is a city that is impossible to administer. Ms Raggis lead in the polls has been driven by Romans distress with the way the city has been governed over the years, most recently under Ignazio Marino of the ruling Democratic party, who was forced to resign in October amid an expenses scandal Since then, the city has been managed by a special commissar chosen by Mr Renzi During Mr Marinos tenure, it also emerged that many of the citys biggest public contracts from rubbish collection to migrant centres had been rigged by administrations from the left and right over the years to benefit criminal organisations The so-called Mafia Capitale affair shook confidence in the citys political class to its core For Ms Raggi, this has provided ample fodder to argue for a clean break from Rome is a disaster Public transport is completely destroyed, garbage is everywhere and schools are breaking down VIRGINIA RAGGI, MAYORAL CANDIDATE We have to see what happens in six months Rome is a city that is impossible to administer GIOVANNI ORSINA, PROFESSOR, LUISS UNIVERSITY, ROME Waiting game: Virginia Raggi at a fundraising event in Rome Tony Gentile/Reuters Milan race Renzi faces challenge in finance and fashion capital If a win for Virginia Raggi in the Rome mayoral race would deal a big symbolic blow to Matteo Renzi, the political stakes may be even higher in the race for Milan, Italys capital of finance and fashion While retaining political control of Rome always seemed difficult for Mr Renzis Democratic party given the scandals that unfolded under the previous administration of Ignazio Marino, Italys prime minister has been counting on sealing a victory in the countrys second-largest city This is because Mr Renzi has invested a lot of political energy in boosting the prospects of Milan since he took power in February 2014, particularly by rebooting last years Expo world fair, which was initially dogged by corruption but eventually turned into a success Manager of Expo, Giuseppe Sala, is running as the Democratic party candidate to replace Giuliano Pisapia, also from Mr Renzis party and generally well regarded But Mr Sala only has a slight lead compared to Stefano Parisi, a centreright candidate, according to the latest opinion polls, suggesting a neck-andneck race in the run-off Unlike in Rome, the Five Star Movement of the comedian Beppe Grillo is far behind James Politi and Davide Ghiglione the past, a return to honesty among public officials and a return to efficiency in the provision of basic services, which may seem normal in other European capitals, but in Rome has long seemed elusive Corruption has ruined everything, this is the main problem, Ms Raggi says Every city in the world tries to apply the law, why cant we? Yet despite these advantages, Ms Raggis campaign has been far from smooth, offering hope to her opponents Roberto Giachetti, a Democratic party lawmaker and Mr Renzis ally, as well as rightwingers Giorgia Meloni and Alfio Marchini that she may be vulnerable This week, she got into a verbal tussle with Giovanni Malagũ, head of Italys Olympic committee, after saying it was criminal to even speak of a Rome bid for the 2024 games while the city was drowning in traffic and potholes Mr Malago responded that her comments were humiliating, offensive and incomprehensible and Ms Raggi was forced to backtrack, saying she wouldnt prejudge an Olympic bid Its not a priority now, then well see, she said Ms Raggi has also had to defend proposals that have seemed a little outlandish, such as incentivising the use of washable nappies to reduce rubbish, and introducing a barter system modelled around Sardex, the complementary currency launched on the island of Sardinia in recent years Its not her lack of experience thats a problem, its her lack of awareness, Mr Giachetti said at a recent press conference Ms Raggi has struggled to distance herself from charges that she is not sufficiently independent from the Five Star Movements brusque and often secretive leadership Critics have said her decisions would be remote-controlled by Mr Grillo or Davide Casaleggio, son of the movements co-founder Gianroberto Casaleggio, who died in April And she has been vague about important national issues, such as whether Italy should exit the euro I don't know the issue really well [enough] to reply, sorry, she said at the recent pizza party But the big headaches for Ms Raggi and the Five Star Movement may come, ironically, if she wins, because the prize of governing Rome could well be a poisoned chalice Mr Renzi could turn this to his advantage nationally by making Ms Raggi a lightning rod for criticism If the Five Star Movement wins, on one side, its a great affirmation, says Oreste Massari, professor of political science at Romes La Sapienza university But its also a test of their ability to govern and Im not sure its worth it for them to win Disappointment could come quickly. Life should be easy, and lucrative, for the boss of a large telecoms company in affluent and pro-business Switzerland However, in a referendum tomorrow, the country will vote on a proposal to turn Swisscom and other state-owned companies into non-profit organisations The proposal, if approved, would also ban them from paying salaries higher than those of comparable government officials The pro-service public initiative is the latest populist proposal to scare business leaders in Switzerland, where just 100,000 signatures are required to put an idea to a referendum Despite the countrys free-market instincts, opinion polls this year suggested that a majority of voters would approve the measure Support has declined as the No campaign has picked up, but nevertheless as many as 46 per cent of voters could come out in favour, according to a survey published last week by the GFS polling organisation in Bern Patrick Emmenegger, a political scientist at the University of St Gallen, said the support highlighted how a European backlash against excessive executive pay, as well as nostalgia for the pre-privatisation era, had reached Switzerland It is very popular because it taps two themes fat cats on one hand and the idea that certain things were great in the past when they were publicly provided. In another example of Switzerland acting as a laboratory for radical economic ideas, the Swiss will also vote tomorrow on whether to introduce an unconditional basic income for all citizens regardless of whether they work, their wealth, or their contributions to the welfare system The concept of an unconditional basic income has enjoyed rising global support in recent years, with some economists and commentators arguing it could help overhaul inefficient welfare states and manage job market disruption to caused by technological change However, the Swiss government is opposing the idea on both cost and practical grounds, and opinion polls suggest it will be rejected decisively The pro-service public initiative, where the referendum outcome is likely to be far tighter, would affect Switzerlands railway and post companies as well as Swisscom Despite operating like private sector telecoms companies in other countries, Swisscom is 51 per cent owned by the federal government If the initiative is approved, the most immediate impact would be on pay employees salaries would no longer be allowed to exceed comparable levels in the federal government Alan Beattie page FTWeekend June/5 June 2016 INTERNATIONAL Japan Abe womenomics programme looks all at sea Target of putting females into 30% of top posts by 2020 dramatically reduced LEO LEWIS YOKOSUKA As a success story of Japans womenomics programme, Miho Otani seems to offer it all: a working, mid-forties mother with a stellar career, the respect of male colleagues and control of a 3,500-tonne warship Japans first female captain of a destroyer-class vessel, however, sees the countrys gender equality drive as a work in grindingly slow progress Her control over 220 crew, an anti-submarine torpedo system and six types of missile launcher may have won the grudging approval of her father, she says, but the wider mentality of Japans male community still has to change Her comments come amid deepening disappointment with the progress of Prime Minister Shinzo Abes reform programmes, particularly the womenomics efforts to address Japans longstanding failure to promote women to senior positions Mr Abes initially stated target of putting women into 30 per cent of management positions by 2020 has been dramatically scaled back, with officials conceding that the ambition was not shared by society as a whole Despite that, says Commander Otani, her career has been an example of what Japan can if it abandons preconceptions over what its women can and should As a lieutenant with aspirations of higher rank, she married at the age of 29 and was immediately asked when she intended to quit Once people realised I was not going to that, I took on the duty of making way for the next generations of women to follow me I felt a responsibility to open the doors. For Japans military, cajoled into fundamental change under the more nationalistic policy stance of Mr Abe, Cdr Otani is a powerful symbol of changing times Over her 20 years with the Marine Self Defence Force, she has watched China become more potently armed and assertive while Japan has shifted from postwar pacifism to a country whose Commander Miho Otani: wider mentality of Japans male community still has to change leadership has reinterpreted the peace clause of the constitution and is comfortable with the idea of deploying military force overseas Cdr Otani is a self-declared patriot who decided while studying at university to enter the National Defence Academy after seeing television coverage of the 1990s Gulf war She became one of the academys first female graduates I was shocked to discover what was going on in the world, and how different it was to the peaceful life I led here in Japan, Cdr Otani said in her first interview since being made captain of the JS Yamagiri earlier this year I will everything to protect my country. From the bridge of the Yamagiri, currently preparing to slip into the Pacific for a month-long training mission under Cdr Otani, the means to that are close at hand The ship bristles with the weaponry that Japan would need in the sort of conflict she and her colleagues must now 30% Initially stated target of putting women into management positions by 2020 $533bn Amount annual defence spending in Asia-Pacific region could reach by 2020 from $435bn in 2015 actively imagine: a maritime clash over disputed territorial waters or islands, very possibly involving a Chinese vessel The escalation of tensions in the region, say analysts at IHS Janes, could push annual defence spending in the AsiaPacific region from $435bn in 2015 to $533bn by 2020 In common with other MSDF captains, Cdr Otani has a growing body of experiences to consider as the training mission begins: foremost among them an incident in 2010 when a Japanese Coast Guard ship was rammed by a Chinese fishing vessel near the Senkaku Islands (Diaoyu in China) whose sovereignty is disputed between Beijing and Tokyo A diplomatic dispute erupted at the time and military analysts have spent subsequent years warning that the build-up of military and civilian vessels in the disputed region raises the risk of accidental clashes on the high seas I keep that incident in my mind all the time, says Cdr Otani Peru Presidential election Fujimori struggles to escape from fathers shadow Many people worry that poll frontrunner has inherited authoritarian tendencies ANDRES SCHIPANI HUANCAYO, PERU It was outside a school that members of the Maoist-inspired Shining Path riddled the womans parents with bullets At the time in the 1990s, the Peruvian city of Huancayo was the centre of a war that claimed 70,000 lives I lived through violent deaths and explosions and rapes all around me, she says Fujimori brought order. The woman, now a 46-year-old police officer who declined to be named, credits Alberto Fujimori, Perus disgraced former president, with defeating the Shining Path rebels, as well as taming hyperinflation, building Perus infrastructure and setting the stage for the countrys economic success of the 2000s She is convinced that the autocrats daughter, Keiko Fujimori, can the same as president by turning round the economy and bringing Perus rampant crime under control If she follows in her fathers footsteps, she can straighten things out, she says Ms Fujimori has opened up a to point lead in tomorrows election to replace leftwing president Ollanta Humala, after winning almost 40 per cent of the votes in the first round in April The 41-year-old US-trained lawmaker, who would be Perus first female president, has run a campaign promising to be tough on crime: Theres been no leader to face the problem head-on well, here I am, she has said Speaking from prison, where he is serving a 25-year sentence after being found guilty on human rights charges related to killings and kidnappings carried out by a state death squad, her father says Keiko is the president Peru needs But the legacy of the man who dissolved congress, sent in tanks and soldiers and later resigned by fax from Japan to avoid trial over alleged corruption and human rights violations continues to split the country and cast a cloud over his daughters campaign Keiko Fujimori campaigning this week in Lima Below: a 1992 bombing by Shining Path in the same city Mariana Bazo/Reuters; Jaime Razuri/AFP This is, once again, an election between those favouring Fujimorismo and those against Fujimorismo, says Luis Nunes, a Lima-based political analyst In Huancayo, capital of the Junớn region, security is a big issue because of a Shining Path offshoot that swapped ideology for drugs and is active in remote areas They killed eight soldiers and two civilians in an ambush the day before the first round of the presidential vote in April People think she will bring security here because its in her blood, says Carlos Tello, the local co-ordinator of her Fuerza Popular party Ms Fujimori has attracted large crowds of supporters in Huancayo But those numbers have been matched across Peru at rallies in which protesters chant: Fujimori, never again. Despite her efforts over the past decade, Ms Fujimori has been unable to escape the shadow of her father and the corruption and abuses of his regime Many Peruvians worry that she has his authoritarian tendencies Ms Fujimori insists that she is a different kind of politician Its crazy to see another Fujimori heading for the presidency We never learn, says a torture survivor and witness in a new trial of members of a military death squad His hope is that Verúnika Mendoza, a leftwing congresswoman who finished third in the first round and who has urged her supporters to vote against Ms Fujimori, can act as kingmaker on Sunday We dont want a country of corruption and violence, so today, to block Fujimorismo, the only option is to vote PPK, she said recently, referring to Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, the centre-right candidate and former World Bank economist Mr Kuczynski, who leads among Perus wealthy and won 21 per cent of the vote in April, has been gaining support But he is also seen by many as out of touch Ms Fujimori dominates among the This is, once again, an election between those favouring Fujimorismo and those against Fujimorismo poor After narrowly losing in the 2011 election, she spent time building her party and honing her image, getting to know the urban shantytowns and travelling to some of the countrys most remote corners Her party now controls congress However, her opponents warn of the partys historical links to drug-trafficking in a country that is a major cocaine producer Vladimiro Montesinos, Mr Fujimoris right-hand man and spymaster, was imprisoned for more than 40 offences, including drug trafficking Recently, Joaquớn Ramớrez, a Peruvian congressman, stood down amid allegations that he was being investigated in the US for money laundering Thanks to growth driven by the mining boom, Peru has in this century been able to slash poverty, although it has at the same time failed to strengthen its political institutions Even after Chinas slowdown and lower mineral prices crimped growth, it remains one of South Americas top economic performers, partly thanks to prudent policymaking and a boost in copper output Yet the incoming president faces a reckoning Peru has slowed with the end of the commodities supercycle and growth has been tentative Ms Fujimoris proposed finance minister, Elmer Cuba, wants to boost public spending and increase taxes Mr Kuczynskis choice, Alfredo Thorne, pledges to lower them But both focus their economic platforms on popular capitalism small, medium and informal businesses Mr Nunes also notes that modern Peru is very different from the one Mr Fujimori ruled in the 1990s It is a less submissive, more awakened and empowered society, he says For the survivor of the Huancayo death squads, whoever becomes president must bridge the gulfs in Peruvian society If Keiko wins I hope she corrects her fathers mistakes, he says Peru is still so divided But if she implements real policies for social inclusion and reconciliation and justice, she could fix part of the dark past. Gems business Myanmar investigates claims of $96m jade auction discrepancy MICHAEL PEEL BANGKOK REGIONAL CORRESPONDENT Myanmar has launched an investigation into the possible disappearance of almost $100m linked to the annual jade auction, sparking debate over a US decision to loosen sanctions on the muchcriticised gembusiness Businesses For Sale Business for Sale, Business Opportunities, Business Services, Business Wanted, Franchises Runs Daily Classified Business Advertising UK: +44 20 7873 4000 | Email: acs.emea@ft.com The Southeast Asian country has set up a committee to probe claims that levies from its multibillion-dollar annual jade trade were misappropriated under previous governments The allegations highlight the challenges for international powers as they try to support Myanmars new civilian-led government, even as questions remain about how much some institutions and industries have changed after decadesofmilitary rule Win Htein, director-general of Myanmars department of mines and a former army colonel, confirmed yesterday that he had been asked to investigate an apparent discrepancy in the state coffers of $96m, relating to a per cent levy paid by companies on sales at the annual jade auction in the capital Naypyidaw The countrys gems industry has long been dogged by allegations of corruption and rights abuses Members of the Myanmar Gems and Jewellery Entrepreneurs Association claimed this week that the funds might have been diverted from their stated purpose of improving the annual gem auction with projects such as constructing administrative buildings and expanding CCTV surveillance We can complain because the government has changed and we have the right to talk, said Kyaw Kyaw Oo, one of the group that made the claims The countrys first civilian-led government for more than 50 years, an administration led by Aung San Suu Kyis National League for Democracy, was inaugurated two months ago Previously if I talked like this, they would put me in jail. Figures from the former government have dismissed the allegations Ye Htut, the ex-information minister, this week suggested the claims might have been to exploit tensions in the former ruling party, the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development party Neither the gem association nor the state-owned Myanmar Gems Enterprise, which runs the annual auction, responded to a request for comment The jade auction can generate revenues of billions of dollars each year The misappropriation claims come Traders check a big stone for auction barely two weeks after the US lifted sanctions on Myanmar Gems Enterprise, as part of its annual review of measures put in place during the military era The US still bans imports of jade and rubies from Myanmar Global Witness, the campaign group, has criticised the delisting of Myanmar Gems Enterprise It said in a report last year that Myanmars jade production in 2014 might have been worth as much as $31bn, or almost half the official size of the economy, once a vast trade in smuggled gems was taken into account Juman Kubba of Global Witness, said: The removal of Myanmar Gems Enterprise from