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LIFESTyLE

How to save money on your wedding dayBy Claer Barrett

FT Money’s cover fea-ture showing how a white wedding could easily tip your finances into the red prompted a huge re-sponse from readers who were keen to share their money- saving tips with courting couples.

Reporter Adam Palin revealed how he and his bride saved nearly £9,000 from the cost of their re-cent wedding by getting married in April rather than the height of summer, keeping a lid on the num-ber of guests - who they fed only once - swapping a DJ for an iPod and get-ting their friends and fam-ily to take pictures, make the cake and arrange the flowers.

Our readers agreed that it is possible to cut the cost of a traditional wedding without scrimping on ro-mance - and many of their suggestions could add an element of fun and origi-nality to your ceremony.

We asked people to send in their own experiences, and here is a selection of their ideas. The senders of the three best tips will be receiving a £25 John Lewis voucher.

Food and drinkFor those organising

an Indian wedding in the UK, costs really can soar. Money reader Nikesh Pa-tel wrote in to say that traditionally large guest lists - commonly 350-500 people - and high expec-tations of a lavish cere-mony means cutting costs is challenging.

“My biggest tip, which has saved us thousands of pounds, is to get a mini-mum of five quotes for everything, then negoti-ate with the lowest three playing them off against each other,” he says.

For alcohol, Mr Patel used the website mysuper-market.com to work out the cheapest supermarket

deals, then bought it on-line “using as many dis-count codes as possible.” Many retailers offer £20 off your first online shop if you spend over a certain amount, so he rounded up friends and family to do lots of small orders to get the greatest discount. A £25 John Lewis voucher is in the post.

Hamish Shephard, founder of wedding plan-ning website Bridebook, offered a cracking tip on the FT Money podcast when he suggested buying champagne the Christmas before your wedding to take advantage of super-market special offers. Just don’t drink it before the big day!

Money reader Tracey King suggested a sea-side theme could save cash. “Find driftwood,

shells and pebbles on the beach to create table dec-orations, and for the sit-down meal, get fish and chips from a local busi-ness and buy your plates and cutlery from Ikea as this is cheaper than hiring them,” she writes.

And Paul Nixon says eating less at weddings is good for the dance floor, as well as the wallet. For his wedding in 2018, he’s planning on serving starters as a canape while guests are still standing up at the drinks recep-tion. “The main course will be a sit-down meal with no dessert, as later in the evening we plan to have an old-fashioned ice cream cart,” he says. “I hope there will be more dancing because every-one won’t be completely stuffed.”

outFitsMoney reader Jessica

Hewson, who is getting married this New Year’s Eve, recommends readers try the Bride2Bride web-site, an online market-place for everything from second-hand wedding dresses to bridemaid’s outfits and accessories. We had a look, and there are certainly plenty of bargains to fulfil the tra-dition of “something old, something new.”

And Jane Wildgoose told us how she saved nearly £1,000 by making her daughter’s seven-foot long wedding veil herself. She spent £110 on mate-rials, and then “spent a great deal of pleasure” stitching it all togeth-er. “There was also the amusement for the rest of the family as my husband

was the model while I cut the shape,” she says.

PHotograPHyThe advent of the cam-

era phone means that many young couples don’t see the point of spending thou-sands on a photographer. Another top tip from Ms Hewson: “Ask your guests to take photos throughout and upload them to Insta-gram with a witty hashtag,” she suggests, adding that # i f t h e F T d i d w e d d i n g s would be her top choice. We’re sending her a £25 John Lewis voucher as an early wedding present.

Subscriber Tristan Standish emailed to say he had seen “too many wed-dings become controlled and ultimately ruined by over-expensive photogra-phers” who spend hours taking posed photographs

of the happy couple. He compared this to diners who photograph their food, and concertgoers who vid-eo live performances in-stead of enjoying the mo-ment.

“The bride and groom should be having fun with their friends and family - and chances are that they will catch the real mo-ments better than a photog-rapher who doesn’t know the crowd,” he adds.

Several readers shared his view that online ser-vices like Photobox are a great way of making a pro-fessional wedding album cheaply from everyone’s pictures.

