Mixed Race Families

Britain is now a better place to grow up mixed race. But don't celebrate yet

Prejudices have receded significantly in the past 20 years, but a report out this week shows racist attitudes remain

by Lanre Bakare, The Observer, Saturday 15 December 2012

Growing up as a mixed race child, with a mother from Leeds and a father from Nigeria, my Bradford childhood certainly wasn't trouble-free. But I had the kind of relatives to see me through any tricky moments. As well as a fantastic, loving family on my mother's side, I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by a strong Nigerian community, focused around a friendship club my father founded, which acted as a focal point for a small but vibrant community.

With my dad and his mates I would hear Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa spoken; I'd listen to the music of Fela, Shina Peters and Ayinla Kollington, and get to taste jollof rice, eba, moinmoin and other Nigerian cuisine. This understanding and engagement with the other side of my ancestry and culture was vital to me. It gave me confidence to fall back on when people would question who I was. Both my parents instilled the idea in me that being different was a huge positive. It was something special, that should be celebrated and cherished rather than hidden or denied.

Not everyone is so lucky, of course. But this week a report released in the wake of the 2011 census threw fresh light on mixed race relationships in the UK and the public's perception of them. And it seemed to bring good news. The census revealed there are a million people who identify as mixed race. British Future, the thinktank that produced the report (titled The Melting Pot Generation – How Britain Became More Relaxed About Race), found that 15% of the public have a problem with these relationships, compared to 50% in the 80s and 40% in the 90s.

The so-called Jessica Ennis Generation (those born in the 80s and 90s, like me) was portrayed as more tolerant of, and essentially not bothered by, mixed race families.

It followed other recent reports which claimed that mixed race people are more attractive, more intelligent and biologically superior to their single race counterparts. But have the prejudices which blighted mixed race people and couples completely disappeared over the last 20 years? Has Britain entered into a post-racial nirvana in which that kind of prejudice has all but died out?

There's no doubt that things have improved. Significantly. Sure, growing up in Bradford in the 90s I had my share of the racist incidents which many people faced – name-calling at school, being singled out by the police, and feeling like I didn't "fit in'' with my peer group. But my experiences pale in comparison to those mixed race people who grew up in the generation before mine.

A friend's father, who is also mixed race, grew up in my area a quarter of a century before.

His brother was driven to painting his skin with white emulsion paint because he was so distressed at the abuse he received. His pores became clogged and he had to be taken to hospital as his skin could no longer breathe.

Stories like that make you realise that for a lot of mixed race people, growing up in a space between two cultures was testing, isolating and painful. There is no doubt society has moved forward since then, but we should be cautious about celebrating too soon. These things are complicated.

Take a journalist colleague of mine, Joseph Harker, who has a Nigerian father and an Irish mother. He is loth to identify as mixed race and sceptical about the motives behind the recent fascination with mixed race Britain and what it represents.

Seen from his point of view, mixed race people have become the new poster boys and girls of diversity because they are seen as less threatening, more attractive, more European and in short, more acceptable.

For him the constant thematising of "mixed race Britain'' is fashionable because it makes white people feel more comfortable. In one piece Joseph wrote, he asked: "Could Barack Obama have been elected were both his parents black?"

This school of thought would contend that the feting of stars like Jessica Ennis doesn't really reflect discrimination more ordinary mixed race folk face, regardless of how successful certain athletes or musicians are. This celebration of mixed race and black athletes is not a new phenomenon.

Daley Thompson won the Sports Personality of the Year award in 1982, and that triumph was seen by some as a watershed moment for race relations that would lead the way for more acceptance of mixed race people and mixed race relationships. It didn't really turn out that way in the 80s.

Then there is the example of the French football team in the World Cup of 1998. A team which included Arab, mixed race and black players like Thierry Henry, Patrick Vieira, David Trezeguet, Zinedine Zidane and Lillian Thuram was used to build up the idea of a French rainbow nation, as Paris and the country at large embraced multiculturalism and its different communities.

Yet, fast forward to 2011 and the French team was embroiled in a race row after Laurent Blanc was taped discussing proposals to reduce the number of black and Arab players in the side, addressing concerns the team wasn't white enough.

At the same time France was struggling to deal with race riots, the rise of the far-right with the increased popularity of staunch anti-immigration politicians like Marine Le Pen, who just last week was in trouble for comparing Islamic prayers to the Nazi occupation during the second world war.

During the same period Britain has had to deal with the rise of the BNP and the anti-immigration agenda which continues to dominate political discourse, with Ed Miliband stating on Friday that Labour made mistakes when it came to immigration and "Britain must always control its borders".

There does seem to be a disconnect between the immigration debate and the supposed flourishing of an at-ease "mixed race Britain''. Do politicians who praise the development of a more mixed country fail to see the obvious connection between that and immigration?

Let's not be too bleak. Things have changed for the better for mixed race Britons over the last 30 years. The point is that there are still prejudices which hinder improved race relations in the UK, which affect all racial groups. I agree with Minna Salami, who runs the MsAfropolitan blog and is mixed race, when she recently said: "There's an eagerness in society to try to be approving of all, which I'm quite moved by, but there's a level of silencing when you've got white reporters claiming mixed race people are symbols of harmony when their views aren't heard."

I've also written about the need for mixed race people to become part of the conversation before, but it seems we are continually used as an example of how Britain is moving on without ever being asked about our experiences or opinion.

Before the real impact of mixed race relationships can be measured in the UK, mixed race people themselves need to become part of the conversation.

When I was 15 I was confronted in a former girlfriend's house by her father, who said: "If I had known you were coming I'd have worn my Ku Klux Klan outfit." He then asked me to leave. It felt like I'd been dropped into a scene from Rita, Sue and Bob Too, the hardcore mid-1980s film about Bradford. But that kind of blatant racism is still experienced by some people if they have a partner outside their race. In many cities there is still open prejudice towards relationships between white women and Asian men in particular.

When a friend kissed an Asian schoolmate at a sixth-form party she was branded a "Paki shagger" the next day, and that kind of language was something Asian and white friends faced regularly when they went out with people outside their race.

The past week has shown how all elements of the media, leftwing and right, tabloid and broadsheet, are keen to present the UK as a more tolerant and mixed society than we were. And, of course, it is.

But there is a danger that by simply patting ourselves on the back and believing the feelgood tale of mixed race Britain we are ignoring the reality that a lot of mixed race people face, which is discrimination, lack of understanding and prejudice.

It's still not time to crack open the champagne.

Taken from HERE.

Six Stages of the Essay Writing Process 6

Stage Six: Editing

If you were snatched away right now by aliens and never seen again, you’d still get a reasonable mark for your writing piece. It’s got plenty of ideas, they’re in the right order, and the whole thing flows without gaps or bulges. However, in the event of an alien abduction it would be comforting to know that you’d left a really superior piece of writing behind. The way to achieve this is through the last step of the writing process: editing.