the sanctions list removes an important source of leverage for making it more transparent and accountable to the new government and to people. The US embassy in Myanmar said state-owned institutions such as Myanmar Gems Enterprise that reported to the democratically elected civilian government had been culled from the sanctions list June/5 June 2016 FTWeekend FTWeekend June/5 June 2016 INTERNATIONAL Republicans Ryan backing for Trump boosts party unity hopes Elite starts to rally around candidate in effort to focus on Clinton fight DEMETRI SEVASTOPULO WASHINGTON Shortly after Hillary Clinton fired a scathing salvo at Donald Trump on Thursday, The Washington Post published an editorial which declared it was a sad day for America The paper was not referring to the bitter battle between the presidential rivals but the fact that Paul Ryan, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, had tweeted during her speech that he would back the New York mogul As the Democratic frontrunner was lambasting Mr Trump as an undisciplined braggart whose thin skin could spark nuclear war, Mr Ryan, the most powerful Republican in Congress, tweeted: Ill be voting for @realDonaldTrump this fall Im confident he will help turn the House GOPs agenda into laws. The Wisconsin congressman and running mate for Mitt Romney in 2012 was one of many establishment Republicans who expressed unease about Mr Trump, refusing to endorse him after he effectively won the partys nomination On several occasions, he chastised him for his rhetoric on Hispanics and Muslims and for failing to disavow white supremacists His move to support Mr Trump comes as many in the party elite rally around the de facto nominee, not because they are happy with him as a candidate but because they are more concerned about electing Mrs Clinton Many Republican foreign policy experts in Washington remain opposed to Mr Trump because of his isolationist America First policy and some senior members have privately said they would vote for Mrs Clinton But Republicans more focused on pursuing their partys domestic agenda believe that Mr Trump would preserve the conservative balance on the Supreme Court, which was upended with the recent death of the arch-conservative Antonin Scalia One veteran operative said Mr Trump had appeased many Republicans by unveiling a list of conservative judges for consideration for vacancies on the Donald Trump in San Jose on Thursday Many Republicans believe he will struggle to beat Hillary Clinton in Novembers US election David Paul Morris/Bloomberg court where the average age of the current eight justices is 69 Many Republicans remain concerned that Mr Trump will struggle to beat Mrs Clinton in the November election because of his divisive rhetoric about large swaths of voters, particularly Hispanics and women Many were incensed when he attacked Susana Martinez, the governor of New Mexico, who is the only female Hispanic governor in the country and also chairs the Republican governors association Mitch McConnell, Republican Senate majority leader, this week said he was worried Mr Trump would drive Hispanics away from the party in the same way African-Americans were repelled by the candidacy of Barry Goldwater in 1964 Mr Trump has made it very difficult for Republicans to reach out to Hispanic voters, the fastest growing segment of the electorate, which the party determined after its 2012 loss needed more attention Mr Trump has since tried to make peace with Ms Martinez, telling a New Mexico newspaper that he would like her endorsement I respect her I have always liked her, he said Mr Ryans endorsement should pro- vide more momentum for Republican holdouts to express support for Mr Trump, but some party members worry that it will not be enough to generate the kind of grass roots vote-getting operations that helped Barack Obama win the presidency in 2008 and 2012 Mr Trump has signed joint-fundraising agreements with the Republican National Committee, which will help Paul Ryan: Im confident [Trump] will help turn the House GOPs agenda into laws the party raise money that can be used to help his campaign, particularly in terms of using data to target potential voters But some people worry that Mr Trump is placing too much emphasis on the kind of big rallies he generated in the primary race, believing his movement will overturn the traditional way elections are won in the US Gillian Tett page Jacob Weisberg page JPMorgan chief Dimon warns Brexit is terrible deal for the British economy HENRY MANCE LONDON The chief executive of JPMorgan yesterday called a British exit from the EU a terrible deal for the British economy as he becomes the latest international business leader to emphasise the risks facing service industries Speaking at an event with George Osborne, UK chancellor, ahead of the June 23 In-Out referendum on membership of the bloc, Jamie Dimon said the bank may have no choice but to reorganise our business model in the country should Britain vote to leave He said that Brexit could mean fewer JPMorgan jobs in the UK and more jobs in Europe, referring to the banks 16,000 UK employees At a minimum, a Brexit will result in years of uncertainty and I believe that this uncertainty will hurt the economies of both Britain and the EU. Mr Dimon added: In a bad scenario and this is not the worst-case scenario trade retaliation against Britain by countries in the European Union is possible, even though this would not be in their own self-interest. Mr Dimon warned of the risks of Brexit earlier this year, telling the FT in February that it could cause massive dislocation to Londons status as financial centre The heads of HSBC, BT, Ocado, PwC, Adecco and UPS also backed a statement in favour of EU membership yesterday Vote Leave, the official Out campaign, responded that there was no significant evidence that the EU has benefited the UKs service exporters, but it has benefited the giant multinational companies which spend millions lobbying Brussels each year The interventions are in tune with the Remain campaigns strategy of emphasising the economic risks of leaving the EU to counter concerns over immigration In a Sky News debate on Thursday evening, David Cameron, prime minis- ter, rejected the argument that other EU countries would swiftly enter a trade deal with the UK post-Brexit, saying that Britain had a substantial services surplus with them But Mr Cameron struggled to land his message that Brexit would lead to a decade of uncertainty In an attempt to build momentum for the Remain campaign, Mr Osborne said at the event with Mr Dimon that Britons livelihoods, dreams and aspirations were on the ballot paper in the poll Leave campaigners were deceiving voters by claiming jobs would not be lost if Britain pulled out of the EU, he added; 400,000 service sector jobs would be at risk Today, 10 of the largest companies in our services sector are all telling us that there will be damage to our econ- 16,000 400,000 Number of staff JPMorgan employs in Britain Service sector jobs at risk if Britain leaves EU, say campaigners omy and jobs will be at risk if we leave the EU So lets end this deception that somehow if we quit the EU that jobs wont be at risk Its deceiving people to pretend that we can leave the EU and jobs wont be at risk. Unlike some rivals, JPMorgan has so far opted to keep a large number of less skilled jobs in the UK at a site in Bournemouth meaning there may be more scope for job losses JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Citi and Goldman Sachs have all donated to the Remain campaign However, Bank of America backtracked on a plan to donate Ê100,000 in an apparent attempt to avoid the limelight Citigroup, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley have considered Ireland as a potential alternative base to the UK, while Goldman has considered the Netherlands Additional reporting by Laura Noonan Editorial Comment page Comment page Monetary policy Fed official fears vote to leave EU risks global markets shock SAM FLEMING WASHINGTON A vote by UK voters to leave the EU could deliver a significant adverse reaction to global markets and impact the US economic recovery, a senior Federal Reserve official has warned Lael Brainard, a member of the Feds board of governors, signalled yesterday that she wanted the central bank to hold fire in its rate-setting meeting this month as it assesses signs of slower US hiring and below-target inflation at home and hazards overseas She highlighted the fragility of the global economic environment while homing in on particular risks brewing in the EU and China Her words on the UK were stark If Britain votes to leave the EU on June 23, it could deliver a shock to global markets that may reverberate to the US, Ms Brainard said at a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, as she noted warnings by the International Monetary Fund about the risks and pro- tracted economic uncertainty a Brexit could entail Although the economic effects of this uncertainty and the costs of adjusting to altered trade and financial ties are difficult to quantify, we cannot rule out a significant adverse reaction to such an outcome in the near term, such as a substantial jump in financial risk premiums, she said Because international financial markets are tightly linked, an adverse reaction in European financial markets could affect US financial markets, and, through them, real activity in the United States. Concern about the ramifications of the UK vote has been growing at the Fed, as a procession of senior officials argue that it is possible grounds for the central bank to leave rates unchanged at its June 14-15 meeting The idea that US monetary policy could be influenced by a vote in a foreign country is highly unusual, but officials worry a Brexit could have destabilising consequences across Europe and global markets June/5 June 2016 FTWeekend FT BIG READ RADICALISATION The trial of Jean-Louis Denis, one of Brussels most notorious terror recruiters, revealed the depth of the challenges facing Belgian security forces For parents of his followers, it unearthed missed chances By Jim Brunsden T he last time Yasmeen saw Fouad she thought she was dropping him off in the centre of Brussels for an afternoon of cinema and bowling with a friend One of the final things her son said to her was that he would be back later than normal that evening, about or 7pm His friend was still carrying a sponge bag and some pyjamas from a sleepover the previous night A few hours later she received the news Fouads friend had called his mother to say the boys, both then 16, would not be coming home They were already hundreds of miles away, in Ataturk Airport, Istanbul, and on their way to Syria For Yasmeen, the timing of the departure was a shock but the possibility that he would go had been in the back of her mind Fouad was the second of her sons to have made the trip to join an Islamist group His older brother, Slimane, had left Belgium that January Both of them are still in Syria She is haunted by the sense that, given the delays in Fouads journey, including a long stop in Ataturk airport, it should have been possible for the authorities to intercept him The Belgians had from Thursday, Friday, Saturday until Sunday morning to geolocate their cell phones and to ask the Turkish authorities [to intervene] Its two adolescents, minors, says Yasmeen, who spoke to the Financial Times on condition of using pseudonyms for her and her sons We said, you geolocate them and we will take the plane to go find them. The departures in 2013 of Slimane, Fouad and his friend are just three of more than a dozen such journeys chronicled in court documents relating to the trial of Jean-Louis Denis, one of Brus- Journeys to jihad Even if they not have a wish to fight at the start, they are obliged to fight because there is no option left sels notorious jihadist recruiters He was sentenced in January to 10 years in prison Denis and his associates were in one of a number of interconnected groups operating in Belgium with the goal of radicalising and recruiting people to wage jihad in Syria Their activities have left Belgium with the unwelcome distinction of being the country with the highest number of foreign fighters per head of population in the western world More than 600 Belgians have gone to support Islamist groups, such as Isis, in Syria or Iraq The problem has been put in even sharper focus since jihadis murdered 32 people in a triple suicide bombing in Brussels on March 22 The cell that carried out the deadly assaults at the city airport and Maalbeek metro station, as well as the larger attacks in Paris on November 13, included many people who had grown up in Brussels Isis operatives such as Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the mastermind of the Paris attacks, and Najim Laachraoui, one of the Brussels airport bombers, had already been pursued by Belgium in a series of trials it has held over the past two years in an attempt to break up the radicalisation networks Many of the defendants came from Belgiums Moroccan community, the main source of departees to the Middle East Ozana Rodrigues with a picture of her son Brian De Mulder, who left Belgium after being indoctrinated Many parents of those who have left for Syria or Iraq say their children should be treated as victims of radicalisation by men like JeanLouis Denis, below, rather than as accomplices of terror Yves Herman/ Reuters Over 12 months, at least 11 young men connected to Denis slipped out of Belgium Denis sought exposure on social media He made sure that film clips of the food bank were posted on sites such as YouTube and Daily Motion Images of the charitys work were shown alongside recordings of his preaching One of his videos for Resto du Tawhid was entitled choose your parents or choose Allah In another, he urged Muslims to understand that they are at war with the deviants here and are in danger His pitch involved a comprehensive rejection of democracy and Belgian law His other activities included the use of an online chatroom, Le Phare au Milieu Des Tộnốbres (the lighthouse among the shadows), managed by Michaởl Devred, an associate who received a suspended prison sentence The site was monitored by police from 2010 According to Yasmeen, young people were attracted to Denis and his activities by a boy scout spirit Going to Syria, she says, was portrayed as contributing to a higher cause Deniss message to followers at the food bank was that charitable work was Tools of recruitment Using court documents, interviews with Belgian officials and with the parents of those who have gone to the Middle East, the FT has assembled a detailed account of how jihadis are recruited in Belgium and what the country is doing to stop it Rather than having to deal with problems such as extremist preachers in a particular mosque or prisoners becoming radicalised by fellow inmates, Belgian security forces are up against a more complex phenomenon of informal groups led by people who have mastered social media and are adept at targeting the young Denis embodies the challenges the Belgian authorities are facing He had an effective recruitment weapon: a food bank, known as the Resto du Tawhid, that he started in September 2012 to distribute meals to the homeless around Brussels Gare du Nord According to the court judgment on the Denis case, obtained by the FT, the aim of Resto du Tawhid consisted primarily in offering a platform, via charitable actions for attracting candidates for jihad, most often young men The investigation into Denis began after a wave of departures of young people for Syria, many of whom had helped at Resto du Tawhid or a previous food bank in which Denis was involved Informant allegations Why was key player absent from trial? Jean-Louis Denis did not act alone and key associates were sentenced alongside him One person, however, was conspicuously absent from the January trial: Abdelkader El Farssaoui The man, whose whereabouts is unknown, is cited in the court judgment as having been a key member of Deniss gang who helped young people reach Syria In the case of Murat, who was aged 19 when he caught a plane for Turkey in November 2013, El Farssaoui, also known as Abou Jaber, helped him to buy his plane ticket, offered to keep it so his parents wouldnt find it and even drove him to the airport Murat, who returned from Syria after three weeks, told investigators that Denis and El Farssaoui promoted the same religious message They all well and good, but its for the Belgian state to that, not you, she says You have your brothers in Palestine, in Iraq and in Syria, your Muslim brothers, there is no one to help them. Zeal of a convert Denis, 41, a former farmworker, converted to Islam 10 years ago He became a rabble rouser in the poorer areas of central Brussels, including the district of Molenbeek that was home to some of the Paris and Brussels attackers In one instance, he organised a protest which later turned violent outside a police station after a woman was arrested for wearing a face-covering niqab in the street, which is illegal in Belgium Denis was also connected to other key figures who recruited fighters for Isis, such as Fouad Belkacem, leader of Sharia4Belgium, and Khalid Zerkani, Molenbeeks most notorious recruiter, also known as Papa Noởl Those who knew Denis describe him as charismatic They say his cartoonish personality enthralled youngsters and convinced adults that he was harmless Murat, a student from Brussels who travelled to Syria in November 2013 but quickly changed his mind and returned, described to investigators how he had been fascinated by Denis It was [like seeing] a Muslim hero known everywhere. Relatives of those who eventually left for Syria describe rapid changes in the childrens behaviour once they became involved with Resto Du Tawhid One mother told judges that Denis convinced her son, Hamza, to no longer go to school, to no longer work but [only] to distribute tracts or food He even taught him to no longer play sport or respect his parents Hamza went to the point of saying explained to me the benefits of jihad The mystery surrounding El Farssaoui is all the more curious given his past The same man is cited in a report by the Spanish parliament as having provided information to police before the 2004 Madrid train bombings, warning that an attack was being prepared El Farssaouis absence from the dock in Belgium infuriated defence lawyers They claimed he was a police informant something the Belgian authorities have not denied Lawyers for Denis said the case should be thrown out on the grounds of entrapment, arguing that someone working with the Belgian police had encouraged people to break the law by travelling to Syria This was rejected by judges on the grounds that the man was not an that a woman like me, she should have her head chopped off. According to Yasmeen, the people in the street, in the mosques, in the schools [were always] asking the police to arrest Jean-Louis, because they found that he had a rhetoric that was totally crazy and that it was toxic and the police again did nothing to arrest him at this moment. By the time of his arrest in December 2013, Denis had become an international reference point for people seeking to reach Syria, and had contact with groups in France and Tunisia For Corinne Torrekens, an expert on Islam at the Universitộ Libre de Bruxelles, he was someone who was really larger than life and I think that he wasnt taken seriously That realisation came too late Victim or accomplice? The profile of many of those who travelled to Syria is very different from that of hardened terrorists According to academics and relatives of those who have left, they are often young people who depart with little idea of what they will encounter in Syria Their motivations can range from concern about the humanitarian crisis in Syria to a search for identity or disillusionment with western policies in the Middle East In some cases they are lured by recruiters promises of a full package a better life with money, a wife and independence The Denis case shows that Belgian authorities, which have faced intense criticism for intelligence failings, were able to follow and piece together the activities of jihadi recruitment networks in great detail The case comes up for appeal this year The fact they knew so much has led to conflict with the parents of the young