HoneymoonReaders Simon and Julie

Holland got married on a shoestring 30 years ago. Their top tip is to use ac-commodation vouchers to cut the cost of your honey-moon, recalling their own break in the Lake District:

“We discovered vouchers on two cartons of duty free cigarettes we purchased for family members the pre-vious year (1985). These entitled us to free bed and breakfast accommodation if we took a three-course dinner at the B&B each evening. The total cost for one week in a Keswick B&B was £150 including several packed lunches (approximately £410 in to-day’s prices). We managed to get married on a modest budget. Good luck to to-day’s engaged couples.”

To find a good selection of deals online, put “din-ner bed and breakfast” into a search engine. Simon and Julie also added that a thank you costs noth-ing more than the price of a writing pad and some stamps - we liked their tips so much that a £25 John Lewis voucher is winging its way through the post to them.

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Couples from around the world watch a musical in a mass wedding ceremony at the Cheong Shim Peace World Center in Gapyeong, South Korea

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20.06.2016

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oBy Simon Schama

It should not have taken the unspeakable killing of a Member of Parliament to remind us that the passions driving the EU debate are not really about economics. That side of the argument is a no-brainer.

Though Michael Gove, justice secretary and lead-ing Leave campaigner, as-serts that “the British peo-ple are sick of experts” the consensus of economists - not to mention the heads of the Bank of England, the Trades Union Congress, and the International Mon-etary Fund - is that Brex-it will wreak short-term devastation and long-term shrinkage on the economy. Capital flight, a collapsing currency, a vacuum of gov-ernment and the drying up of research funds for sci-ence are not the fantasies of fearmongers but immi-nent realities.

Britain will be locked out of the single market unless it pays almost all that we currently remit and accepts freedom of move-ment. Among Brexit’s mea-gre team of economists, Patrick Minford has airily declared that leaving the EU will “mostly eliminate manufacturing.” So when heading straight for the iceberg it is possible that a shot of dismay may not be such a terrible idea.

On any rational calcula-tion, Remain would have a result. But the campaign is not driven by reason but by emotion. Nor is it really about democracy, despite all the misleading plati-tudes about rule by “face-less bureaucrats.” Most of the arguments about the unelected are uninformed by even a passing acquain-tance with the way the in-stitutions of the EU actual-ly work. The commission proposes, but nothing can be enacted except by the decision of the European Parliament and the Coun-cil of Ministers, the latter composed of representa-tives of the elected govern-ments of member states.

No, the hot buttons of sov-ereignty and immigration are two sides of the same consuming question: who are we? Are we a homoge-neous or a heterogeneous nation? Is our history and our institutions, entirely ex-ceptional, born and shaped by our insularity; have we always been and ought al-ways to remain offshore?

In some version or other,

the “who are we?” question has become the rabid fever of our times. The demoni-sation of immigrants was the kick-starter of Donald Trump’s incendiary cam-paign. But lately he may have run up against the defining truism of Amer-ican exceptionalism, first set out by the French-born writer Hector St Jean de Crèvecœur in Letters from an American Farmer (1782): that Americans can be anyone from anywhere as long as they subscribe to the democratic idea.

Chauvinism and the most narrowly nativist defini-tion of the nation are ag-itating popular furies in Russia, Austria, Hungary and France, where Marine Le Pen looks to be the next president. Surfing the mor-al sewer, the UK Indepen-dence Party’s latest poster, smugly unveiled by its lead-er Nigel Farage, features the slogan “Breaking Point” next to a crowd of desperate refugees. It is an image of unforgettable malignancy which will make anyone with a heart immediately want to spend time in their, rather than his, company.

There is no deep mystery as to why all this is hap-pening. Even as the world enjoys the benefits of glo-balisation: unprecedented free movement of goods, people and ideas; the un-bounded cyber space of the internet, so it also recoils against those same things on the realisation that they

don’t guarantee prosperity or happiness. An immune reaction kicks in, in which psychological and physi-cal defences are mobilised against people stigmatised as alien, dangerous, and unassimilable. It is easier to blame the thousand ills on migrants than to see them as the result of sys-temic changes in economy and society.

In Britain this has hap-pened before. The influx of around 100,000 impov-erished Jews fleeing per-secution and destitution in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century trig-gered the creation of the British Brothers’ League which characterised the immigrants as “the scum of Europe.” The Jews were demonised as diseased, dangerous, unable to speak English, taking jobs from honest British workers and driving down wages. Their membership was about the same as Ukip’s - 50,000 - but they too panicked the Conservative party into de-fensive reaction. Parliament passed the Aliens Act of 1905, restricting their entry. The Liberal party, which had opposed the measure, naturally maintained it once it was in government.