What is editing, exactly?

Basically ‘editing’ means making your piece as reader-friendly as possible by making the sentences flow in a  clear, easy-to-read way. It also means bringing your piece of writing into line with accepted ways of using English: using the appropriate grammar for the purposes of the piece, appropriate punctuation and spelling, and appropriate paragraphing.

Why edit?

I’ve used the word ‘appropriate’ rather than ‘correct’ because language is a living, changing thing and the idea of it being ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ is less important than whether it suits its purpose . . . there’s nothing wrong with those thongs, but maybe not for a job interview! It’s all about being practical. If you use spellings that aren’t the usual ones, or grammar that isn’t what we’ve come to accept as ‘right’, it will distract your readers. Instead of thinking ‘what wonderful ideas this person has’, they’ll think ‘this person can’t spell’. It will break the trance of reading. Readers can be irritated and troubled by unconventional usage (I’ve had dozens of letters from readers about the fact that I don’t use inverted commas around dialogue in some of my novels). It’s your right to make up new ways to do things, but expect to pay a price for it. In the case of a school essay, this price might be a lower mark. (Like everything else about the English language, there are exceptions to this. Imaginative writing often plays fast and loose with accepted ways of using English in order to achieve a particular effect.)

The read-through

As with revising, the first thing to do is to read the piece all the way through, looking for problems. Make a note of where you think there are problems, but don’t stop to fix them. Once you’ve found them all, you can go back and take your time fixing each one. If there’s even the slightest feeling in the back of your mind that something might not be quite right, don’t try to talk yourself out of that feeling.

As writers, we all want our piece to be perfect, so we have a tendency to read it as if it is perfect, with a selective blindness for all its problems. For that reason, this is a good moment to ask someone else to look at it for you. To make a piece as user-friendly as possible, you need to check the piece for style, grammar and presentation.

Editing for style

You made a decision about style back at the start of Stage Four, but in the heat of the moment as you wrote your draft, style might have slipped or changed. You might have forgotten a technical term, or been unable to  think of the proper word for something, or you might have got your thoughts tangled up in long complicated sentences. That’s fine—that shows you had your priorities right: get the broad shape of the essay right first, not get bogged down in detail. But now the moment has come to get to grips with all those details of style. The main point about style in an essay is that it should always be the servant of meaning. In an essay, a style that draws attention to itself has failed. The aim of an essay is to get your ideas across strongly and clearly—the style is just the vehicle to convey the ideas.

Questions to ask about style

Have I used the style most appropriate to an essay?

• An essay should be written in a reasonably formal style. It should be in the third person or the passive voice. ‘I’ is generally not appropriate.

Have I chosen the most appropriate words for this style?

• To achieve a formal style, individual words shouldn’t be slangy or too casual. You’ll be expected to use the proper technical terms where appropriate. On the other hand, your essay shouldn’t be overloaded with pompous or obscure words. If a simple word does the job, use it.
• Does the writing give the reader a smooth ride or a bumpy one?
• In a first draft it’s very easy to get yourself into long complicated sentences containing too many ideas. This is the time to simplify them. Even if a long complicated sentence is grammatically correct, it’s generally awkward and hard to read. Try it out loud—if it’s hard to get it right, or if it sounds clunky, rewrite it. It’s much better to have two or three straightforward sentences than a big baggy monster.
• On the other hand, the ‘See Spot run’ variety of sentence gets pretty mind-numbing after a while. If you have too many short, choppy sentences you may need to look at ways of connecting some of them, using words such as ‘although’, ‘in addition’, ‘on the other hand’…
• If all the sentences are constructed exactly the same way, you should look at ways of varying them.

Go back to Stage Four to remind yourself about style.

Editing for grammar

Imaginative writing may have a little latitude with grammar, but an essay has none—the grammar just has to be right.Grammar is a big subject, and for a proper understanding of it, I strongly suggest you get a specialised book on the subject. This is a quick checklist of some of the most common grammatical problems.

Questions to ask about grammar

• Is this really a complete sentence?
• Have I joined two complete sentences with only a comma between them?
• Do my subjects agree with my verbs?
• Have I changed tense or person without meaning to?
• Is one bit of my sentence somehow attached to the wrong thing?
• Have I put enough commas in? Or too many?
• Have I put apostrophes in the right places?
• If I’ve used colons and semicolons, have I used them properly?
• If I’ve used inverted commas and brackets, have I used them properly?
• Have I put paragraph breaks in the best places?
• Have I trusted the computer grammar checker too much?

Editing for presentation

Presentation probably shouldn’t matter, but let’s face it, it does. No matter how well-researched and clearly argued your essay is, it (and your mark) will be undermined by spelling mistakes, messy-looking layout or illegible handwriting.
Questions to ask about presentation

Is my spelling correct?

• You’d think that using a computer spell checker would solve all spelling problems. However, if an incorrect spelling is in fact a legitimate word, the computer won’t always pick it up as a mistake.
• Be aware, also, that computer spell checkers may also suggest US spellings, which aren’t always the same as Australian ones, and they are very bad at names of people and places.
• If you’re not using a computer, go through your writing very carefully for spelling. If you have even the faintest shadow of doubt about the spelling of a word, look it up in a dictionary. There are certain words that all of us find hard—words like ‘accommodation’, ‘necessary’, ‘disappoint’—so if you get to a word that you know is often a problem, double-check it even if you think it’s right.
• Another reader can also be a big help in picking up spelling errors. If there are two perfectly good spellings of a word, choose one and use it consistently.

Does my layout make my piece look good?

• Layout means the way the text is arranged on the page. Layout makes a huge psychological difference to your reader. A piece that’s crammed tightly on the page with no space anywhere and few paragraph breaks can look dense and uninviting. A piece that’s irregular—different spacing on different parts, different amounts of indentation or different spacing between the lines—looks jerky and unsettling.
• Your layout should allow plenty of ‘air’ around the text, with generous margins all round.
• You should leave some space between the lines, too—not only for comments by the teacher, but also because your text is easier on the eye if there’s good separation between the lines.
• It’s just human nature to prefer something pleasant to deal with and—contrary to some opinions—teachers are, in fact, human. So make sure your piece of writing is as legible as you can make it. If it’s handwritten, write as clearly as you can and don’t let the writing get too small or too sloping. On a computer, stick to one of
• the standard text fonts (New York or Times New Roman, for example). Don’t use fancy fonts. Use 10- or 12-point type size. If your piece isn’t long enough, the teacher won’t be fooled by 16-point type. Human, yes. Entirely stupid—not usually.

Does my title help the reader enter the essay?

Your essay may have a title: The Water Cycle. Or it may have a heading: Term 2 assignment: ‘What Were the Causes of World War I?’. Whatever the title is, it should tell the reader exactly what the writing task is.