employee of the police, and also that there was no evidence that the authorities had encouraged him to instigate departures Still, the ruling notes that given the manifest indications of the participation of Abdelkader El Farssaoui in the activity of a terrorist group, it seems strange that he has not been charged in the present matter, describing this as unusual, even curious Parents are outraged, saying the police should have targeted Deniss network sooner Eric Van Der Sypt, of the Belgian federal prosecutors office, rejects the defence lawyers claims We have always been clear about El Farssaoui: he is charged in another file and will have to explain himself later before court, he says Recruitment ground Over 12 months, at least 11 young men connected to Jean-Louis Denis left Belgium No great expectations Many of those recruited leave with little idea of what they will encounter, say academics Rehab route Denmark is experimenting with an exit programme for fighters who return to the country Europeans fighting in Syria and Iraq Estimated numbers and country of origin 470 Belgium The man thought to have organised the November 2015 attacks in Paris, Abdelhamid Abaaoud (below), was born in Belgium and fought with Isis in Syria 1,700 France 760 Germany 760 UK 220 Netherlands 133 Spain 87 Italy Source: The Soufan Group, December 2015 people who went to Syria, who argue that the Belgians closely monitored their children, only to prosecute them as foreign fighters once they had left They also dispute the prosecution of those who go, saying they should be treated as victims rather than accomplices of people like Denis Both of Yasmeens children, for instance, have been given prison sentences in absentia In the Denis trial, nine people who had travelled were given jail terms ranging from five to 15 years According to Yasmeen, the notification from the authorities in November 2014 that Slimane, her elder son, was going to be tried was a shock out of the blue She had been led to believe he would be treated as a victim, she says The Belgian approach of criminalising people who join groups fighting in Syria is in step with policies in other EU nations, says Claude Moniquet, a former French spy and co-founder of the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Centre Its a common position for Europe, he says, adding that a notable outlier is Denmark, which has experimented with an exit programme for foreign fighters a safe harbour for returnees who can be rehabilitated without fear of prosecution Belgium argues that tough measures are needed to disincentivise people, and that these are justified given that Isis is a dangerous terrorist group Saliha Ben Ali, founder of the Society Against Violent Extremism in Belgium, whose son Sabri left for Syria in August 2013 and died there four months later, told the FT that the position of the Belgian authorities is that we will everything so that they dont come back to say, you are condemned, its not worth coming back. This leads to a situation where young people are effectively trapped, she says Finally, even if they not have a wish to fight at the start they are obliged to fight because there is no option left. FTWeekend June/5 June 2016 Letters Email: letters.editor@ft.com or Fax: +44 (0) 20 7979 7790 Include daytime telephone number and full address Corrections: corrections@ft.com SATURDAY JUNE 2016 The Fed faces bigger problems than Brexit There is little case for raising US rates regardless of UK referendum Two reasons exist for the US Federal Reserve to leave interest rates on hold when it meets in mid-June: a moderately significant short-term justification and a much stronger long-term rationale The short-term reason is the little local difficulty of its transatlantic cousin, the UK, which will hold a potentially destabilising referendum about its EU membership the week after the Fed meets But a more compelling long-term argument is for the US central bank to hold interest rates down until inflation is convincingly rising towards or above target, rather than raising them in the expectation that it will one day happen The referendum, to the extent that it will have any influence at all, essentially just creates a timing issue It is possible that a Leave vote will spark some volatility in financial markets as investors digest not merely the prospect of the UK leaving the EU but a general sense of political unease and uncertainty within Europe However, the chance that a vote to leave will be such a seismic event that it will shake the mighty US economy is rather small True, the Fed has been paying more attention than usual to international events over the past year, expressing concern about volatility in financial markets and the threat of global economic turmoil But that mainly reflected a fear that the turbulence was a sign of major dislocation in the Chinese economy China has been grappling with the need to reduce its debt load without triggering a rapid deleveraging which could imperil growth and encourage capital flight, pushing the renminbi sharply lower and affecting half the emerging world By contrast, a one-off event in a smaller economy such as the UK, which does not seem to have any similar underlying vulnerability or widespread spillover effects, is rather less worrisome Given that the Feds Open Market Committee has another meeting due at the end of July, there is nothing to lose and potentially a moderate amount to gain by postponing any rate rise until then A more important question than pausing for the UK vote is whether the US central bank should be considering raising rates at all Gross domestic product seems to be growing healthily But doubts about the momentum of the real economy were underlined by Fridays release of labour market data, in which non-farm payrolls rose well below expectations The unemployment rate fell only because more workers stopped looking for jobs Were we living in the world before the global financial crisis, the Fed might well be justified in raising borrowing costs now, given how low they are But we are in an environment of chronically low inflation where the risk of tightening too soon and threatening a destabilising deflation comfortably exceeds the danger of letting price rises get out of control Charles Evans, president of the Chicago Federal Reserve, said this week that, while he was quite relaxed about the two quarter-point rises this year that Fed officials were expecting, there was a case for leaving tightening until inflation had risen above the Feds per cent target That is a strong argument For the Fed to postpone a rate rise for six weeks to see a single source of moderate risk being resolved is reasonable Yet even after the UKs referendum, there is precious little reason to push ahead with rises in interest rates in an economy whose recovery is less than certain and where inflation continues to run stubbornly below target Port Talbot steel cannot be saved at any price UK should only offer incentives to Tata in return for firm pledges Sajid Javid has expended a great deal of political energy trying to keep Tatas steel plant at Port Talbot from closing Now, after weeks of lobbying, the business secretarys efforts may be about to pay off In March, the Indian conglomerate caused shockwaves when it announced it would no longer support its lossmaking UK operations, putting 15,000 employees at risk Following the offer of generous financial incentives by the government, Tata appears open to the idea of remaining in the UK after all The effort that Mr Javid has put in trying to keep the steelworks existing owners in the UK is understandable South Wales is so dependent on steel production that a sudden closure of the Port Talbot works could cause considerable hardship The government is also determined to avoid a collapse of the company with thousands of job losses in the run-up to this months EU referendum Even so, as he tries to secure an agreement with Tatas Indian owners over Port Talbots future, Mr Javid should proceed with caution While he is rightly going to some lengths to convince the company to stay in the UK, he needs to extract more from Tata than the willingness to pocket a large cheque A final deal between the government and Tata may still be some weeks from completion From what can be gleaned, the business secretarys plan, if it comes off, would be highly favourable to the Indian group Its UK operation has struggled to compete in an industry facing global oversupply and low prices and is said to be losing Ê1m a day The company is also hampered by the legacy of the Ê15bn British Steel pension scheme with an estimated deficit of Ê700m Were it to sell this business to another enterprise for what would likely be a nominal sum, Tata would face a substantial write off on its investment Mr Javid is now offering to legislate in order to change the conditions of the pensions fund, watering down benefits for its members in order to slash its liabilities Unusually Tata would be able to shrug these off while remaining the owner of the steel companys assets Even better for the Indian company, the business secretary is considering offering Tata a loan worth hundreds of millions of pounds on commercial terms That would be used to refinance an existing Ê900m loan that Tatas parent company has made to Tata Steel UK It would effectively reduce the Indian groups financial exposure, substituting the British taxpayer in its place Mr Javids largesse may be necessary to keep the blast furnaces running But it cannot give Tata an upside-only option on the plants future survival A viable business plan must also guarantee a long-term future for Port Talbot The company has already introduced job cuts and cost savings that have narrowed losses and improved performance It now needs to go further, demonstrating that it will invest in ways that will make the South Wales steel mill internationally competitive for years to come The future of the British steel industry is an issue that the Conservatives cannot ignore The partys future will overwhelmingly depend on the outcome of the June 23 referendum Even so, many Tory MPs believe they cannot afford to evoke memories of the Thatcher years when the death of mining and manufacturing communities created social blight across Britain Mr Javid is a committed free market politician who is to be commended for doing everything he can to save Port Talbot But Britains steel industry cannot be saved at any price We salute the courage and integrity of the boy who escaped Sir, We were profoundly impressed and moved by Edward Luces article This is Trump country (Life & Arts, May 28), and wish to salute the courage, drive, intelligence and integrity of Daniel Justus from our perspectives as a father and retired educator, and as a daughter and American abroad From David: Reading Mr Luces forceful and fair-minded article inspired me, and made me wish that I were back in the classroom I could have taught (and learned from) Daniel At the same time I am saddened and frightened by Mr Luces careful portrait of that profoundly depressed and depressing corner of Virginia where Daniel grew up, and miraculously threw off all the blinkers and barriers that would have led him to be yet another victim And maybe there will be a second miracle Daniel has so much talent and energy, and he just might come home after his studies, and become the leader that Buchanan County desperately needs From Laura: Daniels tenacity in the face of a blinkered and backwards school system is admirable, and humbling Growing up in Poughkeepsie, NY, I too benefited from a loving and supportive family, but did not confront the same obstacles in my route out Currently I work for a multinational company in Paris, after stints in London and Hong Kong, and it was never a question that I would go to college, coming from an academic background My big moment of school activism came in fifth grade when I spoke out against a dictum that forbade girls from wearing shorts to class, while boys could A far cry from fighting to be taught extracurricular courses that would let him apply to college as Daniel did in eighth grade Its a damning indictment of Americas educational system that a bright student would have to fight to learn a foreign language, to get himself to college from a school that has no science lab Kudos to Daniel and his family (and to Mr Luce for his outstanding reporting) Ive sent the article to all my friends with teenage children Daniel clearly doesnt need a leg up or further inspiration on his way to a graduate degree and an international career, but he will serve as inspiration to many others David Schalk Father New York, NY, US Laura Schalk Daughter Paris, France A silly snobbishness about red wine that has even spread as far as California I would like to remind both Mr Paxman and your readers (who, being cosmopolitan, may well visit Amsterdam at some point) about the following law of the land: tyranny by bike in the form of loud bell ringing or dangerously whooshing past you is exercised only upon those who not understand that pedestrians should stick to the sidewalk at all times It is in fact Amsterdam that suffers from tyranny by visitors who seem to think that all roads in our fair city are laid out specifically for them Casper Thomas Amsterdam, The Netherlands Everyone in Greece should see Ai Weiweis show to a global arena in the wake of the destruction of cultural heritage by Isis In recognition of Greeces heritage and within a short distance of the marble-columned Parthenon, Ai uses marble to create new works that build on his past work but acquire particular poignancy in their Athenian context the marble gas mask is both a reference to environmental pollution but also the silencing of citizens, in a space a stones throw from the modern Greek parliament in the city where democracy was born; a surveillance camera is deactivated when rendered in marble; a life-size standing figure imitates the Cycladic statues in the museum, but with arms outstretched dropping a vessel recalls his photographic series Dropping a Han Dynasty urn, questioning and celebrating national identity and cultural difference as well as the value of art Ai wants us to become obsessed citizens forever questioning and asking for accountability This is as relevant for us in Britain on the eve of the Brexit referendum as we try to reflect as individuals, national and global citizens untrammelled by insular fears and scaremongering Rea Stavropoulos London NW5, UK Sir, Ben Hunting (Letters, May 27) wonders how such a gourmand as Carlo Ancelotti could order a Tuscan blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot to drink with tagliolini and lobster (Lunch with the FT, May 21) Perhaps Mr Ancelotti is merely suffering from a bad case of red wine snobisme, a gustatory disease whose main symptom is the boring insistence that a decent red wine can be successfully paired with any food Once confined to the Paris metropolitan area of France, it has now spread its silliness throughout the EU and even as far as California Stan Trybulski Branford, CT, US Visitors to Amsterdam dont walk in the road Sir, Jeremy Paxman states, in The Diary (Life & Arts, May 28), that in Amsterdam young people on bicycles exercise a particular tyranny Being one of these alleged tyrants, Overturning assumptions about Mexican migration Notebook by Gillian Tett Extreme commissioning by the FTs Lycra wearers Sir, In recent weeks the FT Weekends Travel pages have taken us on cycling holidays in central Myanmar, across Argentina and, most recently, through the hills of Mallorca Isnt this extreme level of coverage of a minority activity totally out of proportion? Am I right in assuming that the Travel commissioning editors are Lycra wearers? Simon Hall Madrid, Spain Enrique de la Madrid Cordero, Mexicos secretary of tourism, visited New York last week with a sales pitch It was not to proclaim the joys of Mexicos beaches or culture; instead, Mr de la Madrid is part of a cohort of Mexican ministers who are being quietly dispatched this summer to America on a mission to persuade voters to feel grateful for their trade partnership Recently, the word Mexico has stirred up all manner of political tension: Donald Trump has said he will force the country to pay for a border wall and continues to make derogatory comments about Mexican immigrants Unfortunately, this antiMexican tone has infected other corners of the Republican debate So now the Mexicans are trying to fight back but not with more insults or by mentioning Trump by name We are not focused on any particular candidate, Mr de la Madrid told me Instead, they are marshalling data to show why the relationship with Mexico is good for Americans An attack by a statistical shock troop that aims to set the record straight Will it work? By any standard, the statistics that Mr de la Madrid and others are waving around are fascinating Most Americans assume that Mexicans have been flooding into the US in recent years and, if you look back, that is half right: 16m Mexicans moved north between 1965 and 2015 Sir, The greatest strength of the Ai Weiwei show that opened in Athens last week is its role as a catalyst forcing us to reflect and discuss what is happening to the morale and identity of Greeks during the current crisis But it also contains a message for the rest of us in a world where increasing globalisation and the elimination of borders has created new barriers I visited the exhibition with an 84year-old Athenian friend who did not know Ais work but whose reaction by the end of our visit was that everyone in Greece should see the show You mention the artists response to the refugee and migrant crisis in Greece, but not the other interventions and works created specifically for the Museum of Cycladic Art, where in the context of the permanent display of archaic Greek and Cycladic sculptures and artefacts, the artist forces us to reflect on cultural history, the wilful destruction of art and its relationship to national identity issues of particular urgency today, going beyond Greece (where the destruction is not of artefacts but a more insidious one relating to national pride and dignity), But last year more Mexicans left than arrived Trade flows, too, are no longer a one-way street Yes, the US imports about $315bn of goods each year from Mexico But what tends to be overlooked in the debate is that exports from the US to Mexico have soared to $270bn a year That apparently leaves Mexico the second-biggest export destination for the US, which supports 6m American jobs Texas exports $90bn to Mexico, which is 38 per cent of their exports In Arizona, there are $9bn exports, or 41 per cent of the total, Mr de la Madrid said Even Wisconsin exports $3bn Wisconsin! And then about 20m Mexicans come each year for tourism and business travel: that represents $20bn of expenditure It is striking stuff And the Mexican government deserves credit for trying to take the moral high ground in fighting back However, as I listened to Mr de la Madrid speak, I could not help but feel cynical about whether it will work After all, many Trump supporters are driven by anger, frustration and fear Like the debate over the UKs EU membership, this is not a fight about numbers And in any case, if you dig into the trade data, they are often not entirely what they might seem These days, America imports finished cars from Mexican factories But, as the Wilson Center think-tank points out, the components used to make those cars often originate in the US and can end up crossing the border eight times during the assembly process Indeed, if you look at Mexican exports to the US, about 40 per cent of these were created with Made in America components The crucial point, then, is that it seems outdated to talk about imports and exports as in the 21st century, countries are linked by complex supply chains that not fit into traditional statistical boxes, or political rhetoric This would not reassure Mr Trump and his supporters: they want the entire car to start and finish in America, even if that makes it more expensive But the existence of these interconnected supply chains raises the likelihood that disentangling those trade ties could cause a shock and increase consumer prices Made in America might make powerful politics but it is no longer a clear idea in economic terms The tragedy is that it is painfully hard to communicate