In 1934, with the possi-bility of migrants coming from Hitler’s Reich, The Daily Mail urged readers to “Give the Blackshirts a helping hand.” In 1968 Enoch Powell’s infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech

warned of civil unrest un-less Commonwealth immi-gration was stopped.

All these blustering de-fenders of the island king-dom against the oncoming tide of foreigners imagined themselves to be sustaining and protecting the inherited purity of British institutions and history. But those insti-tutions have been anything but insular in their origins and character. Look at the names of the 25 barons who obliged King John to sign the Magna Carta and you will see that the vast ma-jority were Norman French; the language spoken almost exclusively by the Angevin kings. The Bill of Rights of 1689 which established, ir-reversibly as it turned out, our constitutional monar-chy, only came about as the result of a Dutch invasion, which for 18 months quar-tered 20,000 troops in Lon-don. The ex post facto justi-fication was that William of Orange had been “invited” by a circle of Whig aris-tocrats. But the truth was that William was coming to England, invitation or not, since the life or death of the Dutch Republic depended on Britain joining the strug-gles against Louis XIV.

The Bill of Rights was the product of our being pulled into a European co-alition committed to resist-ing the absolutism which just four years earlier had made Protestantism illegal in France.

Britain was the bene-

ficiary of that act of in-tolerance. Some 50,000 Huguenots, among them Mr Farage’s ancestors, re-settled in Spitalfields, to the enduring benefit of the country. Two centuries lat-er the Jews in much greater plight and numbers occu-pied those same streets. My grandparents moved into Fieldgate Street, once the home of Huguenot silk weavers. In the 1960s my mother, then working in Whitechapel and Stepney, welcomed the next wave of Bengali immigrants; one of whom, she enjoyed tell-ing people, rose to be head cook at Bloom’s kosher salt beef restaurant.

At this point of course Boris Johnson, Mr Gove, Mr Farage and the Brex-iters shout “This is nothing to do with the EU,” bang their tin drums and strike up the “unaccountable Brussels bureaucrat” cho-rus; chanting the £350m-a-week whopper.

But as they well know, immigration allergy is the open secret of its mass appeal. Mr Farage’s post-er was just the giveaway. The choice on Thursday is between an open or a closed Britain; between an outward facing or an in-ward-facing one; between the past and the future, which is why the vast ma-jority of the under-25s want to Remain. The man-tra that we will be liberated from Europe to go out into the world is a disingenuous

fantasy. The WTO makes agreements through the EU. There will be no spe-cial deal for the UK. We will be back of the queue. We will not be reclaiming our sovereignty; we will simply be alone.

If, finally, I invoke the memory of Jo Cox, it is not to exploit her death but to honour her morally mag-nificent and cruelly ended life. She was as homegrown Yorkshire as you could get. But she understood with instinctive decency that to be British was also to be a citizen of the wider world including Europe; that the two identities were mutual-ly sustaining not mutually exclusive; that no man is an island.

She was the impassioned champion of the Syrian people, tormented and up-rooted by their unrelenting war. Her maiden speech said it all: “Our commu-nities have been deeply enhanced by immigration […] what surprises me time again as I travel around the constituency is that we are far more united and have far more things in common with each other than things which divides us.”

She was, she said, a cel-ebrant of diversity. And that, too, is what makes our country a United Kingdom.

The writer is an FT contributing editor.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2016

OPInIOn

Let us write our own history and vote to remain a beacon of tolerance

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FEATURE特刊

Racial and religious issues are coming to the fore of Malaysian politics, including the past two weeks of campaigning

By Shamim Adam and Niluksi Koswanage

Malaysian Pri-me Minister Najib Razak’s coalition won a pair of by-

elections on Saturday with bi-gger majorities, helping him solidify his grip on power.

Voters in Sungai Besar in Se-langor state and Kuala Kang-sar in the northern Perak re-gion opted to keep ruling par-ty lawmakers in the seats, with wider majorities than the 2013 federal election, according to the Election Commission.

The polls came after a helicop-ter crash last month killed in-cumbents from Najib’s United Malays National Organization.

The vote was the first test of public support for Najib on peninsular Malaysia after a year of political turmoil over funding scandals. The size of the wins suggests Najib re-tains support within the broa-der Barisan Nasional coalition led by UMNO.