Have I acknowledged other people’s contributions to my essay?

• Most essay writers use other people’s work to some extent. Sometimes they use it as background reading. Sometimes they specifically use information someone else has gathered or insights someone else has had. Sometimes they actually quote someone else’s words.
• It’s very important to acknowledge this help, and say exactly where it comes from. This is partly simple gratitude, but it also means that other people can go and check your sources, to find out if, as you claim in your essay, Einstein really did say the earth was flat.
• You should acknowledge other people’s work in two ways: first, in a bibliography at the end of your essay. This is just a list of all the sources of information that you’ve used. List them alphabetically by author’s surname, with information in this order: author, title, publisher and place and date of publication (or the address of the website).
• As well as appearing in the bibliography, sources that you’ve used in a direct way should also be acknowledged in the essay itself—for example, ‘As Bloggs points out, Einstein was not always right.’
• The titles of any books that you refer to should be in italics (if you’re using a computer) or underlined (if you’re writing by hand).

Editing an Essay: 5 steps

1. Read the piece through

• Don’t stop to fix mistakes, just mark them.

2. Is the style okay?

Ask yourself:

• Have I chosen the style that’s most appropriate for an essay? (Remember, an essay is aiming to persuade or inform.)
• Have I chosen particular words that jar with this style? (Check for over-casual, conversational words or ‘ordinary’ words where a technical one would be more appropriate.)
• Have I chosen to construct sentences in a way that jars with the style? (Look for short, simplistic sentences, also for needlessly pretentious ones.)

3. Is the grammar okay?

Ask yourself:

• Have I written any sentence fragments?
• Have I written any run-on sentences?
• Do my subjects agree with my verbs?
• Have I changed tense or person?
• Have I dangled any modifiers?
• Have I shown the pause I intended by using commas?
• Have I used apostrophes in the right places?
• Have I used colons or semicolons correctly?
• Have I used inverted commas or brackets correctly?
• Are there plenty of paragraph breaks, and are they in the most natural places?

4. Is the presentation okay?

Ask yourself:

• Have I checked spellings? (Be careful of sound-alikes such as their/there/ they’re.)
• Is my layout orderly and well spaced?
• Have I found the best title for my piece, which prepares the reader for the essay?
• Have I acknowledged sources of ideas and information in a bibliography?

5. Print out the piece and read it through again

• Repeat the steps above, if necessary. Then print and read it again.
• If everything seems OK in the final read-through, the essay is finished.

IN THIS SERIES ABOUT THE ESSAY WRITING PROCESS:

Stage One: Getting Ideas >
Stage Two: Choosing Ideas >
Stage Three: Outling >
Stage Four: Drafting >
Stage Four: Revising >
Stage Six: Editing

How significant is a signature?

By Colm O'Regan Comedian and writer

Did Elizabeth I have more time on her hands, or have standards slipped?

A letter leaked to the press from Vince Cable criticising the government was signed off by the business secretary with a distinctive moniker akin to a smiley face. So how significant is a signature?

The odd-looking sign-off became a talking point this week, with some people joking about what it might say about Vince Cable.

Is he trying to be cool? Is he too busy?

Maybe he just likes to draw a caricature of a smiling whale at the end of his letters as a reminder to himself and all of us that we are not alone on this planet and all our decisions have impacts on the eco-system.

Whatever it is, his squiggle is sufficiently odd to have people resurrecting that old chestnut: trying to predict personality from handwriting.

I became aware of the "science" of graphology around the time I had to produce my first signature. This was when I opened my first account of any description with a financial institution.

Signing an application form for a Sammy Squirrel Savings Account in the Irish Post Office is not exactly the same as inking a merger between Glencore and Xstrata but nevertheless it was a milestone of sorts.

I didn't make what one would call a cool signature. I just wrote my name a little bit faster. And that is still the case today. Someone analysing my signature now would conclude that I've no strong feelings about anything and that I may not even be a real person.

It's too late to change now and the lack of an impressive signature has affected my life. One of the reasons why I consciously shun the fame that would have otherwise occurred as a natural result of my talent, is that it would take too long for me to sign "all those books".

As for the rest of my letters, they soon came into focus. My older brother got a book from the library about graphology and a whole new world of navel-gazing opened up. Apparently my backward slanting writing was an indication that I was too focused on the past.

That was uncanny. I did sometimes think about the day before. I started rotating my pages anti-clockwise and immediately felt the past fall like a weight off my 13-year-old shoulders.

Large loops on the below-the-line letters were, according to my brother, a sure sign of a "total pervert". I clamped down on that dark side of me straight away.

For a few weeks when nothing else was happening, I gradually addressed each aspect of my handwriting until, according to the graphology book, I was a cross between Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe and Carl Lewis.

You don't see so much about graphology now - a succession of studies in recent decades have emptied a vat of scorn over its ability to describe and predict personality, but perhaps the biggest threat to graphology is not scepticism. It is the March of Time.

With the advent of computers, fewer and fewer people are doing any handwriting beyond their middle-school years, so their penmanship isn't evolving beyond the teenage stage of development either.

This would lead graphology experts analysing future populations to conclude that most of the subjects studied are moody, hard to get up in the mornings and think their parents are an embarrassment (I know what you mean, especially when they're trying to be cool).

Against this background, future pseudoscientific analysis will have to look at our computer-based evidence in order to jump to dodgy conclusions. Take fonts for example. If you want to spot the deranged and the psychopathic now, start with anyone who types exclusively in Wingdings.

Those who employ Comic Sans are the kind of people who want to make dull activities sound fun. A Comic Sans user may also display passive aggressive tendencies particularly when highlighting falling standards in the canteen. "These cups don't wash themselves" looks cheery in A4 on the wall, but inside the author is a seething cauldron of rage.

Times New Roman? This person is a no-nonsense individual. They believe if a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well and no amount of dressing it up or "design" is going to change that fact. Or it could be someone who has not worked out how to change the font in Microsoft Word.

Apart from font there are other tell-tale signs of personality traits. If someone uses lots of emoticons they're not confident in their ability to convey their meaning to others. DO THEY WRITE IN BLOCK CAPITALS followed by a parade of exclamation marks that looks like a picket fence? Then they are someone who comments on an article on a website. You can leave yours below.

READERS’ COMMENTS

9 HOURS AGO

//Apparently my backward slanting writing was an indication that I was too focused on the past.\\

Or, like me, you are left-handed and learned to write in the days of fountain pens and needed a method so that you didn't smudge what you had just written. Turning the paper clockwise 90 degrees and writing in "columns" was so much more comfortable than dislocating one's wrist, elbow and shoulder.