this messy reality to a sceptical voter base; phrases such as supply-chain integration not pack much rhetorical punch Therein lies the challenge for the Mexican government as it embarks on its sales pitch I wish it the best of luck; in a world of Trumpian soundbites, it will need it gillian.tett@ft.com June/5 June 2016 FTWeekend Comment Messy lives will receive little benefit from a basic income GLOBAL ECONOMY Alan Beattie P erhaps it is the paucity of other interesting ideas in politics; perhaps it is the thrill of an idea that appeals to idealists of both right and left The basic or citizens income, by which multi-faceted welfare systems are replaced by an unconditional fixed payment per head, has been gaining a respectful audience across the developed world Switzerland will vote this weekend on whether to adopt a basic income system based on a SFr30,000 annual payout to all residents If the opinion polls are correct, it will be comfortably defeated That is to the good With any luck, such a decision will help put the idea on the side table of interesting thought experiment rather than occupying the main workbench of practical proposition The basic income idea, which has been around for about a century, appeals to the kind of person who wants to stand above all the messy politics of who gets what and instead run things on clean, simple lines In theory, rather than encouraging idleness, handing out a fixed payment will provide an incentive to work more Even if it is withdrawn as recipients wages rise beyond the minimum (the negative income tax variation on the same idea), effective marginal tax rates will be less steep than for those who at present would receive targeted meanstested benefits Eliminating a multiplicity of welfare programmes may reduce bureaucracy But it will also require either politically improbable rises in taxation or a severe cut in the amount of help given to the badly off In both cases, a pure basic income will remove support from groups in society in particular need of help Modelling shows that, if low-income households are not to lose out relative to the current arrangements, overall taxation will have to rise sharply In the UK, if tax-free allowances are kept, this would probably mean pushing the combined tax and national insurance rate to 50 per cent across the range of incomes, compared with a basic combined rate of 32 per cent now Of course, some would welcome lower payments instead, even at the cost of making the poor much poorer The libertarian-leftist alliance in favour of a basic income would soon fall apart when it became clear that the Milton Friedmanites wanted to use it to turn the economy into a small-state paradise and the social democrats to create a Scandinavian welfare wonderland Even if rises in taxes or cuts in benefits were politically manageable, a BI might well result in a reduction in labour supply if households decide to cut back on hours of work in response to higher nonwage income This would depress the amount of tax revenue available for redistribution, requiring yet higher tax rates Reintroducing work requirements to prevent this would mean resurrecting the apparatus of coercion that the BI is supposed to eliminate Handing out free cash to any old punter rather than looking after the needy seems an unlikely sell Moreover, the payments that most societies make to particular groups the long-term disabled, parents, the elderly would either have to be ditched or separately added at extra expense Some associated bureaucracy such as fitness-to-work requirements on the disabled would also have to be retained This gets to the heart of the problem with BI The complexity in welfare systems directly reflects the fact that we, as collective democratic societies, have decided that we are going to support certain groups To each, as the saying goes, according to their needs We compensate the long-term disabled because their lives are often more expensive and challenging, and their ability to work circumscribed We give extra money to parents because having children is expensive and yet has general benefit in generating future taxpayers to fund public spending We subsidise housing costs because rents differ so much across the UK and failing to so will in effect drive out or impoverish lower-income families in the richer areas, such as London We support the elderly because they are less able to work and because being old has often been associated with poverty Shifting from this to a basic income system is essentially saying that we consider the challenges of disability, old age, parenthood and prohibitive rent less important than administrative simplicity and the inefficiencies associated with means-testing Handing out free cash to any old punter rather than looking after the elderly and disabled seems an unlikely political sell Declan Gaffney, a policy consultant who advised the previous Labour government, has put it best: basic income, he argues, is a thought experiment allowing us to imagine what kind of social welfare system we want In reality, it will probably show us that the public desires something closer to the current arrangements than to the neat but highly problematic idea of a single unconditional income for all The system is messy but then so are peoples lives and needs Throwing out that complexity in pursuit of a simple system ignores this fundamental fact of the human condition The basic income is an idea against which the reality can be tested It is not a replacement for it alan.beattie@ft.com A missed opportunity for Americas libertarians After two decades behind the scenes, Clintons most trusted aide is risking public scrutiny, writes Courtney Weaver OPINION Jacob Weisberg T A t a 2013 Manhattan fundraiser, Anthony Weiner, a New York mayoral candidate and disgraced former congressman, introduced the guests to a woman they had often seen, but seldom heard: his wife, Huma Abedin It had been two years since the revelation that Mr Weiner had accidentally sent a photograph of his bulging boxer shorts to his 45,000 followers on Twitter, a fact made only more ridiculous by the congressmans last name He resigned shortly afterwards When Mr Weiner launched his political comeback, he allowed documentary makers to make a fly-on-the-wall account of the campaign That film has now been released to great reviews and an uncomfortable spotlight for Ms Abedin, who turns 40 next month She has lurked behind the scenes for two decades as Hillary Clintons chief body woman and confidante, following Mrs Clinton from her office as first lady to her role as senator, then secretary of state and has been by her side for two presidential runs The footage from Weiner of Ms Abedin speaking on her husbands behalf at that 2013 fundraiser shows Mr Weiner joking to the audience that by seeing Ms Abedin take the floor, they had just witnessed a rare occurrence; a sensation akin to seeing talkies for the first time In the background, his wife looks uncomfortable It is a revealing moment, one of many in the film Its release has come just in time to wreak havoc on Mrs Clintons presidential campaign as she prepares to take on Donald Trump Officially, Ms Abedin serves as the campaigns vice chairwoman Unofficially, she is one of Mrs Clintons closest advisers Ms Abedin is already facing scrutiny for her involvement in Mrs Clintons use of a private email server and email address during her time as secretary of state, and for her own unusual work agreement while working for Mrs Clinton at the state department A US federal court is expected to hear Ms Abedin testify later this year about Mrs Clintons email server and the terms of her own state department contract, which allowed Ms Abedin to receive a government salary while simultaneously working as a contractor for private consulting firm Teneo It is a case brought by a conservative watchdog The Federal Bureau of Investigation deposed Ms Abedin last month as part of its own investigation into Mrs Clintons server, a probe that is expected to wrap up in the coming weeks, potentially with major repercussions for some Clinton staffers The consequences of Weiner look less dire But the film is an illuminating tale of a key figure in the Clinton apparatus who has come to resemble her boss in more ways than one Ms Abedin was born in 1976 in Michigan, to a mother of Indian descent and father of Pakistani descent Both parents were academics and she spent much of her childhood in Saudi Arabia, where her father founded a think-tank Person in the news | Huma Abedin A reluctant star of the political screen She returned to the US to attend George Washington University In 1996, she began interning for Mrs Clinton Colleagues say Ms Abedin regards Mrs Clinton as part friend, part boss and part surrogate mother Mrs Clinton reciprocates I have one daughter, the Democratic frontrunner famously said at Ms Abedins 2010 nuptials to Mr Weiner But if I had a second daughter it would be Huma. It was the Clintons who helped facilitate the introduction of Ms Abedin to her future husband, a favour they might now regret While Mr Weiners original sexting scandal caused little collateral damage to the Clinton empire, the later surfacing of yet more sexting revelations during his mayoral run, did The documentary unfolds over the course of that later scandal, with Ms Abedin torn between loyalty to the Clintons, who reportedly asked her to distance herself from Mr Weiners campaign, and loyalty to her husband, whose entreaties for her to appear with him at public events are rebuffed Ms Abedin remains eerily poised and unflappable, even as personal scandal breaks around her; a lesson in the thick skin that both she and her mentor have developed When Ms Abedin learns the new scandal has broken, she does not scream or cry And when her husbands She remains eerily poised and unflappable even as personal scandal breaks around her staff wrap up a difficult meeting, she reminds the communications director to smile when leaving the building so as not to hurt the campaigns optics One of the underlying questions of the film is why she has chosen to stay with her husband, with whom she has a young son An even bigger one is why they agreed to participate in the docu- mentary It is a question the film-maker at one point asks Mr Weiner directly For him, the answer is simple After being the butt of many jokes, both for his sexting scandal and his unfortunate last name, Mr Weiner is ready to be viewed as a complete human being, however imperfect Ms Abedins reasoning is harder to judge It appears rooted in the hope that the documentary and mayoral run would provide a vehicle for her own redemption Mr Weiner reveals that she wanted him to get back in the limelight She was very eager to get her life back that I had taken from her, he explains, an oblique reference to their former status as a Washington golden couple By the end of the film, it is clear that Mr Weiners failed mayoral run did not bring back the life that Ms Abedin had in mind Whether she will find better luck with Mrs Clinton is another question The writer is the FTs US political correspondent he Libertarian partys nominating convention, held last weekend in Orlando, Florida, was typical of its gatherings One of its more popular presidential candidates, software magnate John McAfee, is wanted for questioning by the police in Belize as a person of interest in connection with his neighbours murder Another candidate, who goes by the name of Vermin Supreme, wore a rubber boot on his head while explaining his platform of time travel, self-defence against zombies and free ponies for all It is all good fun, if observed from a safe distance But, unlike in previous elections, the Libertarians not have to be a total joke this time around they have an unprecedented opportunity to play an actual role Republicans with any moral sense are desperate for a supportable alternative to Donald Trump Libertarianism, the political philosophy of rugged individualism, ought to hold a natural appeal to tolerant, anti-statist, free-trade conservatives who deplore the turn taken by the party of Abraham Lincoln towards racial prejudice, authoritarianism and mercantilism Libertarians also happen to have crucial infrastructure in place for the neverTrump crowd: probable ballot placement in all 50 states, alongside Democrats and Republicans In Orlando, the Libertarians ended up nominating the most mainstream candidates on offer: former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson for president and former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld for vice-president Both are affable, reasonable-seeming politicians with governing experience Yet the party is poised to remain entirely marginal this year Why can it not harness the Jeffersonian instinct for individual liberty, even in a year when the leading parties have put forward the most disliked nominees in memory? The problem starts, of course, with the Libertarians themselves a Halloween parade of cryptocurrency enthusiasts and conspiracy nuts of every permutation These eccentrics regard their party not as an expanding tent but as a private playground for diffuse forms of self-expression People who devote their greatest passion to the cause of legalising drugs, challenging the age of consent and removing limitations on the ownership of fully automatic weaponry are not really in the business of attracting a broader following As a political party, the Libertarians have always been more party than political Beyond the adolescent antics, their difficulty is at the level of ideas Todays Libertarians are not so much extreme left or extreme right as they are lost in the clouds of utopian anarchism Their platform calls for the abolition of gov- ernment-funded schools and statesanctioned marriage During their nominating debate, delegates booed Mr Johnson for endorsing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 Like academic Marxists, who are their sisters under the skin, libertarians are far more interested in an ideal world than in the one where ordinary humans live They regard the failure of policies they support, such as the self-regulation of financial markets in the 2008 crisis, as evidence that government still managed to play some corrupting role When facts come into conflict with theory, they reject the facts The failure of any libertarian state to ever actually exist anywhere in the world supports their faith that it would all work only if it could be tried To a country beset by rising inequality, stagnant wages and the hollowing out of the middle class, libertarians have literally nothing to say And in a way the party is right to mistrust supporters who have compromised their principles by moving into mainstream politics David Koch, the partys nominee for vice-president in 1980, has become with his brother Charles the American face of oligarchy For the Koch brothers, libertarianism became a convenient guise for the economic interests of their family oil and gas conglomerate Though the Kochs are thus far staying aloof from Mr Trump, they have been generous patrons of climate-change denial and moralising evangelical Republicans A somewhat different style of liber- They are not so much extreme left or right as lost in the clouds of utopian anarchism tarianism flourishes in Silicon Valley, where it meets the feeling of the rich and immature that Washington should leave them alone The leading exemplar of this set is Peter Thiel, the billionaire cofounder of PayPal and a Trump delegate to the Republican convention Mr Thiel contends that extending the franchise to women in the 1920s destroyed American capitalism He helped found the Seasteading Institute, an organisation devoted to creating a law-free floating community in the middle of the ocean More recently, Mr Thiel has been exposed as the financier of a libel suit against Gawker Media that threatens the free press In practice, wherever libertarianism has moved beyond the defence of sexual perversity and antisocial behaviour, it has revealed itself as a mask for selfinterest and the abuse of economic power This is a shame because an intellectually coherent alternative to the Republican party, grounded in the principled restraint of classical liberalism, has never been more wanted The writer is chairman of the Slate group and author of Ronald Reagan Top reads at FT.com/comment The lessons from the suicides at Zurich Insurance It is natural to flounder when you find that you are fallible, writes John Gapper Turkey has changed today it wants to be less European, not more The countrys democracy is in a downward spiral, writes Elif Shafak 10 Name game Sponsors put their shirts on the Premier League ANALYSIS, PAGE 12 FTWeekend June/5 June 2016 Idea Cellular Kweichow Moutai Indivior Dollar index Gold Xetra Dax Brent oil Two-year US Treasury 11.05% Rs105.45 6.07% Rmb284.00 36.21% 235.10p 1.6% 94.07 $28 $1,238 1.0% 10,103 0.5% $49.81 11bp 0.78% Noble announces chairman to step down days after chief goes Commodities trader unveils proposals for $500m rights issue to slash debts Walmart pilots grocery delivery tie-up with Uber LINDSAY WHIPP NEW YORK Walmart is raising the stakes in grocery delivery, announcing a tie-up with carbooking apps Uber and Lyft in a pilot scheme based in Denver and Phoenix Doug McMillon, the retailers chief executive, was due to announce details of the test service at the companys annual meeting yesterday A Walmart employee will pack the grocery items and prepare them for delivery by an Uber or Lyft driver The service will cost $7-$10 payable to Walmart rather than the delivery companies The move comes as competition for last-mile delivery intensifies, with startups such as Deliv competing against the likes of Silicon Valley companies Instacart and DoorDash According to a Walmart company blog post, the move comes after a similar pilot project between its Sams Club stores with Deliv in Miami Uber has been expanding into ondemand delivery, introducing it into a number of US cities last year after testing it in New York Earlier this week the company announced a $3.5bn investment from Saudi Arabias sovereign wealth fund partly to further expand the range of its services Walmart has committed $2bn in a drive to catch up with Amazon, the ecommerce group that has invested heavily in logistics technology Amazon launched Prime Now more than a year ago in a number of cities, offering members of its annual subscription scheme two-hour delivery on a range of items Walmarts pilot programmes include drones for delivery and for use in warehouses and an annual membership service to compete with Amazon Prime The company has also spent $2.7bn to increase staff wages and improve customer service, while also revamping stores and creating an integrated physical and digital offering Its most recent quarterly results suggested these investments were starting Last-mile delivery: Walmart customers will be able to get their groceries delivered by car for $7-$10 to pay off on top line sales, a relief for investors who had seen disappointing earnings from US retailers However, some continue to raise concerns about low wages and understaffing Making Change At Walmart, a campaign representing some existing and former Walmart employees, union members and small business owners, said yesterday: Many Walmart workers are still struggling with poverty wages, erratic schedules and understaffing at their stores, and many customers dont want to shop at a store that treats workers so poorly. Airlines Lucrative business class gone for good, says Emirates head The resignation of Yusuf Alireza, chief executive at Hong Kong-based Noble Group, was announced earlier this week Bryan van der Beek/Bloomberg PETER WELLS HONG KONG JEEVAN VASAGAR SINGAPORE DAVID SHEPPARD VIENNA Noble Group, the beleaguered commodities trader, yesterday announced its founder would step down as chairman within a year as it also unveiled plans for a $500m rights issue to cut its debt load Richard Elman intends to relinquish his position of executive chairman, which follows Nobles announcement on Monday that Yusuf Alireza was resigning as chief executive Hong Kong-based Noble slumped to its first net loss in almost 20 years last year, as the commodities crash took its toll on the company But Asias biggest commodities trader has also been contending with questions about its accounting since early last year, and credit rating agencies