Still, turnout in the semi-ur-ban constituencies was be-tween 71 and 74 percent for the two seats, lower than the Election Commission’s fore-cast of 75 percent and shy of levels above 80 percent re-corded in 2013. That was due to voters living in other cities and outside Malaysia who di-dn’t return to cast a ballot, official news agency Berna-ma said, citing EC Chairman Mohd Hashim Abdullah.

Former leader Mahathir Mohamad has recently lost traction in his bid to convin-ce party officials that Najib is a liability and will cost them a reign unbroken since 1957. Most UMNO divisional chiefs back the premier, even amid concerns about slowing grow-th and its impact on ethnic Malays, the cornerstone of the party.

“Najib desperately needs these wins,” said Ahmad Mar-tadha Mohamed, dean of the college of law, government and international studies at Universiti Utara Malaysia. “It will validate his position that despite all the problems he’s facing, they are able to win. Otherwise, his status will be in the balance, especially as pre-sident of UMNO.”

Malaysia

Najib wins by-elections, boosting grip on party

Barisan Nasional also secu-red a bigger majority in recent elections in Malaysia’s biggest state of Sarawak, but the vote across the South China Sea on Borneo island was dominated by local issues. Voters on the peninsula are more attuned to the turmoil surrounding the premier.

Najib, 62, has battled gra-ft accusations since July, and denies wrongdoing. He was cleared by the attorney general this year over reve-lations that USD681 million appeared in his accounts befo-re the 2013 election. The mo-ney was a donation from the Saudi royal family and most was later returned, the gover-nment said. The premier has also been embroiled in probes into the finances of troubled state fund 1Malaysia Develop-ment Bhd.

“Now, with these two huge majority wins, and BN’s land-slide 72 out of 82 seat Sarawak election win last month, the people have shown their con-fidence for and trust in BN,” Najib said early yesterday in a

statement. “They rejected Tun Mahathir’s lies, they rejected his unworkable coalition of former enemies, and they re-jected the incoherent opposi-tion.”

Ministers in Najib’s cabinet made daily trips to the two constituencies before elec-tion day, shaking hands and at times handing out bags of rice and other aid to the poor. They sought to counter an opposition focusing on ques-tions about Najib’s credibility. In a Twitter post on Friday, Najib told voters not to taken in by what he called the oppo-sition’s games.

“I support the opposi-tion more than BN, but you have to also think about who has better access to the go-vernment, who can get more things done and who can im-prove your life,” said Mei, an ethnic Chinese fruit seller in Sekinchan town in Sungai Be-sar who would give only a par-tial name. “You have to look out for your own interests, and not what the prime minis-ter did or didn’t do.”

A divided opposition made it easier for BN coalition to win, and the presence of multiple candidates assisted it.

Two opposition groups ran against UMNO for both seats, while an independent candi-date turned Kuala Kangsar into a four-cornered battle. UMNO won Sungai Besar in 2013 in a straight fight, and Kuala Kangsar in a three-way race, both by narrow margins.

UMNO held Sungai Besar by 9,191 votes, compared with a 399 vote majority in 2013. In Kuala Kangsar, its candidate - the widow of the parliamenta-rian who died in the helicopter crash - had 6,969 more votes than her nearest rival even though her Islamic mourning period meant she couldn’t campaign in public.

Racial and religious issues are coming to the fore of Ma-laysian politics, including the past two weeks of campaig-ning. UMNO, in power since independence, won the 2013 ballot by its slimmest-ever result as Chinese and In-dian electors deserted Najib’s

coalition.Since then, Najib has wooed

the Malay majority. He’s rea-ched out to the opposition Parti Islam se-Malaysia and proposed they work to promo-te Islam’s doctrines. PAS, whi-ch is pushing for the Islamic penal code to be implemented in a state it controls, also com-peted on Saturday.

Under PAS’s hudud laws, adulterers and apostates cou-ld face death by stoning, while those found guilty of theft cou-ld have their hands amputated.

About 68 percent of voters in Kuala Kangsar are Malay, 24 percent are Chinese, and Indians and other ethnicities make up the rest, according to the Bernama news agency. In Sungai Besar, Malays make up about 67 percent of voters, while 31 percent are Chinese and the rest minority groups.

“The infighting within the opposition dampened the mood,” said Ibrahim Suffian, an analyst at the Merdeka Center for Opinion Research in Kuala Lumpur. “A lot of young voters, the outstation voters just didn’t come back to vote, there is a lot of disillu-sionment,” he said.