7 HOURS AGO

Handwriting analysis has actually been used in the corporate environment to consider whether or not a person was right for a job. Hmm, crosses his T's in a very sharp upward slant. This man is obviously psychotic and a danger to others... Please let us be rid of this ridiculous pseudo-science. You might as well judge a person's mental fitness based on his star sign.

6 HOURS AGO

Brilliant article. made me laugh. I remember being around 14 and getting caught practising my signature in school by a teacher. She told me that it showed a certain degree of self obsession. I replied that i didn't have a clue what she was on about..... I was just practising for when I became famous. - she didn't see the joke.

6 HOURS AGO

I just scribble really fast. I hate being in a queue (line) waiting for the really s l o w person to s i g n their name just right. Dotting the i's and crossing the t's. As for the 'experts'? Go get a life and put an end to your clap-trap!

5 HOURS AGO

My signature is unreadable, because I developed it in my teens and it was too much hassle to change for banks etc. I reckon you can tell that a woman is married(or using a married name) by looking at her signature as it is more likely to be readable because she developed it later in life and had time to think about taking care over making it presentable.

Taken from the BBC.

Megawati and Kalla: Dream Team?

Opinion Column - Jakarta Globe. Writer: Aleksius Jemadu.

When Golkar Party stalwart Akbar Tanjung told the media that former Vice President Jusuf Kalla was considering approaching former President Megawati Sukarnoputri to form a ticket in the 2014 presidential elections, the news immediately attracted much media attention.

There are at least two reasons why the idea of pairing Megawati with Kalla in the 2014 presidential election is newsworthy.

First, both Megawati and Kalla still command wide respect within their parties, and therefore their popular base of political support cannot be underestimated. While Megawati can capitalize on the loyalty of her traditional supporters within the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), Kalla still has great influence within Golkar, especially in his own province of South Sulawesi, one the party’s strongholds outside Java.

Second, Megawati and Kalla also have had extensive experience in the government, as a former president and vice president respectively. Thus, they are in the best position to understand the weaknesses of the current government and might also have some fresh ideas on how to make it work better.

Two approaches can be used to evaluate the merit of the pair. First, we can evaluate them on the basis of their own credentials as political leaders without comparing them with their possible contenders in the 2014 presidential election.

Megawati has never been successful in a direct presidential election. She tried in 2004 and 2009 with different vice presidential candidates but she failed in those elections. Kalla was successful when he ran as the running mate of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in 2004 but then when he tried again as presidential candidate in 2009 he failed.

Now if Megawati and Kalla want to run again in 2014, the question that they will have to answer is this. Is there something new in their latest nomination that makes them more worthy of popular support than in the previous trials? They may have a plan to correct their past mistakes but that alone is not a guarantee that people will trust them more in the coming presidential election.

The second approach involves making a comparison. In any competition, the strength of the candidates is always relative because voters will compare them with their contenders. As things stand today, the most serious presidential contenders are Aburizal Bakrie from Golkar and Prabowo Subianto from Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra).

It is interesting to note that Golkar leaders seem very careful when they comment on the partnership of Megawati and Kalla. The only reason behind their reluctance to condemn Kalla’s exit from Golkar is that they know all too well that Kalla is still popular among the Golkar rank and file. On top of that, they may realize that if Megawati and Kalla succeed in 2014 it will be easy for Kalla to orchestrate his comeback to Golkar and marginalize a defeated Aburizal.

Regardless of their popularity within their respective political parties, Megawati and Kalla will face an uphill battle. Megawati’s biggest challenge is mobilizing popular support beyond her “captive market” of PDI-P traditional loyalists. How can she convince the Indonesian public that she has the ability to reproduce the success of the current government in sustaining high economic growth and political stability despite the world economic slowdown? After all, it was President Yudhoyono who managed to fix the mistakes of her 2001 to 2004 presidency so that Indonesia could accelerate its economic growth.

When Kalla ran for president in 2009 with retired general Wiranto, their electoral achievement was mediocre. One reason for their poor performance was that incumbent President Yudhoyono was quite strong. Now the political landscape has changed. Whether Megawati and Kalla can spectacularly increase their electoral support will depend on the public’s perception of their synergy in addressing the shortcomings of the current government.

Time will tell whether Megawati’s nationalistic and populist proclivities combined with Kalla’s aggressive entrepreneurship can make their shared dream come true.

Aleksius Jemadu is dean of the School of Government and Global Affairs at Universitas Pelita Harapan in Karawaci.

On the Hobbit trail in New Zealand

With the film of The Hobbit due out next month, New Zealand is preparing to welcome a fresh wave of visitors keen to follow in Bilbo's hairy footsteps around Middle Earth

Sir Ian McKellen as Gandalf on the Hobbiton set near Matamata on New Zealand's North Island 

There are three stories you'll hear about The Lord of the Rings in New Zealand. The first is the tale of a wealthy man, a Tolkien fan from the US, who asked the makers of the movies' One Ring to come up with a costly gold replica, then hired a helicopter to fly him over Mount Doom, where he threw it into the flaming inferno. At least, that's how they tell it in Wellington. In Nelson, it's a woman, a spurned lover, who threw her One Ring wedding band into the mouth of the volcano. Then there's the story of the six-foot-three German tourist who arrived at Hobbiton dressed as, well, a very tall hobbit, who felt so at home in one of the hobbit holes there that he squashed himself into it and refused to leave for 12 hours. In Auckland, they'll tell you he was Belgian.

The Lord of the Rings has been big business in New Zealand ever since Wellington-born director Peter Jackson decided to film his trilogy here, back in the late 1990s. Now, with the imminent release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – the first instalment in the new movie trilogy spun from the far shorter book – there's another opportunity to attract Tolkien devotees.

People involved with Middle Earth-related tours talk wearily of copyright back-and-forths with the Tolkien estate and with New Line Cinema; it was, initially, hard for them to market anything local as an official Lord of the Rings experience. There's very much a sense that the tourism which followed the films' release took all parties by surprise, and they're preparing for it properly this time.

The biggest name in the game right now is Hobbiton, a sheep farm that doubled as the Shire for both trilogies. It's about two hours' drive from Auckland, near Matamata; stop in any of the creaking cafes in the small towns along the way ("Collect your Hot Mail here!" reads the proud sign on one) and you'll bump into a minibus full of pilgrims on the same journey. If you're very lucky, one of the lesser-spotted costumed devotees may make an appearance, though on a brisk early spring day, you need more than just a cloak to keep you warm, so we didn't spy any Gandalfs.

Jackson's location scouts saw potential in Alexander Farm's rolling green hills, lake, and, crucially, large pines – one of which would eventually become Bilbo's party tree. After filming was completed in 2004, the set was dismantled, before anyone realised that a massive opportunity had been missed. When it was rebuilt for The Hobbit, the farm fought to keep its hobbit holes.