have cut Noble to junk status partly because of concerns about its ability to refinance its debts The proposed rights issue to raise net proceeds of $500m, which must be approved by shareholders, is deeply discounted Nobles shares fell 13 per cent yesterday to S$0.260 The stock has dropped 64 per cent during the past year Singapore-listed Noble said in a statement that Mr Elman, a UK-born former scrap metal dealer who founded the company in 1986, wishes to step down as executive chairman within the next 12 months Noble outlined changes to its corporate governance, saying its next chairman would have non-executive status, and that it was adding another non-executive director to the board Mr Elman is Nobles largest shareholder, with a 22.28 per cent stake, but that is expected to be diluted in the rights issue He has committed to buying 9.6 per cent of the new shares being issued, and could buy more stock through a socalled tail swallow arrangement One analyst said this may indicate Mr Elman, 76, is constrained by lack of capital Noble declined to comment on this, or explain why he had decided to step down as chairman Mr Elmans future role at Noble is unclear China Investment Corporation, the Chinese sovereign wealth fund that is Nobles third-largest shareholder with a 9.65 per cent stake, has agreed to buy 9.6 per cent of the new shares It will secure a second seat on Nobles board Noble Share price and index (rebased) Straits Times Net income ($bn) 120 1.0 100 0.5 80 -0.5 60 Noble Jan 2015 -1.0 40 -1.5 20 -2.0 2016 Jun 2005 07 09 11 13 15 Sources: Thomson Reuters Datastream; Bloomberg Noble said proceeds from the rights issue would be partly used to repay debts falling due in 2017 and 2018 At March 31, Noble had net debt of $3.7bn Mr Elman said Noble had moved firmly to reposition our balance sheet, adding: Combined with focusing our operations on our high return market leading franchises, we are confident we now have the profile and capital structure to enable us to best capture the opportunities we see going forward. Under new joint chief executives Will Randall and Jeff Frase, Noble intends to focus on trading in commodities including oil, gas and coal Noble also said yesterday it was planning to cut headcount, sales, administration and operating expenses by more than 20 per cent during 2016 On Monday, Noble announced plans to sell its electricity supply business in the US, called Noble Americas Energy Solutions This and other disposals, plus further measures, are intended to raise $1.5bn for Noble Under the proposed rights issue, one new share will be issued for every existing Noble share at a price of S$0.11 each, representing a 63 per cent discount to the companys closing stock price on Thursday PEGGY HOLLINGER INDUSTRY EDITOR The good old days of lucrative business class revenues are numbered as companies rein in spending and low cost competition intensifies on long haul routes, the head of one of the worlds biggest airlines has said Sir Tim Clark, president of Emirates Air Line, said airlines would have to adapt their strategies as business class passengers migrated to cheaper seats Airline profits may be rising, but average fares paid per mile, known as yields, are under pressure, he added I see a change out in the way corporate business is going to develop which of course will affect our yields because the high end stuff isnt going to come through as it was in the good old days, Sir Tim said We have to recognise that things are going to be slightly different for the mix, the Emirates boss said on the sidelines of the annual meeting of Iata, the aviation industry trade body He predicted passenger volumes would continue to grow despite a weak global economy, but air fares forecast to fall by per cent this year would remain depressed We are going to be there for a long time on these fare levels, he said Sir Tims warning means airlines will have to work hard to keep costs down, while finding new ways to drive revenue Business and first class fares are by far the most profitable for airlines, especially on long haul routes Jonathan Wober of Capa, the aviation consultancy, estimates premium cabins for a major European carrier on long haul might account for 15 to 20 per cent of passengers, but up to 50 per cent of revenue The numbers will be much lower on short haul, he said Emirates is considering introducing a premium economy class between business and ordinary coach, Sir Tim said The carrier is also looking at new seating and cabin layouts that would allow a greater segmentation of fares in its fleet of A380 superjumbos That plane is certified to carry more than 800 passengers although no airline is operating at that capacity We are mapping where we think [the market] is going to go, Sir Tim said Chris Tarry, aviation analyst, said the shift to premium economy was accelerating across the industry A number of established airlines are introducing or increasing the size of premium economy, he said In some respect airlines are no different from retailers in measuring the revenue per square meter and here premium economy is the highest yielding cabin on an aircraft. Obituary Fatalistic Pepsi chief executive who led the charge in the cola wars of the 1980s Roger Enrico Former head of PepsiCo 1944-2016 Youre the Pepsi generation, sang Michael Jackson to the tune of Billie Jean, as a child clutching a can of the cola drink expressed astonishment to find he had moonwalked into the pop icon Securing Jackson for this gamechanging 1984 advertisement was the brainchild of Roger Enrico, then chief executive of PepsiCos beverage and foods division Enrico, who has died aged 71, contacted Jackson himself to seal his co-operation As a follow-on from the hugely successful Pepsi Challenge, in which Enrico had been involved, his pioneering move for a soft drinks company to endorse celebrities helped Pepsi usurp albeit temporarily arch-rival Coca-Cola from the top spot in supermarket share in the cola wars In 1985, Coke tweaked its recipe for the first time in almost a century in response to flagging growth, only to reverse course months later amid consumer horror at the change The retreat enabled it to re-establish its historically higher market share That era was pretty much the golden age of the cola wars, said Duane Stanford, editor of Beverage Digest What was revolutionary was the number two player went for such a huge star Michael Jackson was the kind of talent youd expect Coca-Cola to grab and here was the number two company signing him. It was unusual for an executive running an entire division to be involved in negotiations for an ad campaign as Enrico was with Jackson This was what made him so different, recalled Allen Rosenshine, chairman emeritus and former chief executive of ad agency BBDO, who worked with Enrico when his company was responsible for PepsiCos account and was a close friend He enabled Pepsi to stand out. Roger Enrico was born on November 11 1944 in the town of Chisholm, Minnesota, close to the Canadian border His path to the top before he retired he was chairman of DreamWorks was peppered with pit stops Having wanted to be an actor to the disapproval of his factory worker father he started out working at General Mills before serving with the navy in the Vietnam war He joined Pepsi in 1971 as a brand manager for Funyuns at the companys Frito-Lay division After his success at Pepsi, where he became group chief executive in 1996, he stepped down in 2001 following a heart attack but stayed on for two years in the less demanding role of chairman I think career path are the two worst words invented, he told Fortune magazine in 1996 Ive always believed you ought to go with the flow Be a bit fatalistic Dont overprogramme yourself. This meant taking risks, even if they did not always pan out Other celebrity endorsements included Madonna, which he admitted did not work so well amid a backlash from some religious groups in the US, despite the resulting adverts popularity overseas He also said in the Fortune article that he should not have written his book The Other Guy Blinked: How Pepsi Won the Cola Wars, explaining that he had written it to sell Pepsi but it had morphed into personal publicity His legacy at Pepsi includes many successes besides commercials In 1997 he engineered the sale of the restaurant division what is now Yum Brands (KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell) as a Pepsi chief Roger Enrico made life hard for its rival company, Coke means to help the company sell more fizzy drinks to a broader range of restaurants with soda fountains And he was instrumental in the acquisition of Tropicana and Gatorade, a move that has proved crucial as soda suffered a decade long decline in US sales [Enrico] was a risk-taker, never afraid to challenge the status quo or make bold moves to get ahead, Indra Nooyi, PepsiCos current chief executive He was tough as nails, always prepared to get the job done and beat the competition At the same time, he had a true love for our people and a passion for empowering them to reach their full potential. Enrico is survived by his wife Rosemary and son Aaron His death comes just weeks after the passing of Bill Backer, another important marketing guru from a similar era, who made ads for Coca-Cola Both left an indelible mark on American advertising history Lindsay Whipp 20 June/5 June 2016 When Finnishness matters E arlier this week the chiefs of the worlds major airlines descended on Dublin for the International Air Transport Associations AGM If you are not fully up to speed with this particular civil aviation pow-wow, it was described to me by one airline president as a cross between a jobs fair, a jamboree for av-geeks and an endless cocktail party A chairman for a competing airline likened it more to a long weekend at a country club where everyone knows how many cars you have in your driveway, when you bought them and how much you paid As it happens, Im clattering away on my keyboard on a KLM flight (I havent flown with KLM for about a decade) from Zurich to Amsterdam, with a connection on (wait for it) Delta to Portland, Oregon, and Im thinking about which topics good and not so good should have been at this particular aviation summit As I look around the cabin of this ageing Boeing 737 (the winglets arent fooling anyone), a few themes for the next AGM come to mind The first thing I notice is that this aircraft has been properly configured for Dutch giants Im in one of those slimline, space-saving seats but thankfully it has a pitch that takes into account that 93 per cent of the Dutch population have legs that are 1.5 metres or longer Since I hover around the height of 180cm, this makes for luxurious short-haul flying early on a Thursday morning Im not sure if KLM offers similar space on all their 737s or if this is a quirk found only on their older fleet but the IATA should consider a session called OUT IN SPACE why airlines need to get out of the clouds and consider the dimensions of the modern passenger. Thirty minutes later the breakfast trays are cleared and one of the Amazon flight attendants comes by asking if I would like a biscuit I decline but she is being quite persistent Are you sure you dont want a biscuit? she coaxes with a smile Theyre very nice Dutch Voffel biscuits You should try one. At first I think Voffel is a brand but rapidly figure out that she is saying waffle, and Im intrigued All right then, lets have a go, I say and then tear into the package The biscuit does not disappoint and I can see shes watching me from the You can invest in hardware and nice design yet still lose out if you dont take human feelings into account galley She gives me a proud smile and a thumbs-up I turn back to the window, pondering our little exchange A Dutch woman in her forties persuades me to have a waffle biscuit, one shes very proud of given its Made in the Netherlands provenance In an instant Im feeling good about KLM I like the Dutch more than I did when I woke up and maybe Amsterdam is a place I should be spending more time Forget about the Marcel Wanders design the connection was human and thanks to one cookie-crazy flight attendant I would consider flying KLM again This in contrast to my Finnair flight a few weeks ago on a fresh-offthe-assembly line Airbus A350 The route was Hong Kong to Helsinki and everything was very Finnair the nice Iittala glasses, the abundant Marimekko design and the spotless cabin The only problem is that the Finnishness ended there, as the entire cabin crew was Chinese While the captain and first officer reminded you briefly that you were on a Finnair flight with their slow, earnest announcements, nothing else felt Finnish How odd for Finns (even though they all speak English) not to be addressed in their mother tongue on their flag carrier And aside from the cockpit announcements, there was no Finnish or Swedish, just English and Cantonese I mentioned this a bit later to some friends in Helsinki and they said it has not gone down well This is a good example of how, in business, you can invest heavily in hardware and nice design details and then lose much of the potential gain because the feelings of humans beings were not taken into account The flight was certainly pleasant but passengers appeared to have no connection to the crew, who clearly could not uphold the values of the national Finnish flag carrier since they were completely disconnected from the Finnish mentality and way of life More and more national carriers are opting to contract staff in from elsewhere at cheaper rates while ordering newer aircraft with jazzy entertainment systems but few seem to recognise the brand damage that comes with an erosion of a basic connection between cabin staff and passengers, and the empathy that comes with shared backgrounds The IATA might also consider this SOCIAL CAPITAL SELLS why its important that your crew have a connection to your flag and biscuits. Tyler Brỷlộ is editor-in-chief of Monocle magazine; tyler.brule@ft.com More columns at ft.com/brule What we mean by heritage Jan Dalley Openings I n a Russian court a few days ago, a political performance artist named Pyotr Pavlensky was charged with damaging a site of cultural heritage: last November he set fire to the doors of the former KGB building on Lubyanka Square in Moscow In the Soviet era, the Lubyanka became a byword for brutal interrogation and torture But a cultural heritage site? Ah yes, argued the prosecutor Its a cultural heritage site because many important cultural figures passed through those doors to be imprisoned (and tortured, and murdered) within It seemed like a joke in very bad taste Yet theres been such a lot of talk about heritage in the past few weeks, Ive been wondering what it actually is Some of the news is indisputably worthy and important: for instance, Italys decision to throw a 1bn lifeline to some of its most magnificent sites reflects not only that countrys enduring belief in what endures, but its hard-headed acknowledgment that culture spells business Some of the debates seem less substantial: for instance, few people outside Chicago could care much about the longrunning row in that city over the proposed museum of Stars Wars creator George Lucas Although the fact that Lucas is devoting $740m to securing the future of his collection of memorabilia rather puts Italys 1bn budget (for Paestum, LAquila, Herculaneum, Pompeii, the Uffizi in Florence and much, much else) in some sort of context The Russian case, the Lucas case, and many others only prove what we know that heritage is what you say it is Weve long left behind the idea that it means the leavings of the rich and the grand, although that notion took a bit of dislodging: when the National Trust for Scotland (better known for castles and remote islands covered in puffins) suddenly acquired a Glasgow tenement in 1982, the harrumphing of the lairds echoed through the glens Now no one would question the value of this vivid slice of early 20th-century life, and in 1988 the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in Manhattan opened to show Weve long left behind the idea that heritage means the leavings of the rich and grand the (even harsher) realities of those turn-of-the-century Glaswegians if they had decided to emigrate to the US These are the sort of heritage monuments that we now understand, both memorial and celebration of worthy, unsung lives With an emphasis on the worthy part Todays definition kicks out the idea that heritage has to involve beauty, or precious objects, but its still to with imparting value Lunch with the FT: the book L Lunch with the FT: 52 Classic Interviews (Penguin, Ê10.99) features enncounters with Angela Merkel, Paul Krugman, Zaha Hadid, Dolce & Gaabbana and Jimmy Carter, among others, accompanied by James Feergusons original illustrations First published to celebrate the FTs 1255th anniversary, Lunch with the FT: 52 Classic Interviews is also avaailable in hardback and as an ebook What, then, about the gates of Auschwitz? A memorial, of course, to the victims of that appalling genocide But also important heritage? Id say yes Not just the heritage of the Jewish people, but also of the German nation Our horrors and cruelties are part of our heritage, as much as our glories There are carefully preserved slave-quarters on grand Southern estates (though not many) We gaze at the dungeons of the Doges Palace, the execution block at the Tower of London In that light, the doors of the Lubyanka dont seem so much like a bad joke If heritage value has nothing to with beauty, and nothing to with glorification, it definitely has to with significance When the Taliban blew up the Bamiyan Buddhas, it wasnt because they didnt accord them cultural value, it was because they did A waste of perfectly good dynamite, otherwise But does heritage have to involve the cooling, distancing effect of time? Im not even sure about that Id say the Star Wars memorabilia is culturally valuable in just the same way as an IOU discovered last week under a London building site That would have seemed insignificant in its day its just that its day was in 57AD In the end, heritage means anything that means something to us Touches us, tells us something, makes us remember something In Londons Foundling Museum (itself a moving monument to forgotten lives) a new exhibition entitled Found invites artists to contribute something discovered, or rediscovered Among a wealth of exhibits, designer Ron Arads long string of pawn tickets spoke louder than a treatise on poverty So many of them are marked with the letters GWR It stood for gold wedding ring Jan Dalley is the FTs arts editor SNAPSHOT Butterfly wings, by Vladimir Nabokov I have hunted butterflies in various climes and disguises, Vladimir Nabokov wrote in his 1951 memoir Speak, Memory: as a pretty boy in knickerbockers and sailor cap; as a lanky cosmopolitan expatriate in flannel bags and beret; as a fat hatless old man in shorts. No amateur, the novelist worked as curator of the butterfly collection at Harvard Universitys Zoology Museum Spending 14-hour days in the laboratory, between 1940 and 1948 Nabokov published dozens of papers on taxonomy and named multiple species of butterfly Predating the discovery of DNA, his research is now seen as a visionary contribution to evolutionary biology Fine Lines, edited by Stephen Blackwell and Kurt Johnson, presents 154 of Nabokovs scientifically precise, aesthetically striking drawings, alongside essays examining the links between the writers literary and lepidopterological pursuits Lorna Cumming-Bruce Fine Lines is published by Yale University Press yalebooks.com Weekends most read on FT.com This is Trump country Edward Luce reports from Buchanan County, Virginia Do nice guys finish first? Lucy Kellaway on a new theory about power Robert Shrimsley On Zen Tzu and the art of the aeroplane seat war Trumps bad suit syndrome Could the Republicans bad clothes work in his favour? Catch me if you can A ride with a pro cycling holiday in the hills of Mallorca Sidney Toledano Lunch with the FT in Paris with the boss of Dior Couture Gillian Tett Spending in the age of Snapchat Geneva property Is the Swiss city emerging as an alternative to London? Simon Kuper The rule of a new French royalty 10 Tate Modern How the gallery transformed art Chess solution 2154 f5! (threat Nf2 and the queen is trapped) exf5 Nf2 Qg6 exf5 when if Qf7 (Qxf5? Rxe7+) Rxe7 Rxe7 Rxe7 Qxf7 Qxh5 and White will win a safe pawn up Black tried Rxe2 gxf7 Rxe1 Qxh5 but White still won Saturday June / Sunday June 2016 LGBT Special Forbidden fruit? Horace Walpoles Strawberry Hill All welcome Hebden Bridge has a thriving counterculture Time for beds Robin Lane Foxs soft-leaved tips ARCHITECTURE PAGE 11 UK PROPERTY PAGE GARDENS PAGE 14 Expat lives | London to Berlin Always the outsider Musa Okwonga has seldom felt at home whether at Eton College, in London as a bisexual man or in Uganda where his father was assassinated Now he lives and writes in Berlin By Alexander Gilmour In Boxhagener Platz Christina Theisen M usa Okwonga is foreign where he lives He is always foreign, always has been His is an expat life Kitgum district, northern Uganda, December 1983 I was the first person to put soil on his grave I shovelled a bit on I had these Velcro trainers and I shovelled some on with my trainers I buriedmydad.Okwongawasfouryears old Until then, he had never seen his fathers village.Hecameasaforeigner His parents moved to England before he was born My father arrived in 1971, my mother in 1972, with nothing but a handbag. They were medical students Wilson and Phoebe, Ugandan refugees fleeing Idi Amin He was born in west London in 1979, the year Amin was toppled His parents had four children He is the eldest son His father returned to Uganda in 1983, during a period of civil war He was chief army surgeon and he died in a helicopter crash alongside General Oyite-Ojok Officially, it was an accident Unofficially, it wasnt The aircraft was hit by a missile, some people say And some say that missile was fired by troops of the National Resistance Army commanded by Yoweri Museveni, president of Uganda since 1986 At least, that is what the son of the late chief army surgeon says But he has no proof Okwonga went back to Uganda in 2000 And not since Two visits Even if I not return, that is an important part of who I am. We meet in Macondo, a cafộ in east Berlin Okwonga, 36, has lived in the German city for a year-and-a-half His manners are politely buttoned-up He is a journalist, musician and author of two books about football He is a poet, too, and he writes in the cafộ, which is worn and warm He has the air of someone who is far from home Berlin is where outsiders feel at home, he says The art of the happy expat is to feel at home anywhere, I suspect Failing that, he should look at home In the mid-1990s, Okwonga looked perfectly at home at Eton College We were in the same year, friendly, but not friends Among the other pupils were the heirs to the Swire and Goldsmith fortunes, an heir to the British monarchy and Prince Nirajan of Nepal More than 1,250 boys and Okwonga was just one of two or three with black skin He may not have felt at home, but he excelled a scholar, prefect and football nut, bright, charismatic, cocky Cockiness comes with the clothes, he says Etonians attend classes in tail suits, Musa Okwonga in Macondo, a cafộ in east Berlin Christina Theisen I lived only a few miles away closer than most boarders but it mostly felt like another world and dressed in wedding clothes, you have to be confident Likewise, if you own a black face you have to look confident, even if youre not, otherwise youll implode At Englands most famous public school, Okwonga felt foreign: I lived only a few miles away probably closer than most boarders but it mostly felt like another world. A football pitch in Kitgum, northern Uganda, near the village where Okwongas father is buried Jenny Matthews/Alamy His family was poor compared with most Eton families He was on a 50 per cent bursary He lived with his mother and three siblings in West Drayton, an unlovely suburb on the edge of Greater London Chalk swastikas on pub doors were part of that unloveliness, as were the racist murals on car park walls, the KKK stencils and the National Front foothold in nearby Northolt At night, he used to vary his route back from the basketball court you knew something was in the air Racism was also a feature of Eton during the 1990s I never knew a member of staff to make a racist remark but among the boys it was casual and rife Okwonga remembers one boy who was keen to share his family history I hate that guy so much, the boy confided to a mate I wish I could tell him that my great-grandfather was a slave driver. Wisely, he never told Okwonga But someone else did Where did he think was home? There wasnt really anywhere I didnt feel like I was from Uganda I didnt feel really at home in West Drayton I was keeping my head down I didnt feel at home in the environment I was in. Yet Okwonga is warm about Eton; he was guarded but he thrived Weird as it may sound, that school was a sanctuary. It cant have been a sanctuary for the boys who were secretly gay, however To be homophobic was to be normal, when we were there Okwonga joined in with the homophobic banter Needless to say, he is not proud of it He has even made apologies He is wiser now After Eton, he studied law at St Johns College Oxford Then law Continued on page 13 FTWeekend June/5 June 2016 House Home The trees not dead, its resting Alexander Gilmour Agonised uncle Its not so much that I chose to plant it in the middle of the lawn Or that it cost me Ê50 Or even that its dead Its what it might represent It cant have been dead when I bought it it looked perfectly fine I paid for it, took it home and planted it I gave it everything it needed It was meant to be the centrepiece of a new garden It is still in the centre Yet the tree is dead It has an English name Apple Queen Cox It is a dessert apple, according to the label still attached, pollination group 2, and it is self fertile, which sounds good It most likely has a Latin name, as well, but dead trees have no names It is like a traitors head on a spike, menacing the other plants It represents something bad, some undiagnosed moral failure, perhaps It might be why so many slugs have popped up from nowhere and why the neighbours impressive cat lays waste to the flowers by lying on them Nothing good can come of this cat Or this tree And it was going so well Until the advent of the dead tree, gardening was rather fun It was also easy I couldnt see what all the fuss was about You a bit of tidying, go to the garden centre, buy plants, plant them Et cetera Watch them grow We even did taxing things seeding the lawn from scratch, for example, twice in fact, when once might have done the trick And the grass has grown Not everywhere, granted, but sort of decently In the grand scheme of things, the lawn is a triumph And not the only triumph Most of the plants weve bought have not died A happy few look happy I have looked happy, too, now and then In the marital home, my prestige is up I am the gardener I was on a roll Yet I was rash to think it such a doddle The dead tree is a great problem In the gardening world, dead trees are what sort out the sheep from the goats In the eyes of my wife, a dead tree is constant proof that I get things wrong My boss is another problem Not because she isnt perfect She is perfect, just too perfect, an actual expert on gardens with a gold medal from the Chelsea Flower Show Quite reasonably, I find this intimidating Thus, at the FT, I have tended not to brag about my green-fingered triumphs lest they turn out badly And I have hardly mentioned the bare patches in the lawn And I have not talked about this tree Yet since everyone has a breaking point, I find myself confessing Its dead, I say At least I think it is. You know how to tell if a tree is dead? the Chelsea winner probes Yes I I even have a technique I stare at it the entire time, willing leaves to appear, until I snap, take the bull by the horns and stride the four yards across the patchy lawn and full of trepidation snap twigs off the outer branches Each time, the twigs snap too easily to be alive So thats how I know its dead My technique is wrong, apparently My boss tells me what to do: you nick off a bit of bark near the base of the trunk and if its green, its not dead Then she says: Its difficult to kill an apple tree. No it isnt My wife and I discuss who should take the tree back to the garden centre Since I all the gardening, I think it should be her For the same reason, she It is like a traitors head on a spike, menacing the other plants thinks it should be me She proposes that we should go together Bad idea A joint visit to the garden centre can be nice but this particular expedition is fraught with pain on many levels Besides, it is inefficient one of us should go while the other fights the slugs, I think Stalemate And its partly because my wife is scared of driving the car and partly because I am scared of taking things back to shops, yet there is also a bigger thing Even if we agree to go together, the tree might prove to be alive when examined by the garden centre people And then well have to laugh it off for being so stupid, say sorry and put the tree back in the car, take it home, replant it and wait and wait and I dont think I could cope with the magnitude of it And so we wait For a miracle Not a flicker of life Not yet But God might pull a rabbit out of a hat and we might get apples yet And then, just think Just think what that would represent Resurrection Alexander Gilmour is deputy editor of House & Home David Tang is unwell L ong leafy streets of singlefamily homes line Seattles Capitol Hill Dan Savage opens the door to his prairie box-style house before I knock long windows that flank the entry hall have revealed my approach The radical political commentator and outspoken sex advice columnist offers me tea as we walk into his kitchen, a country chic blend, with a farmhouse sink and thick wood slab counter I cant make coffee, he confesses, which is fine as neither of us drinks it Seattle is known for its coffee and particularly as the home of Starbucks For the past quarter of a century he has written the Savage Love column syndicated in 50 publications across the US and Canada which blends biting humour with practical advice He also hosts the popular Savage Lovecast podcast The mail I would get when I first started writing the column was this is what I want to do, and Im so worried its not normal. He rarely gets that question any more and attributes that to people realising you cant judge normal on discrete interests and acts When it comes to culture, politics, breakfast variance has always been the norm. He believes the same to be true of our most intimate desires and a study last month conducted by the Journal of Sex Research in Quebec supports that claim, finding that almost half of more than 1,000 people surveyed expressed interest in at least one sexual activity deemed anomalous Savage, 51, has coined many phrases to help people communicate these desires, the most popular being GGG which stands for good, giving and game that signals sexual openness to potential partners He has often said that gay people are better at pleasing their partners because they have to keep talking after they get to yes, while straight people often default to a single act These conversations not only cement consent but also reveal the single act desire to be a myth Savage is also a go-to expert for many US cable news shows and he has a knack for dismantling dangerous ideas with quick sound bites During a recent appearance on MSNBCs All In with Chris Hayes, he responded to a suggestion that disappointed supporters of Bernie Sanders might vote for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, pointing out that the lesser of two evils is less evil On Twitter, he encourages provocative acts of protest Trans people should start dropping off jars filled with their urine at @PatMcCroryNCs office so his staff can oversee its safe disposal, he tweeted last month to his quarter of a million followers after McCrory, governor of North Carolina, signed a bill that forces transgender people to use bathrooms that not align with their gender identity In 2003, when then US senator Rick Santorum likened homosexuality to bestiality, a reader of the Savage Love column suggested that his last name be renamed for a sex act Savage put it to his readers, whittled down 3,000 suggestions to a handful and then let his readers vote To this day, a Google search of the word Santorum reveals the extent of Savages victory It has even been credited with helping to tank the senators recent presidential campaign A sign reading Google Santorum sits Kitchen area of Savages house in Seattles Capitol Hill neighbourhood Statue of Jesus adorned with media passes Photographs: Matt Lutton You cant judge normal on discrete interests and acts variance has always been the norm Buffalo head in the dining room with portraits picked up from junk shops At home | Dan Savage is the political commentator and sex advice columnist who helped give new meaning to the word Santorum in response to a US senators anti-gay views By Christopher Kompanek Sitting room Wise words and Savagery Gustav Ricard Pepe Coconuts, one of two poodles in the house belonging to Savages husband, Terry Miller on the living room bookshelf Savage wore the same phrase on a T-shirt when he received a special achievement Webby Award in 2011 for the It Gets Better viral video campaign, which he created with his husband, Terry Miller, 45, to give LGBT youth hope in the face of bullying On air, he speaks fast, opening his podcast with a topical, often political, rant on issues that impact sexual freedom As he talks about the mementos and artefacts that dot his cosy home, however, his voice is softer and he smiles frequently Everything thats cluttered over the mantel in the living room reminds me of a time, place or thing I would forget if it wasnt sitting there. Two tiny bottles of brandy, bought on a trip to communist Hungary during the 1980s, sit at one end, while a statue of the Virgin Mary sits at the other Thats the Mary that my mother put on the back of the toilet so we would remember to put the seat down My mother was a devout Catholic, but she had a sense of humour about how you could leverage the downward glancing glare of the mother of God to your advantage in the pee wars with your sons. This design quirk appears in the pilot episode of the ABC series The Real ONeals, which is very loosely based on Savages experiences growing up gay and Catholic in Chicago He identifies as being culturally Catholic and among his possessions are awards given to sex advice pioneer Ann Landers, including one from Pope Paul VI On another shelf, neat stacks of hotel room card keys are piled high These are the only souvenirs he takes from his frequent travels They tell me where Ive been. A hospital menu his mother received after being taken off life support in 2008 is tucked on a nearby shelf next to photos of his 18-year-old son, DJ The menu was for April Fools Day, so the universe played a tiny joke on my mother on her way out. Most of his furniture comes from previous generations After my mother died, I walked into the living room and there was the chair that she was sitting in when she learnt to read, and my own son sat in it when he was learning to read. The dining room contains a mounted buffalo head that was a Christmas gift from Miller I dont know my great grandparents names, but thats their table Six generations including my son have had Christmas dinner at that table. The table also hosted a debate on marriage equality in 2012 with prominent anti-gay marriage activist Brian Brown He wanted me to fill an auditorium of angry queer people who would Favourite thing A mural of a hat store selling Viking helmets by the Seattle artist Parris It was removed from the wall of a local watering hole called Re-Bar, where Savage met Miller 21 years ago He was stoned; I was drunk, and we had a one-night stand that night Hes still here This was on the wall directly above the urinal in the bathroom where we made out Around our 10th anniversary, the owner of the bar told us we could have it. boo and hiss, so he could say, look who the really intolerant people are. Im not as dumb as he thinks I am, so I [suggested] my dining room table after dinner to deny him the optics of being the oppressed one. Savage doesnt like dogs but there are two poodles in the house that belong to Miller One thing he talks a lot about on his podcast are the prices of admission you have to pay be with someone Above the dining table, three paintings of children, who look like they hold dark secrets behind their vacant stares, hang on the wall They are not family portraits but a few of Savages many junk store finds I hid in antique stores in our neighbourhood, not wanting to play with others as an isolated gay kid Everywhere Ive lived, Ive made the walls look like this. This is particularly true of a wall in his breakfast room, which is cluttered with a variety of framed pictures A cruise certificate for a local resident hangs in a corner Anita Hunter went around the world on a cruise in 1948, and the captain signed this for her Theres a tiny swastika in the border of nation flags They obviously printed these in the 30s or 40s before the end of the war, and the swastika was not yet toxic enough to discard them. As a self-described hoarder, Savage cant imagine parting with any of these items, including a tin of Dr Wernets Powder from the medicine cabinet of his fourth-grade home You know how I like old worn things around me, he jokes to Miller of their 21-year relationship Im a long-term relationship type Not just with him but with everything. June/5 June 2016 FTWeekend House Home i / BUYING GUIDE Crossley Heath School in Halifax, six miles from Hebden Bridge, is one of the most highly regarded grammar schools in the north of England Trains from Hebden Bridge take about 35 minutes to Manchester and just under an hour to Leeds In the year to March 2016 there were eight drug-related crimes reported in Hebden Bridge, compared with 12 in the neighbouring Sowerby Bridge district What to buy for Ê500,000 A five-bedroom, Victorian house on a smart street in Hebden Bridge Ê1m A five-bedroom detached property within walking distance of the town Ê2m A 10-bedroom manor house with some land in the Calder Valley More listings at propertylistings.ft.com T he west Yorkshire landscape described by Emily Brontở is a place of moody stretches of moorland and dark, desolate valleys: Oh, these bleak winds, and bitter, northern skies, and impassable roads, laments Lockwood in Wuthering Heights So it is surprising, then, to find among such surroundings a colourful town known as the lesbian capital of the UK Walk through Hebden Bridge in the Calder Valley and you will see subtle signs of its counterculture nature: craft shops, vegan cafộs and same-sex greeting cards in shopfront windows The market town has more lesbian women per sq ft than London or Brighton and is quickly gaining a reputation as one of the most LGBT-friendly places in the country When somewhere becomes known for being gay-friendly, the community grows, says Karla Butler, a massage therapist who moved to the area two years ago Its an accepting place in general Gay or straight, you can join the Hebden family. The family began with the hippy movement in the 1970s, turning this rural, textile-producing town into a community of artists, writers, musicians, alternative practitioners and, latterly, gay women Demand to live in Hebden means its homes sell for a 26 per cent premium against the rest of the Calder Valley, according to data from Hamptons Not a run-of-the-mill place UK property Northern textiles town Hebden Bridge is known as the lesbian capital of the UK By Tory Kingdon International, with prices averaging under Ê191,000 Yet while prices are relatively high and rising the alternative spirit of the place has survived Hebden has a yearly arts festival, burlesque festival and folk roots festival In August it will hold its first Happy Valley Pride Festival, set up by Mike Stephens and his friends after homophobic graffiti appeared in the town With Hebden being known for its diverse community, it was really shocking; we had to act in response to it, he says Poet Ted Hughes spotted the early promise in the local property market He wrote that this part of Yorkshire had Hebden Bridge and the Calder Valley Rory Prior/Alamy the most fantastic houses marvellous, little kingdoms, Going for next to nothing They might not cost next to nothing now, but in the centre of Hebden Bridge buyers can find attractive Victorian and Georgian terraced homes on premium roads such as Birchcliffe Road locally nicknamed snob row for less than Ê500,000 Local agency Anthony J Turner is selling a fourbedroom house on Rose Grove near the town centre for Ê325,000 In hilltop villages and hamlets such as Heptonstall and Chiserley, close to Hebden, it is possible to buy larger former mill-owners houses Hughes Hebden Bridge house prices Indices rebased Hebden Bridge England & Wales Calder Valley 300 200 2000 05 10 15 100 Sources: Hamptons International; Land Registry Stoodley Hall, a five-bedroom manor house, Ê1.5m bought such a house, Lumb Bank, in Heptonstall in 1969 Today, a fivebedroom manor house, Stoodley Hall, is on the market with England Residential for a guide price of Ê1.5m The property is two miles outside of Hebden Bridge Amenities in the town cater to its liberal community The Hebden Bridge Alternative Technology Centre runs workshops on DIY solar water heating and mosaic making, while the LGBTfriendly Nelsons Wine Bar is also used as a gallery space Multinationals on the high street are notably absent Sainsburys attempted to infiltrate the staunchly independent high street, but the locals fought back they prefer to shop at the market every Thursday Its position in a valley basin does make the town susceptible to flooding In December last year about 90 per cent of businesses on the high street suffered flood damage, according to Ben Turner of Anthony J Turner A number of shops and cafộs are only just reopening now The floods had a huge impact on the town but thankfully only around per cent of homes were affected, he says Flood reports not seem to have affected house prices According to Hamptons data, in the past year there has been a 6.4 per cent increase in home values, and complaints of a shortage of housing stock suggest demand to live here is at an all-time high Like Brontởs moorlands, however, Hebden Bridge is known to have a wilder, darker side Film-maker Jez Lewiss 2009 documentary Shed Your Tears and Walk Away exposed the drug and alcohol problems behind the utopian face of the town The Calderdale district also has one of the highest suicide rates in the country Locals insist these are historical issues If you go looking for problems in the park, you may find them, says Turner, but no more than in any other northern town [Hebden Bridge] is safe, its friendly and its welcoming. 