The artwork on the sides of the mini-buses that take people down to the main site still bear the scars of its cobbled-together past. The post-LOTR hobbit holes resembled a Changing Rooms project gone bad, with plain MDF facades fronting holes to nowhere, and though those early visitors may have been disappointed, they did get the option of feeding lambs at the end of the tour, a tradition that still stands today. Sure, you could survey a bit of grass where Elijah Wood once placed his hairy prosthetic feet, but in its original incarnation, these moments required Tolkien-esque powers of imagination.

These days it's far slicker operation, though there is a peculiar feeling to flying for 26 hours only to find yourself in a place that has been chosen for its resemblance to the Malvern Hills. Then there's the fact that the 37 hobbit holes vary greatly in size to accommodate the different heights of the actors playing hobbits and dwarves at any one time. Oh, and that oak tree that sits majestically above Bag End? Its plastic leaves, imported from Taiwan, blow off in the wind, and have to be replaced every year or so because visitors keep pinching them as souvenirs.

So while it may feel like you're taking a gentle stroll around a lusciously green film set, it can be quietly disorientating. Avoid going the day after you land, lest any remaining jetlag tip you over the edge. Perhaps that's what happened to the giant German/Belgian hobbit who claimed he had found his home here.

View of Hobbiton Village

Hobbiton may be the main event for now, but Wellington, on the southern tip of the North Island, is about to take over, renaming itself "The Middle of Middle Earth" at the end of November in time for the world premiere of The Hobbit. Back in September, there was little sign of the mania to come, though it already drew on its LOTR history. We spent an afternoon on a Lord of the Rings Movie Tours minibus, along with a couple of hardcore Tolkien fans, who made Hobbiton's gentle visitors look like pathetic amateurs.

It's a winding drive – as are most of them in the terminally bendy-roaded New Zealand – up to Mount Victoria, which is less of a mountain and more of a hill, but which hosted a number of the scenes set in the Hobbiton woods in The Fellowship of the Ring: its paths are marked by cute "hobbit-height" posts.

Our Movie Tours guide, Alice, had brought along a laptop, so we could view clips while standing on the very spot in which they were filmed. She also had props. I proudly reenacted a Sam and Frodo breakfast, a deleted scene restored to the extended edition of The Fellowship of the Ring (again, this is not for amateurs), complete with pipe and replica frying pan.

Next, we came to the hill down which the hobbits roll when they're on the run from Farmer Maggot. "Do you want to make a hobbit pile?" asked Alice.

"Go on then," we shrugged, preparing to throw ourselves on the floor. I looked over at the other couple on the tour with us, who, judging by their furrowed brows and the number of questions they were asking about the minutiae of the trilogy, were taking it rather more seriously than us. They stared back, appalled. We did not make a hobbit pile.

Mount Ngauruhoe, on the North Island, starred in the Mordor scenes.

I asked Alice if she'd been a fan of the movies before she took the job. "I wasn't," she admitted. "I know everything about them now, though."

This seems to be how it is in New Zealand. Everyone has taken up their Hobbity associations with enthusiasm, from the two mountains that stood in for Mount Doom – Mount Ngauruhoe and Mount Ruapehu, with additional help from scale models and CGI – to the small family-owned vineyard in Nelson, on the South Island, which won a licence to stick Middle Earth on the labels of its surprisingly delicious wines. You can hire a helicopter to fly out over more remote locations, or visit the gold and silversmith who made the One Ring for the movies.

You can't drive for more than an hour without somebody pointing out a waterfall that might have had Orlando Bloom underneath it or a restaurant that Sir Ian McKellen liked to have his dinner in. What's nice about it is that the famous laid-back New Zealand character is in the fabric of everything. It doesn't feel opportune so much as a country going along with something that happened to come its way.

One of Hobbiton Movie Set and Farm Tours homely Hobbit holes 

In fact, what may have been our most authentic Hobbit experience wasn't marketed as one at all. The Waitomo Caves, on the North Island, offer a series of "adventure options" that range from a leisurely underground stroll to look at glowworms to the Haggas Honking Holes challenge, which earns a maximum eight Rambo Points in the brochure. With hindsight, I would recommend you respect this points system, and not undertake an intensive caving experience thinking that mild claustrophobia and a fatal lack of upper body strength would be minor considerations.

The name refers to a hollow cavity deep underground that "honks" back at you when you put your head into it and shout, but it sounds like something straight out of the Shire. And at no point did I feel more like a plucky hobbit than the moment I emerged into the sunlight after two hours of abseiling into underground caverns, crawling through freezing streams on my belly and squashing myself through inhuman gaps in the walls. When Bilbo Baggins and the dwarves journey over the Misty Mountains, they shelter from a storm in a cave that turns out to be a goblin hotspot. As I peeled off my wetsuit and examined the bruises that were just starting to appear on my hands, I realised I would have done well to heed Tolkien's warning in chapter five: "That, of course, is the dangerous part about caves: you don't know how far they go back, sometimes, or where a passage behind may lead to, or what is waiting for you inside."

by Rebecca Nicholson - The Guardian, Friday 16 November 2012 22.44 GMT

Taken from HERE.

Jakarta aims to reduce traffic by 40 percent in 2 years

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Headlines | Tue, November 13 2012 - Paper Edition | Page: 2

It is now one of the most frequently asked questions: “Does the new Jakarta administration have an effective method to ease traffic?”

The answer is that not only one, but four methods would be applied at the same time to reduce the capital’s gridlock problem by 40 percent, by 2014.

City traffic police deputy director Adj. Sr. Comr. Wahyono said on Monday that his division and the Jakarta Transportation Agency had met on Friday to discuss several measures deemed effective to control the number of vehicles on the road.

“We have agreed to resort to the implementation of an electronic road pricing (ERP) system, firm enforcement of regulations on both traffic and spatial planning as well as vehicle limitation to achieve the targeted 40 percent reduction,” he said.

The police and the transportation agency were currently working on details on the traffic policy, Wahyono added.

Last week, newly installed Governor Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and Jakarta Police chief Insp. Gen. Putut Eko Bayuseno had promised to make “breakthroughs” in easing the city’s heavy traffic.

Jakarta is estimated to suffer from total gridlock by 2014 as the number of vehicles on the road has been rising by 11.26 percent every year, while the number of new roads has only increased by 0.01 percent each year.

Currently, according to traffic police data, 20.7 million people go in and out of the capital on a daily basis and 56.8 percent of them use their own vehicle.

The data also shows that on average, commuters need 120 minutes of travel time to get to their destination, with only 40 percent moving time.

Jokowi had previously said that he was optimistic about the implementation of the pricing system next year after the central government finally approved the pivotal legal basis for its execution.

The police had suggested that the administration set an ERP trip charge somewhere between Rp 50,000 (US$5.20) and Rp 100,000.

The city, however, has said that a trip charge of between Rp 6,500 and Rp 21,000 for the planned ERP system would be enough to reduce private vehicle use, reflecting inflation and economic growth.

“The pricing system is expected to discourage motorists from using private cars and use public transportation instead. But, we need a gubernatorial regulation for the implementation,” Wahyono said.

Besides the pricing system, Wahyono said that the police and the administration had also agreed to crack down on-street parking and sidewalk vendors to create more space for motorists.

“On-street parking and sidewalks vendors occupy space for motorists, narrowing the roads, leading to congestion,” he said.

Wahyono said that the police and administration would also deploy a number of transportation agency officers, Jakarta Public Order Agency (Satpol PP) and traffic police officers to 70 congestion-prone areas in the capital.

“The sources of congestion in those areas vary, besides they serve as main and busy roads. Officers from the agency and the Satpol PP are required to clamp down on on-street parking, sidewalk vendors and public transportation vehicles that stop illegally,” he said.

Wahyono, however, said that nothing mentioned above would work well if the numbers of vehicles in the capital kept increasing.

He said that the police and the administration would look over possible ways to limit the number of vehicles running on the city streets, deeming that banning Jakartans from buying new vehicles would be impossible.

“Banning people from buying cars may violate free trade, so the best we can do is to allow only certain vehicles — either by color, manufacture year or the number on its license plate — taking turns to run on the streets only on certain days,” he said.

• Total road length: 7,208 km
• Road growth: 0.01% per annum
• Total numbers of vehicle: 13,347,802
• Motorcycles: 9,861,451 
• Passenger cars: 2,541,351 
• Commercial vehicles: 581,290 
• Buses: 363,710

Taken from HERE.

The Coin Game

Can you write clear, concise rules and tips that will fit on the back of a shoe polish tin type container?

The players. The equipment. The Set up. How to play. How to win. Tips. Use the comments feature...

Will Indonesia Kill Off the Death Penalty?

Salim Osman - Straits Times | November 06, 2012

Is Indonesia on the cusp of abolishing the death penalty, which is used as a sentencing tool against terrorism, premeditated murder and drug trafficking?

Although the death penalty is rarely handed down, it is still the focus of human rights groups, which want the government to end capital punishment because of its rights violation and its supposed ineffective deterrence of crime.

Two recent developments have prompted the question.

First, it has emerged that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has been quietly using his constitutional prerogatives to grant clemency to convicts, including those on death row, since 2004 after winning the election.

The clemency has reduced the sentences of 19 drug offenders, including four on death row, whose lives have been spared from certain death by firing squad.

Three of the condemned men were Indonesians, while the fourth was a foreigner. Their sentences were commuted to life in prison.

Two of the Indonesians were former civil servant Deni Setia Maharwa and his accomplice Meirika Pranola, who were caught with a third accomplice at the Jakarta International Airport before a flight to London in 2000. They were found to be members of a syndicate trying to smuggle heroin and cocaine.

Deni was granted clemency in January this year, and Meirika in November last year, on humanitarian grounds, as they were deemed couriers, not traffickers. It was not revealed when the third accomplice received his clemency.

Earlier last month, a three-judge panel of the Supreme Court overturned the death sentence of drug lord Hengky Gunawan, converting it to a prison term of 15 years.

Hengky was convicted in 2007 of running a major ecstasy production and distribution ring from Surabaya in East Java.

The judges said that the death sentence in Hengky's case was antithetical to the Constitution, which enshrines a right to life.

Second, Cabinet members have come out not only to defend the granting of clemency to drug offenders on death row, but also to link it to advocacy for Indonesians in foreign prisons.

In separate remarks, Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa and Deputy Justice Minister Denny Indrayana said that the decision to commute the death sentence handed down to drug convicts was part of a wider push to move away from capital punishment.

Marty said recently that globally, more countries had stopped using the death penalty, although it remained on their statutes, as it does in Indonesia.

"The policy of commuting a death sentence for a drug crime is not something that happens just in Indonesia," he said.

"This policy is also practiced in other countries, and Indonesians are among the beneficiaries of such clemency."

Even as they spoke, Malaysia announced that it was considering abolishing the death penalty for drug offenses.

For the first time, Denny admitted that the main reason behind this softening on capital punishment has been the need to free Indonesian migrant workers who are on death row overseas.

What prompted this was the public outrage over the execution of an Indonesian maid, Ruyati Sapubi, 54, who was beheaded for murdering her abusive employer in Saudi Arabia in June last year.

Since then, the Indonesian government has set up a fund to pay "blood money" to Saudi families to seek the freedom of its citizens.

The Deputy Justice Minister told Kompas newspaper on Oct. 23 that there were a total of 298 Indonesians on death row in other countries as of July last year.

Through its advocacy efforts, Indonesia managed to persuade foreign governments to commute the death sentences of 100 of them, including 44 drug offenders on death row.

"Frankly, if our President is to make an appeal for clemency for our citizens jailed abroad, we can strengthen our case by offering clemency to foreign convicts here," Denny said.

There is no certainty that this would work as the Indonesians, including those on death row for murder and drug trafficking, are jailed mainly in Saudi Arabia and Malaysia. No Saudis or Malaysians are known to be on death row in Indonesia.

Indonesia may have second thoughts on the death penalty, but it is still too early to say that it will abolish capital punishment any time soon. It is also not certain that Yudhoyono will grant clemency to the remaining 100 still on death row.

The majority of Indonesians still view the death penalty for drug traffickers as justified.

While it is seen as a rights violation by human rights lobbyists, many Indonesians also view drug abuse as a rights violation of the victims, who cannot lead normal lives because of their dependence on drugs fed by the traffickers.

Hence, it is not surprising that the clemency granted by Yudhoyono to the four condemned prisoners and the leniency given to the drug lord by the Supreme Court unleashed a storm of criticism from public figures that underscored the overwhelming sentiment supporting the death penalty for drug traffickers.

The Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), which is the highest authority on Islam, and the largest Muslim organization Nahdlatul Ulama criticized the clemency decisions, saying that they were a setback to the fight against drug trafficking that posed as serious a threat to the nation as corruption and terrorism.

"The three are extraordinary crimes and should be dealt with seriously through the imposition of extraordinary punishments or the death penalty," said MUI executive chairman Ma'aruf Amin.

It is clear that according clemency to drug offenders goes against the grain of majority opinion in Indonesia. Most people still frown upon any leniency to drug traffickers. Hence, capital punishment will have to stay.

But the dilemma for Indonesian leaders will be how to reconcile this domestic concern with the task of saving the lives of many Indonesians on death row abroad for drug trafficking and murder.

Taken from the Singapore Straits Times, reprinted in the Jakarta Globe, HERE.

Would you eat in a McDonald's vegetarian restaurant?