500 metres Chiserleyy Hep Heptonstall He pto l CALDER VALLEY G oovve Gr ve HEBDEN BRIDGE Mark Market arket Streett Birchcliffe B Bi Bir irch Road Hebden Beck FTWeekend June/5 June 2016 House Home There goes the gaybourhood Global property | Gay people once sought refuge in poor areas, but will liberation and gentrification cause these spaces to disappear? By Josh Spero A gay pride celebration in San Francisco in June 2015 to mark a Supreme Court case recognising the right to same-sex marriage Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images I think the 1880s must have been an ideal time, with brothels full of offduty soldiers, and luscious young dukes chasing after barrow-boys. So says an elderly gay aristocrat, dreaming of Victorian London in The Swimming-Pool Library, Alan Hollinghursts debut novel Lord Nantwichs tone nostalgic yet egalitarian and erotic is heard across many cities today as neighbourhoods renowned for their brave, salacious gay pasts succumb, for reasons good and bad, to the 21st century The struggle, in one aspect at least, is between homosexuality and homogeneity Even if the word gaybourhood only goes back to 1995, there have long been urban areas associated with a strong LGBT presence Matt Houlbrook, professor of cultural studies at the University of Birmingham, identifies Bayswater between the wars and Notting Hill and Soho after 1945 as queer neighbourhoods of London Harlem in New York has had an African-American LGBT population since the 1920s and 1930s, while many US military personnel who were discharged for homosexual behaviour in the 1940s found their way to San Francisco and by the 1960s had turned its Castro district into a beacon of the LGBT world, without hang-ups or even clothes (public nudity was only banned in 2012) In the 1980s, Le Marais, which spreads across Pariss 3rd and 4th arrondissements, took up the flame too Yet over the past decade, these areas have encountered the economy, society and irony: the forces of intolerance that drove their creation have dissipated and the gentrification gay men wrought has come to undo them Soho queer and bohemian as symbolised by the artist Francis Bacon and his rough-trade boyfriends has never looked cleaner, and not everyone is happy about it The English Collective of Prostitutes, an organisation that supports sex workers, many of whom work in Soho, has objected to the areas social cleansing as shiny new buildings replace burlesque bars and transvestite showcases such as Madame Jojos Old Compton Street now has G-A-Y bar and two gay pubs, while the areas only lesbian bar closed in 2014 Five-bedroom house in San Francisco, $4.09m Transvestites in San Francisco, 1981 Carnaby Street in Soho, London, in the 1960s Robert Van Der Hilst/Getty Images Jan Olofsson/Redferns Soho Estates, founded by the pornographer Paul Raymond, is a substantial owner of the area, according to chief executive John James, Raymonds sonin-law (He denies the commonly quoted figure that the company owns 70 of Sohos 140 acres.) Gay bars may have disappeared on his watch, but James says that what was once illegal is now mainstream Naturally, then, Soho has moved on, too Its a nostalgic, romantic idea that really has had its day, he says Commercially we not and cannot and should not support half-arsed businesses just because they were pleasant in the 1950s. Residential property prices today are unrecognisable Rob Hill, of estate agents Greater London Properties, says that in 2008 a penthouse in Soho sold for a record Ê1,600 per sq ft In 2015, a similar apartment fetched Ê2,400 per sq ft inflation of 50 per cent in less than a decade On Soho Square, a smart three-bedroom apartment is on sale for Ê4.75m, through Chestertons Conversely, it was the dereliction of areas such as Soho that was attractive to LGBT folk In San Francisco, gay June/5 June 2016 FTWeekend House Home Three-bedroom flat on Soho Square, London, Ê4.75m Gay Fair on Castro Street, San Francisco, 1980 Paul Fusco/Magnum Photos professionals capitalised on low property values, such as the Castros large 19th-century houses empty after white flight to the suburbs and kickstarted gentrification, says Petra Doan, a professor of urban planning at Florida State University Home values in the Castro have increased from $691 per sq ft in 2005 to $1,235 in 2016, a rise of 79 per cent, according to real estate agency Douglas Elliman In the 1960s and 1970s, the same spacious houses sold for $20,000 to $40,000 Today, a modernised 19th-century home on the edge of the Castro with five bedrooms is on sale for $4.09m through Zephyr Real Estate Doan, who has published extensively on queer spaces, says dispossessed, young LGBT people gravitate towards the poorer parts of cities Theyre seen as places that are anonymous, she says, places where you can if youre a little different fit in, and that creates a demand. Hence, says Doan, gay bars or lesbian bookshops become part of a selfperpetuating cycle Yet social acceptance is changing that need Theories of a post-gay era have been developed by Amin Ghaziani, an associate professor of sociology at the University of British Columbia, in his book There Goes the Gayborhood? The rapid rate at which sexual minorities are blending into American society represents the most impressive civil rights triumph of our generation, he says Statistics from the US census bear him out: the concentration of male same-sex partner households in 100 areas fell per cent between 2000 and 2010; there was a near 14 per cent drop for female same-sex households These couples were dispersing into straight areas The key today, says Ghaziani, is plurality Gaybourhoods have tended to mean areas revived by white homosexual men, and there are few districts where gay women have been as prevalent or as prominent Park Slope in Brooklyn and Santa Fe in New Mexico are known as lesbian-friendly areas, but none has seen the transformation gay men have brought According to a 1993 study, this is because gay women have had different needs from gay men: for gay women, the suburbs offer nicer houses, bigger parks and better schools all good for Gay Pride in Soho, London, 2015 A cafộ in the Marais district of Paris Jon Arnold Rob Stothard/Getty Images raising children The move to the suburbs has reduced the density of lesbian households and made building a community harder If anything, trans people have had even less proprietary space The fear, violence and poverty inflicted on this community have made appearing in public, let alone colonising a neighbourhood, dangerous A 2011 study by the National Center for Transgender Equality in the US showed trans people were nearly four times more likely to have a household income of less than $10,000 a year compared to the general population They live where they can in places where they find themselves tolerated, says Doan, herself a trans woman New York was where the modern LGBT rights movement started: in 1969, gay and transgender people rioted at the Stonewall Inn, a bar in Greenwich Village John Gasdaska, a real estate broker with the Corcoran Group, says the legacy of Stonewall created a gay hub, and when house prices were driven up by the small supply, men moved on, first to the West Village, then Chelsea and later Hells Kitchen Prices in these areas have accelerated over the past decade: in the West Village in 2005, homes cost $1,262 per sq ft, according to Douglas Elliman data; in 2016 they stand at $3,090 per sq ft, a rise of more than 140 per cent Perhaps the ultimate sign that a gaybourhood has run its course is about to befall Greenwich Village: President Barack Obama is recommending the area around the Stonewall Inn be declared a national monument Pariss Le Marais dates from a slightly later era than Soho and the West Village, giving it a different charm, according to Hervộ Latapie, who offers tours of the area with Paris Gay Village Gay people flocked there in the 1980s, he says, because they no longer wanted hidden, closed, expensive places: Le Marais was a post-gay-lib gaybourhood But it too has been in decline, says Latapie, because it became mainstream when high-end brands moved in, its visitors aged and dating went digital, with apps such as Grindr breaking the link between going out and getting off Le Marais went into decline when its visitors aged and dating went digital, replacing going out Even if the best-known gaybourhoods are shrinking and straightening, other areas are ready to rise Interviewees suggested places such as Ybor City, a district of Tampa, Florida, where the distinctive housing stock casitas, former cigar workers residences too small for entertaining meant gay bars would continue to thrive Harlem is seeing an influx of white families, too, including many gay men, although the resultant displacement of black families is causing social tension, according to author and resident Keith Boykin The forces that shaped gaybourhoods desire and shame, freedom and persecution have lost most of their scalding heat over half a century of LGBT liberation, incomplete and internationally patchy as it might be Now that we can marry and adopt in more than 20 countries, now that our neighbours not shun us, those areas that we did up and where we fenced ourselves in, pleasure-domes and prisons, no longer seem necessary Josh Spero is deputy editor of FT Special Reports FTWeekend House Home June/5 June 2016 James Fryer Countries off the gaydar Hugo Greenhalgh Perspective There are many parts of the world where being homosexual can be dangerous, if not fatal so what to if you move to such a place? W hen I moved to Georgia in 2001, I stopped being gay Wham bam bang that was me back in the closet For almost four years Admittedly, it was my choice to work for a dictator of a seamy seaside state nestling on the border with Turkey Id gone there to work for a local television station, but ended up effectively being his PR My company didnt send me the only person responsible for moving to a country where homosexuality, while not illegal, was hugely frowned upon, was me It is not always that simple Globalisation has seen companies hop borders like never before Iran, in from the cold after agreeing to limit its nuclear programme, has become the new hotspot for businesses sharking for frontier-market funds Fine, but you really not want to be gay in downtown Tehran Most companies will find an apartment for you, but I fell in love with Georgia And, almost 10 years on from when I was asked to leave after a Georgian MP called me the Lord Haw-Haw of the Caucasus I am now considering buying a flat overlooking the Black Sea coast Now that the legal snarls thrown up when the dictator fled to Moscow with a large chunk of the state budget have been ironed out, my main concern is the level of homophobia in Georgia Do I want to buy a flat in a country where I could be a target? The world is much smaller if youre gay Laws criminalising homosexuality still exist in 78 jurisdictions worldwide, out of a total of 320 In five countries Mauritania, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Sudan simply being gay is punishable by death Others, such as Uganda, are equally off the property menu Which is a shame, as the country is particularly lovely at this time of year: a balmy 28C, little rain and clear blue skies Property is relatively cheap, with an island listed for sale with 134 acres by Lake Victoria for just $2m One small snag: Uganda is virulently homophobic, its parliament having attempted to pass a Kill the Gays bill in 2013 One brief respite, following a huge international outcry, was that the mooted death penalty was transmuted to life imprisonment But, either way, it remains illegal to be gay or lesbian in the country But Uganda and other homophobic countries are missing a trick It is a clichộ but one thats true that when the gays move in, the neighbourhood applauds, safe in the knowledge that property prices are set to rise US academic Richard Florida devised the Gay Index, which showed the positive effect of having gay neighbours The point is that a gay couple will move in next door and plant flowers, says Dave Carlos at property advisory company JLL, only slightly tongue in cheek Studies have shown that diversity in the workplace more women on boards and a greater tolerance for sexual identity can be positive for the corporate bottom line It can also work for bricks and mortar: you want the gays to move in next door But while the world is awash with gay-friendly resorts and even retirement homes, there remain far too many places to avoid if you are LGBT Certainly, large swaths of Syria and Iraq, now under the control of the so-called Islamic State, have recently become even less appealing But even more mainstream countries are increasingly out of bounds India recriminalised homosexuality in 2014 Yet, interestingly, it legally recognises hijras (people whose birth sex is male but who identify as female) as a third gender one of the very few countries in the world, alongside Pakistan and Bangladesh, to so Russia is quite another issue Ive long wanted to live in Moscow Part of the reason behind my move to Georgia was to use it as a springboard to head northwards Yet LGBT rights in Russia along with the general attitude of the population towards homosexuality and, indeed, the Eurovision Song Contest are at an all-time low When I was in and out of Russia in the early noughties, taxi drivers were happy to say which gay club was the best in the city Now I wouldnt dare ask The UK, by comparison, has a growing tradition of tolerance On my way to work in London, I walk past a blue plaque, unveiled in 2013, to mark the former home in Bloomsbury of Ernest Boulton and Frederick Park, better known as Stella and Fanny Just as it grappled with gay rights in the 1980s and 1990s, the UK is now coming to terms with a greater understanding of the trans community In the US, Keep Austin Weird was launched a few years ago to promote local businesses in the Texan city but also to resist the blandification under way in many of Americas larger urban areas Homeless activist and cross-dresser Leslie Cochran, who died in 2012, was often seen as the personification of the campaign Keeping it weird works The writer James Baldwin always said you can judge a country on the treatment of its minorities and, indeed, my former dictator was very good at promoting religious tolerance Just not so good on gay rights For many LGBT people, the solution to moving to a homophobic country is still the one I devised 15 years ago: you simply stop being gay Hugo Greenhalgh is the FTs wealth correspondent June/5 June 2016 FTWeekend FTWeekend UK Office: +44 20 7873 4907 | US Office: +1 212 641 6500 | ASIA Office: +852 2905 5579 www.ft.com/house&home Property Gallery England England England England Scotland June/5 June 2016 Ireland www.ebook3000.com 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to the rules, masculine and unaffected So if several hundred years ago, plain architecture stood for masculinity, was there a flipside, where buildings expressed contrary expressions of gender and sexuality? You would be hard pressed to find nudge-nudge symbolism in carvings or paint on Georgian buildings, as homosexuality was punishable in the 18th century But Strawberry Hill Horace Walpoles white Gothic fantasy castle in Twickenham, south-west London, built in the decades after 1747 has intrigued scholars asking this very question Walpole was born in 1717, the last son of the prime minister Robert Walpole Or perhaps his father kept mistresses on his travels, while his mother Catherine Shorter had her own lovers The family seat was Houghton in Norfolk, a mansion of solid Palladian rectitude Walpole was a thin figure with great charisma and intelligence and a natural empathy frequently cut by acid wit, his letters reveal On the announcement of the new king George II in 1727, he deliberately wailed louder than the other boys at Eton for the loss of the old king a piece of theatre from a prime ministers son He embarked on his theatrical house in his early thirties As author of a guidebook to his own house, Walpole left a detailed record of his intentions for Strawberry Hill, a little Gothic castle that permitted four visitors a day, but no children The pinnacled mass conflating Venice, Hampton Court and 20 tonnes of icing sugar has recently been restored Look carefully and you can see where it engulfs a small 17th-century house called Choppd Straw Hall that he leased from a toyseller called Mrs Chevenix He tells us much about this evolving toy box, and the antiquarian trinkets it was Horace Walpole Granger, NYC/Alamy Strawberry Hill in Twickenham Alamy The Gallery VIEW Pictures/Alamy Castle confection Fireplace and bookcases in the Library Alamy stuffed with Cardinal Wolseys hat, portrait miniatures, and hair cut from the corpse of Edward IV Was Walpole gay? His biographer Timothy Mowl thinks he had a teenage tryst with Henry Pelham-Clinton, Lord Lincoln He did have a fling with a Florentine beauty called Elisabetta Grifoni, though he let it taper off And at the age of 49 he advised an admirer named John Crauford that he had taken the veil as if a nun, religiously abstinent Walpoles sexuality remains controversial But he never married, and with a close coterie of male friends forming a Committee of Taste, he built for himself not a family seat but this summer gallery for his collection a place to write, walk and entertain This in itself is important, as sexuality and politics were entwined in 18th-century houses The country mansion was the embodiment of the heterosexual norm: a dynastic power-base with chambers decorated with symbols of fertility like pomegranates or acorns But Walpole never expected children, and instead Strawberry Hill is a countercultural monument of camp Strawberry Hills campness is in line with the sensibility identified with flamboyance, gloss and disengagement Walpole as the leading society diarist and gossip was the