As McDonald's plans to open its first vegetarian restaurants in India, two vegetarians argue for and against the idea

Kavitha Rao v Andrew Tobert

McDonald's has announced it is to open vegetarian-only restaurants in India.

Kavitha Rao: McDon't do it!

As a lifelong vegetarian and as an Indian living in Bangalore, I have been eating cheap fast food all my life. But not the skanky plastic garbage peddled by Maccy D's, KFC and their ilk. Instead, I might have a crisp, lightly browned dosa (rice and lentil crepe) with coconut chutney for breakfast, pav bhaji (bread rolls with a buttery vegetable hash) for lunch and chaat (a spicy mix of potatoes, yoghurt, onions, tomatoes, cilantro and crispy bits) for a snack. Usually, these will cost me about Rs 50 (about 50p), less than a McDonald's veggie burger, which goes for Rs 59. They will be healthier, tastier, fresher.

The recent announcement by McDonald's that it is launching a veggie restaurant in India had me bellowing "What fresh hell is this?" It's the culinary equivalent of selling ice to Inuits. Inuits may not have more than a hundred words for snow – apparently it's an urban myth – but I can assure you that Indians have many more than a hundred varieties of veggie fast food, not just a plain one-size-fits-all potato patty.

Oh, I have tried McDonald's veggie offerings, the ones carefully created for my primitive brown taste buds after years of research. Once. The dull McAloo Tikki burger is not a patch on the infinitely more delicious crispy alu tikkis with tamarind chutney found at any street vendor. Their McSpicy Paneer is a cop-out, falling back on that bland veggie standby: paneer. It's the insipid nut roast of India, the tofu of timidity.

Cleanliness, you say? Nope. Even if you are a foreigner with a stomach like tissue paper, you are better off eating piping hot, fresh dosas from a busy street vendor than you are eating stale fast food. India has always had homegrown chains of veggie fast food joints which are every bit as clean and quality conscious as McDonald's, perhaps even more so. And I'd rather give my money to a small business owner than a McCorporation.

But hey, I am not going to sermonise. Or even tell you, Morgan Spurlock-style, that veggie burgers are killing you slowly. I don't need to. After almost 16 years in India, McDonald's has just over 250 outlets here, which, in such a massive country, is pocket change. I suspect that Indians are smart enough to know which side of their pav bhaji is buttered. Sure, broke students and tubby kids hankering after plastic toys will continue to eat there, but there will also be plenty like me who shun the Golden Arches in favour of a truly happy and tasty meal.

• Kavitha Rao is a Bangalore-based journalist

Andrew Tobert: I'm lovin' it!

There are few more powerful symbols than the Golden Arches. For me, they represent at once the homogenising influence of market forces, the evil of industrialised agriculture, the obesity crisis. And the last time I was truly happy.

McDonald's, from the first time I crossed its air-conditioned threshold, has offered a place of sanctuary and calm. The smell of whatever-that-smell-is wafting through the air and the happy children, joyous with additives swirling around their blood streams. This is where I've had my best thoughts, my most cherished memories. This is where I can truly be me.

And I'm not alone. From Shanghai to Chicago, kids, pensioners, lawyers and students come and are welcome. However much people might not want this to be true, McDonald's is the global restaurant – the place that unites humanity. You might find better, cheaper food elsewhere, but that's not going to convince Parisian school kids or London lawyers coming back for more.

I used to go three times a week (and yes, dear readers, I was a fat child). I wasn't just lovin' it, I was stalking it on Facebook, and naming our soon-to-be-children. But three months ago, my life changed for ever. I became vegetarian (something about climate change and global hunger, but I forget the details). My place of solace was now closed off.

Of course when I walk by a restaurant, it looks as it always has. As I stand on the street corner, I see people laughing, enjoying themselves. I want to go in, and share the things that make us human. But I know I can't, the temptations will be too much. The Chicken Selects, the Big Mac, the fries (I could go on), so delicious and so stunningly cheap. I miss them. A lot. But I made my choice, and I must accept the consequences. So there's me, outside. An outcast in a meat-eating world. But perhaps not for much longer.

That's why a McDonald's veggie restaurant in India fills me with unadulterated joy and hope. Yes, there are haterz, there always are. And to them I say, whatevs. Indians won't all become obese overnight, and their cuisine isn't going to suddenly disappear. Maybe Indian vegetarians, like their meat-eating peers the world over, watch McDonald's ads and think "you know what, that looks cool". And isn't that a wonderful thing? That we live in a world where people can pick and choose the best of global culture, regardless of where they were born? McDonald's is the global emancipator. May its benevolence spread far and wide.

But first, could the veggie outlets spread to London? Say, Hackney, E9. Then I won't feel a stab of jealousy every time I pass a branch. And maybe then I can stop resenting being a vegetarian, and start actually enjoying it. Yes, those really will be the (Mc)Salad days.

• Andrew Tobert is a copywriter, an environmental activist and a lousy vegetarian

Taken from guardian.co.uk, Thursday 6 September 2012 11.00 BST, HERE.

Why do we behave so oddly in lifts?

Many of us use them several times a day without really noticing. And yet the way we behave in lifts, or elevators as they are known in the US, reveals a hidden anxiety.

"Most of us sort of shut down.

"We walk in. We press the button. We stand perfectly still."

Taking the lift could be the least memorable part of your journey to work, but Dr Lee Gray of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte has made it his business to scrutinise this overlooked form of public transportation. People refer to him as "the Elevator Guy".

"The lift becomes this interesting social space where etiquette is sort of odd," he explains. "They are socially very interesting but often very awkward places."

Conversations that have been struck up in the lobby tend to be extinguished quite quickly in the thick atmosphere of the office elevator. We walk in and usually turn around to face the door.

If someone else comes in, we may have to move. And here, it has been observed that lift-travellers unthinkingly go through a set pattern of movements, as predetermined as a square dance.

On your own, you can do whatever you want - it's your own little box.

If there are two of you, you take different corners. Standing diagonally across from each other creates the greatest distance.

When a third person enters, you will unconsciously form a triangle (breaking the analogy that some have made with dots on a dice). And when there is a fourth person it's a square, with someone in every corner. A fifth person is probably going to have to stand in the middle.

Now we are in uncharted territory. New entrants to the lift will need to size up the situation when the doors slide open and then act decisively. Once in, for most people the protocol is simple - look down, or examine your phone.

Why are we so awkward in lifts?

"You don't have enough space," says Professor Babette Renneberg, a clinical psychologist at the Free University of Berlin.

"Usually when we meet other people we have about an arm's length of distance between us. And that's not possible in most elevators, so it's a very unusual setting. It's unnatural."

In such a small, enclosed space it becomes vital, she says, to act in a way that cannot be construed as threatening, odd or in any way ambiguous. The easiest way to do this is to avoid eye-contact.

But perhaps there is more to it than just social awkwardness.

"In the back of our minds we are a little anxious," says Nick White, an office worker in New York who was unfortunate enough to be trapped in a lift for 41 hours.

Nick White was trapped in a lift in his office building for 41 hours.

"We don't like to be locked into a place. We want to get out of the elevator as soon as possible, because, you know, it's a creepy place to be."

During his ordeal, he began to think of another enclosed space that lurks at the back of our minds - a tomb.

It would be understandable if White refused ever to step in a lift again. But if you work in a city built on a vertical plane, and if you have aspirations above being a receptionist, that isn't an option.

"I certainly remember what happened to me every time I go in one," he admits. "It's part of the commute, the part you have the least control over."

Elevator Guy Lee Gray agrees that a sense of disempowerment is the main cause of lift anxiety.

"You're in a machine that's moving, over which you have no control. You cannot see the elevator engine, you don't know how it's working," he says.

This sense of passivity in the hands of a machine may become more pronounced as we enter the age of buttonless "smart" elevators.

After swiping through security or touching a central control panel, travellers are directed to a lift that has been programmed to stop at their floor, removing the need for any further commands. The system is designed to cut down on unnecessary stops, but although more efficient, some people find the experience unnerving.

Regardless of the qualms and anxieties associated with lifts, Gray is adamant that they are safer than cars - and significantly safer than escalators.

"It is in in fact of one of the safest forms of transportation, if you look at the billions of miles that lifts travel every year and the very, very small number of accidents."

We all know this, which is why we continue to take lifts every day, despite our anxieties.

"We have learned that we can take an elevator and it is safe to do so," says Renneberg. "So in a way it's a triumph of rationalism over our more animalistic instincts."

This pleasing thought - that we become more sophisticated by travelling in lifts - is perhaps one to ponder next time you get in one.

Just don't, whatever you do, start a conversation about it.

Taken from the BBC HERE.

There is a BBC podcast about this HERE.

The decline of Asian marriage

The Economist: LEADER COLUMN

Asia's lonely hearts

Women are rejecting marriage in Asia. The social implications are serious

Aug 20th 2011 | from the print edition of The Economist

Twenty years ago a debate erupted about whether there were specific “Asian values”. Most attention focused on dubious claims by autocrats that democracy was not among them. But a more intriguing, if less noticed, argument was that traditional family values were stronger in Asia than in America and Europe, and that this partly accounted for Asia's economic success. In the words of Lee Kuan Yew, former prime minister of Singapore and a keen advocate of Asian values, the Chinese family encouraged “scholarship and hard work and thrift and deferment of present enjoyment for future gain”.

On the face of it his claim appears persuasive still. In most of Asia, marriage is widespread and illegitimacy almost unknown. In contrast, half of marriages in some Western countries end in divorce, and half of all children are born outside wedlock. The recent riots across Britain, whose origins many believe lie in an absence of either parental guidance or filial respect, seem to underline a profound difference between East and West.

Yet marriage is changing fast in East, South-East and South Asia, even though each region has different traditions. The changes are different from those that took place in the West in the second half of the 20th century. Divorce, though rising in some countries, remains comparatively rare. What's happening in Asia is a flight from marriage (see article).

Marriage rates are falling partly because people are postponing getting hitched. Marriage ages have risen all over the world, but the increase is particularly marked in Asia. People there now marry even later than they do in the West. The mean age of marriage in the richest places—Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong—has risen sharply in the past few decades, to reach 29-30 for women and 31-33 for men.

A lot of Asians are not marrying later. They are not marrying at all. Almost a third of Japanese women in their early 30s are unmarried; probably half of those will always be. Over one-fifth of Taiwanese women in their late 30s are single; most will never marry. In some places, rates of non-marriage are especially striking: in Bangkok, 20% of 40-44-year old women are not married; in Tokyo, 21%; among university graduates of that age in Singapore, 27%. So far, the trend has not affected Asia's two giants, China and India. But it is likely to, as the economic factors that have driven it elsewhere in Asia sweep through those two countries as well; and its consequences will be exacerbated by the sex-selective abortion practised for a generation there. By 2050, there will be 60m more men of marriageable age than women in China and India.

The joy of staying single

Women are retreating from marriage as they go into the workplace. That's partly because, for a woman, being both employed and married is tough in Asia. Women there are the primary caregivers for husbands, children and, often, for ageing parents; and even when in full-time employment, they are expected to continue to play this role. This is true elsewhere in the world, but the burden that Asian women carry is particularly heavy. Japanese women, who typically work 40 hours a week in the office, then do, on average, another 30 hours of housework. Their husbands, on average, do three hours. And Asian women who give up work to look after children find it hard to return when the offspring are grown. Not surprisingly, Asian women have an unusually pessimistic view of marriage. According to a survey carried out this year, many fewer Japanese women felt positive about their marriage than did Japanese men, or American women or men.

At the same time as employment makes marriage tougher for women, it offers them an alternative. More women are financially independent, so more of them can pursue a single life that may appeal more than the drudgery of a traditional marriage. More education has also contributed to the decline of marriage, because Asian women with the most education have always been the most reluctant to wed—and there are now many more highly educated women.

No marriage, no babies

The flight from marriage in Asia is thus the result of the greater freedom that women enjoy these days, which is to be celebrated. But it is also creating social problems. Compared with the West, Asian countries have invested less in pensions and other forms of social protection, on the assumption that the family will look after ageing or ill relatives. That can no longer be taken for granted. The decline of marriage is also contributing to the collapse in the birth rate. Fertility in East Asia has fallen from 5.3 children per woman in the late 1960s to 1.6 now. In countries with the lowest marriage rates, the fertility rate is nearer 1.0. That is beginning to cause huge demographic problems, as populations age with startling speed. And there are other, less obvious issues. Marriage socialises men: it is associated with lower levels of testosterone and less criminal behaviour. Less marriage might mean more crime.

Can marriage be revived in Asia? Maybe, if expectations of those roles of both sexes change; but shifting traditional attitudes is hard. Governments cannot legislate away popular prejudices. They can, though, encourage change. Relaxing divorce laws might, paradoxically, boost marriage. Women who now steer clear of wedlock might be more willing to tie the knot if they know it can be untied—not just because they can get out of the marriage if it doesn't work, but also because their freedom to leave might keep their husbands on their toes. Family law should give divorced women a more generous share of the couple's assets. Governments should also legislate to get employers to offer both maternal and paternal leave, and provide or subsidise child care. If taking on such expenses helped promote family life, it might reduce the burden on the state of looking after the old.

Asian governments have long taken the view that the superiority of their family life was one of their big advantages over the West. That confidence is no longer warranted. They need to wake up to the huge social changes happening in their countries and think about how to cope with the consequences.

If you find this topic interesting, this article HERE goes into more detail. It is taken from the same edition of The Economist.