closest the 18th century came to our campy Kardashian blogging culture, according to Matthew Reeve, associate professor at Queens University in Ontario Tweets are todays attention-grabbing ephemera, while for Walpole my buildings are paper, like my writings, and both will blow away in 10 years Walpoles choice of architectural style at Strawberry Hill was anticlassical Gothic operated in the northern shadows rather than the Mediterranean sunlight of classical Athens and Rome Its proportions were asymmetrical and the layout respected no rules to arrive at his door, you navigated not a grand pediment but a Chinese fish bowl as a memorial to his drowned cat To follow Jones criteria, it was not at all masculine Except, it is in one important sense: this is the architecture of medieval monasteries cloistered male-only environments apart from society Strawberry Hills Gothic shadows and sparkles, plaster vaulting and cornices and pretty panels of coloured glass in the windows were all drama, scarcelycontained effervescence like a shaken bottle of fizzy soda It had none of the cool, spacious gravitas of a family house with a marble hall lined and petrified heroes projecting Daddys ego Here, Walpole wrote the first Gothic novel The Castle of Otranto (1764) which portrayed paternal tyranny; by the time he published his Oedipal novel The Mysterious Mother in 1768, he had fully trampled on normal family bounds Strawberry Hill is acknowledged as having inspired a tradition of camp Gothic Reeve pursues its legacy through Thomas Barretts Lee Priory, in Kent, and William Beckfords Gothic skyscrapers in Bath and at Fonthill, Wiltshire Beckford, Oscar Wilde, Lytton Strachey they all looked back to Strawberry Hill as a queer archetype, says Reeve But none of them quite matched Walpoles vim 12 FTWeekend June/5 June 2016 House Home UK property Creative Londoners are drawn to Camberwell for its lively arts scene and diverse community By Jenny Lee i / BUYING GUIDE Camberwell is in Southwark, which has an annual council tax rate of Ê2,412 for homes worth more than Ê320,000 There were 9.05 crimes per 1,000 residents in Southwark in April, higher than the citywide average of 7.32 The nearest Tube stations are Oval and Elephant & Castle Mainline trains from Loughborough Junction to St Pancras run every 12 to 15 minutes T he exterior of The Flying Dutchman in Camberwell, south London, is demurely Victorian yet its spirit is anything but Inside stands a majestic gold confessional booth It is the work of performance artist Franko B, who was once suspended naked on a swing in the middle of the pub giving a new meaning to high art Camberwell eludes definition; quiet streets, pockets of greenery and friendly neighbourhood pubs such as The Flying Dutchman where gender and identity can be respectfully explored until dawn On a recent cloudless day on the corner of Havill Street, a young family flung open the doors of their Ford Fiesta for an impromptu party with neighbours; car throbbing to the rhythms of UB40 With no London Underground links (Oval in Kennington is the nearest Tube station), Camberwell has remained a south London backwater No one used to know where Camberwell was, says Svetlana Stein, who co-founded The Flying Dutchman with Antonio Mori Is it in Camden? They used to ask Now you can see the Shard from here people realise how close it is to central London. There are some who cherished Camberwells obscurity It used to be great, says Rod, who asks to be known simply as Rod of Camberwell, no last name needed, everybody knows me, Ive lived here for 30 years, he says Now the idiots are moving in. It is unclear which idiots Rod means, but it is undeniable that newcomers What you can buy for Ê500,000 A one-bedroom apartment with a private roof terrace Ê1m A four-bedroom terrace house with a garden close to Ruskin Park Ê2.5m A six-bedroom Victorian house More listings at propertylistings.ft.com Eight-bedroom house on Champion Hill, Ê8.75m Right: four-bedroom house on Grove Lane, Ê1.37m Bohemian backwater Georgian terraced houses on Camberwell Grove Field & Sons, Kennington Road Camberwell house prices Indices rebased Camberwell Prime central London London 2006 08 10 12 250 200 150 100 14 16 Source: Knight Frank Research / Land Registry Farmers merss Roa Road The Flying Th g Dutchm Dutchman hm Camberwell Ca erwell PECKHAM P KHAM Col e College of Arts add Peckham Ro CAMBERWELL RWE ne Victorian art critic who moved to Denmark Hill in the 1840s but left when the railway arrived, ruining his view Today there are artists complexes scattered across Camberwell Tucked down a cobblestone alley opposite Southwark Town Hall is Vanguard Court, home to ceramicists, silversmiths, a milliner and a stone mason This was the only studio with natural light I could find that was affordable, says Leo Bennett, an illustrator at Vanguard Court Asked how Camberwell has changed since he was a student here a decade ago, he asserts that it is going the way of a lot of places in south London like Peckham its becoming more gentrified He may be right; an eightbedroom house on Champion Hill, just outside Camberwell in Denmark Hill, is priced at Ê8.75m through Foxtons The largest Georgian and Victorian houses are mainly to be found on the tree-lined streets of Grove Park and Camberwell Grove, where a sixbedroom Victorian home is on sale through Harvey and Wheeler for Ê2.5m Two minutes walk away on Grove Lane a four-bedroom early Victorian house is on sale through Wooster and Stock for Ê1.37m Overall property prices in Camberwell are slightly more expensive compared with neighbouring areas: the average price in 2015 was Ê510,454 compared with Ê487,208 in Peckham and Ê469,178 in Elephant and Castle, according to Wooster and Stock a ve L Gro are discovering Camberwell Properties in the area priced at more than Ê1m have risen 11.5 per cent on average over the past year, according to Luke Bishop, a sales manager at local agency Wooster & Stock Venues such as The Flying Dutchman are totemic of Camberwells connection to artists and its importance to the LGBT community The pub is fabled for its roaring parties such as Untouchable, conceived to raise money for the Southwark LGBT Network Half a mile away on Peckham Road is Camberwell College of Arts Stein points to the synergy between the LGBT community and Camberwells art studios and colleges There are lots of young artists living and making work here, says Stein Theres also Anish Kapoor, the Turner Prize winning sculptor, whose sprawling studio spans the length of Farmers Road Camberwells artistic heritage stretches back to John Ruskin, the Nevertheless, Camberwell is c cheap relative to local areas with a similar housing mix, w ssuch as East Dulwich, where tthe average property price in 22015 was Ê653,456, just over 228 per cent more expensive It suffers because it hasnt ggot a station called Camberwell, says Nick Holt, chair of w tthe Camberwell Society, who has lived in the area for 12 h yyears But its actually very aaccessible for the City and Canary Wharf. According to Holt, one of the best features of Camberwell is its diverse population Along Camberwell Church Street, there is a vegan Cameroonian crờperie, a Chinese restaurant serving Xinjiang cuisine and a tapas bar that imports its charcuterie from Spain Theres an overwhelming sense of community, says Holt Its just a bit more bohemian A bit more real. DENMARK MAR ARK HILL LONDON 500 met 50 metres t Vanguard Court rt June/5 June 2016 13 FTWeekend House Home Always the outsider How the cities compare Buying in London Move funds to the UK before you make your final move, when youre likely to be considered a tax resident The buying tax stamp duty is heavily loaded on more expensive homes, growing from Ê43,750 for a Ê1m home to Ê273,750 for one costing Ê3m If you already own a home abroad, ready yourself for an additional per cent secondhome charge In the UK a binding commitment to buy and sell only arises when the formal exchange of contracts takes place Exchange is traditionally marked by a 10 per cent deposit If you pull out before the completion date, expect to lose your deposit and to be pursued for compensation if the seller has suffered further loss When you come to sell, estate agents fees paid by the seller, whom the agent represents average 1.3 per cent of the purchase price on the high street; for more expensive properties it is worth haggling There is no notarial function in the UK; both buyer and seller rely on solicitors, who check the title deeds and collect and advise on other key information, including the results of any structural survey Continued from page school At law school he came out and everything basically fell apart For the first time in his life, he failed exams He was terrified I had almost no gay friends, and so I was stepping into a totally unknown world This journey wasnt made any easier by the fact that the first gay black man I met had just discovered that he had HIV. It was tough for his mother, too Im the eldest, he says Im a man from Uganda and a conservative Christian home Bisexuality was not discussed. She worried if he would be OK Until Okwonga was 21, he had seen girls he was not aware of his sexuality at school, he says Then, for seven years, he identified as a gay man And then I started dating women again. Today, he identifies as bisexual He is back on terms with his mother Before Berlin, he had been based in London most of his life But about two years ago, he grew sick of it He had given I am struck by how often even on the most crowded of trains white Berliners will leave a space next to me Graffiti mural on the Berlin Wall featuring the famous kiss between Erich Honecker and Leonid Brezhnev in 1979 Massimo Borchi/4Corners up law; he was a writer, who travelled often Each time I returned home, I felt less and less attachment to the UK, he says Finally, he could not stomach the anti-immigration stuff, he was reading in the press They made us sound like an infestation. So he moved here He lives alone He has no partner He is not part of the Berlin gay scene And he never hides his sexuality Indeed, he wants to be an example: he wants people to look at him and think its fine to be who I am His area Friedrichshain, in the old East Berlin is grubby and nice graffiti and co-ops, patches of unmanicured beauty Social and political activists meet in this part of town, which he likes Is it easy to be black in Berlin? Its fine, he says, if youre a middle-class black guy Less good if youre seeking asylum Yet even an old Etonian is not immune to prejudice In January, On a U-bahn train in Berlin Christina Theisen Okwonga wrote: I am struck by how often even on the most crowded of trains white Berliners will leave a space next to me, somehow fearing the prospect of sitting next to a male of African appearance. Does he feel African? As I get older I feel more Ugandan, he says Why has he not been back since 2001? I feel very much part of the diaspora but I didnt feel I fitted in there. Perhaps it isnt easy to feel like you fit in to a country ruled by a septuagenarian who believes that science proves that people are not born homosexual, who signed the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act in 2014, and whose troops killed your father, or so you think In another life, Okwonga might have been a politician Even in this life, it has occurred to him to try Yet no more What I represent? he wonders I have no constituency People might look at me with suspicion Is he posh? Is he one of us because he went there? Or is he black? Is he this, is he that, is he straight, is he gay? Eventually, I was like, actually you dont really represent anyone. He is happy in Berlin Its where people end up who didnt feel like they fit in anywhere else. On that bright note, I leave the cafộ, step into some unseasonal snow and return almost immediately because I forgot to pay the bill I find Okwonga scowling at his phone He thinks he has overexposed himself It worries him because he has no constituency no constituency to fall back on He is foreign He is one of Gods eternal expats Alexander Gilmour is deputy editor of House & Home Buying in Berlin Purchase taxes are the same for expats as locals, but vary between Germanys 16 states; Berlins is per cent of the sale price Extra costs in the city soon mount up Buyers pay the estate agents fees, even though agents represent sellers per cent of the sale price before tax You will also have to pay for a notary typically 6,000 on a 1m sale who drafts the purchase contract, checks the ownership claim and draws up the new legal title, at which point the deal is binding Youll need a bilingual lawyer since agreements are in German Budget another 3,000 for land registry fees Sell a property less than 10 years after buying it and, unless its your primary residence, youll be taxed on any capital gain at your income tax rate Hugo Cox 14 FTWeekend June/5 June 2016 House Home T he seasons have realigned themselves just as predicted in this column in unseasonably warm February It is now time for Britain to be bedding out, at least outside London where some of you have been risking half-hardy plants already for several weeks I have retained a longodds bet on a traditional late spring frost I work warily by old-fashioned rules, including one against bedding out before Derby Day Only this weekend, therefore, will I finalise this summers soft-leaved decoration My first decision concerns viola varieties, which are the most marvellous value in the modern garden In this mild year they have had a fantastic run since late November I cannot bear to throw them out, so I will be cruel in order to be kind I will cut them right back to a short length of stem and then soak them weekly with Miracle-Gro fertiliser to force them into yet another season Nurseries are now throwing out unsold pansy trays, so you can pick them up for almost nothing So long as they are deadheaded, this treatment will make them flower all over again, giving pansies, pansies all the way All the way stretches, on recent form, into mid-November Out in the shops, remember this new likelihood as you make your final choices Half-hardy perennials are likeliest to flower for the full six months, whereas seed-raised annuals, including most tobacco plants, will have packed up by mid-September There are exceptions, especially in the new ranks of petunia, whose names range from Burgundy F1 to Tumbelina My first choices lie elsewhere, among bacopas, fuchsias, lotus flowers, heliotropes, marguerite daisies and socalled geraniums If you study the labels on the potted stock of these plants in a big garden centre, you may promptly wish to take control and vote Out The offerings to us Brits are now driven by the big worldwide trade Osteospermums, those pretty daisy-flowered favourites, now sell in forms that look ever more artificial and over-regulated in shape and flower They may suit a Californian hotel but they have none of the charm of older non-global forms such as Osteospermum Jamaica Primrose On a multilingual pot of the hideous Sunny range, I found tell-tale names such as Spaanse Margriet or Kapkoerbchen They have been bred and stamped for global gardeners, not for Britons with an eye for tasteful trailers Osteospermum Alamy Viola Alamy Place your beds Its Derby Day and time to decide on soft-leaved decoration that will stay the course this year on their front terrace The prices are ever more amazing Easy blue felicias are on sale at Ê9 each just because they are already in flower Fully developed pots of a marguerite labelled White Bush cost Ê16 a time Do not succumb to the disease called sucker-shoppers impulse Many of the best buys for a long summer are still looking small and unpromising They will last far better over the six-month course ahead and are much cheaper On sight you might steer clear of a bacopa As young plants they look insignificant, but they soon spread widely and spill beautifully over the edges of pots and boxes The varieties improve yearly Watch out for Bacopa Scopia Gulliver Blue Sensation, even though it Robin Lane Fox On gardens is not blue-flowered at all but a pale shade of lilac mauve Match it with Bacopa Scopia Gulliver Pink Beauty, one with sociably pale-pink flowers They will flower on until November and continue to grow ever wider At the edges of window boxes or pots they are excellent So are the yellow and pink-flowered forms of bidens Like bacopas, they look nothing much as of now, but they soon grow into falling curtains of ferny green leaves and clear little flowers They are superb in window boxes or baskets, but such is their vigour that they not combine well with other trailers The classic ones have always been yellowflowered and this year, pots of a good clear one called Gold Fever are much in evidence Avoid the new Pirates Treasure because it is needlessly doubleflowered Instead, look for the excellent Pink Primrose, a game-changer with flat flowers whose centres are a deeper rosepink It is still less well known than the yellow-flowered trailers Yet again I am majoring on fuchsias I love them and they love my heavy watering and feeding regime They are supreme choices for the longer autumn season, improving as the weeks slip by until a heavy frost Watch out for the new Buds of May series, which flowers very freely and includes Adrienne with a lilac central tube and a skirt of pink and white Trailing fuchsias are invaluable for window boxes and the edges of big pots Here I much like Dark Eyes, a classic blend of deep violet-blue and red; Marinka, all red; good old Eva Boerg, semi -double violet-purple with a purple and pink surround; and Kit Oxtoby, a light combination of a pink tube and white surrounds Specialist fuchsia nurseries will offer many more, but be sure to go for freedom of flower and a compact habit before all else The more they are watered and if they are fed weekly, the better they are Geraniums have also been standardised for global taste Older reds are now harder to find, including the superb scarlet Paul Crampel, which makes a great climber after only two or three years on the wall of a frost-proof greenhouse Newer forms are bred to stay level in a bed and not to raise heads above the egalitarian parapet Nonetheless I like pale-pink Geranium SIL Karen, even if the flowers are rather lumpy, and Gesa Light Pink with zonal markings on its leaves at a height wellsuited to window boxes Small-flowered angel varieties are also good value, as the newer ones now flower for longer Burgundy, as usual, is a name to avoid as the flowers are smudgy purple For a touch of easy class, try trailing Lotus, on sale as Lotus Orange, a form of Lotus berthelotii The leaves on this widely trailing plant are finely cut and a very appealing grey-green and the flowers are like orange-red claws I like it with the variegated Plectranthus, a good spreader, too, which has the hidden charm of strongly incense-scented leaves if you pinch them in your hand If mixed with a classic heliotrope they are a great combination Most garden centres sell Heliotrope Marine, a deep purple-flowered one which is raised from seed and has some, but not much, scent Far better are the named forms grown yearly from cuttings and sold by nurseries specialising in greenhouse plants Heliotrope White Swan, Chatsworth and Lord Roberts are among the best, being smaller leaved and sweeter flowered By taking off the lower leaves and side shoots you can easily push the main stem up to a foot or more in height and let it develop a head of growth Small standard heliotropes are selling for Ê20 each this weekend at my nearest mass supplier The bedding field is yours to plunder but remember that plants not have to be half-hardy or rare in order to look good in pots Last year my winners were some surplus Michaelmas daisies, planted out in pots for want of another home In late autumn they were superb, when antirrhinums bought at Ê6 a tray had long since packed up [...]... 5.53% Index Cross-Border DJ Global Titans ($ ) Euro Stoxx 50 (Eur) Euronext 100 ID FTSE 4Good Global ($ ) FTSE All World FTSE E300 FTSE Eurotop 100 FTSE Global 100 ($ ) FTSE Gold Min ($ ) FTSE Latibex Top (Eur) FTSE Multinationals ($ ) FTSE World ($ ) FTSEurofirst 100 (Eur) FTSEurofirst 80 (Eur) MSCI ACWI Fr ($ ) MSCI All World ($ ) MSCI Europe (Eur) MSCI Pacific ($ ) S&P Euro (Eur) S&P Europe 350 (Eur) S&P... 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