“Many Chinese are not happy with the way the opposition has been going. BN has used the infighting to their advan-tage, and Najib is on much fir-mer ground than he was just after the general elections in 2013 even with the 1MDB is-sues,” Ibrahim said. Bloomberg

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak

20.06.2016 mon

F4 NATURE

NATUREINTERvIEw

自然

The 10 most toxic plants for cats are as follows:

1. Tiger LiLiesTiger lilies are probably the most poiso-

nous plants for cats. All the parts of the plant are toxic, and able to cause renal failure. Cats that have ingested this plant will vomit, be lethargic, lack appetite or have increased thirst. If left untreated, the poisoning will cause kidney failure within 24 to 72 hours after ingestion.

2. raw PLanTs from The Potato Family 

The potato family of plants, scienti-fically known as Solanaceae or deadly nightshade, is potential poison for cats. The toxic substance is called Glycoalka-noid Solamine, and may be found in the leaves and stems. Some plants from this family are the potato, the tomato, the eggplant, chili pepper or paprika. If you grow these, keep your cat away from it.

3. Poison ivyPoison ivy causes ugly rashes and may

be really toxic to cats. Not only poison ivy is poisonous to cats, but also Boston ivy, English ivy, Glacial ivy and Heart ivy.

4. misTLeToeCats ingesting mistletoe may get poiso-

ned. The berries are the most toxic part.

5. ChrysanThemumThe chrysanthemum is a common hou-

seplant that may poison your pet. Even if the cat touches the plant with his skin or mouth, there will be allergic reactions.

6. CreePing and weePing figThe creeping fig and the weeping fig are

tempting for the cat and can be toxic if ingested in high quantities.

7. azaLeaAzalea is frequently used as a landsca-

pe plant. Ingesting leaves or flowers may cause vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, cramps or respiratory and kidney problems in your cat.

8. JuniPer shrubsThe ingestion of too many juniper shru-

bs can lead to abdominal pain and kid-ney problems.

9. daffodiLs and buLb PLanTs

Daffodils are poisonous for cats, espe-

cially the bulbs. They will cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and may be even fa-tal. Cats may be at risk when ingesting any type of bulb plants (i.e., tulips).

10. onion PLanTsIf you grow onions in your garden, the cat

shouldn’t have access to this place. The to-xic substance in these plants is the N-pro-pyl disulphide, which may cause Heinz Body Anaemia. Garlic is also toxic for pets.

Other toxic plants include aloe vera, asparagus fern, cladium, elephant ears, English holly and the umbrella plant.

ask the Vet:Royal Veterinary CentreTel: +853 28501099, +853 28523678Fax: +853 28508001email: info@rvcmacau.comwww.facebook.com/rvcmacauwww.royalveterinarycenter.com

By Dr Ruan Du Toit Bester

10 Most toxic Plants for cats

ASK THE VET

Hope this info helps prevent poisoning of your cat

Till next weekDr Ruan

Flora Lichtman

HeRe’s a scary thought: What if we’re too late to stop de-

vastating climate change? We talk a lot about prevention. Harvard physicist David Keith says we should be thinking about triage.

Keith is researching solar geoen-gineering — spraying aerosols into the upper atmosphere that act as tiny mirrors, reflecting some sun-light back to space and cooling the planet. His lab built a mini-atmos-phere to test how different aero-sols might react.

While other countries have re-search programs on solar geoengi-neering, in the U.S., just studying it has been controversial. Critics argue that the potential unknown effects could be dire and that a cooling remedy could weaken our will to curb emissions.

Keith says we need to know more about geoengineering before we dismiss it.

“It’s a deep question,” he says, “why people seem to be more con-cerned about deliberate tinkering that actually aims to reduce en-vironmental risk than they are about all sorts of hideous ways we’ve damaged the environment.” Bloomberg

Brian Parkin

All new cars registered in Germany need to be

emissions free by 2030 at the latest to help meet pollu-tion reduction goals, a senior government official said.

Germany’s pledge to cut carbon dioxide output by 80 percent to 95 percent by 2050 will be in jeopar-dy unless the country ra-dically reduces transporta-tion pollution, said Deputy Economy Minister Rainer Baake. Since cars typically have a 20-year lifespan, registrations of new diesel and gasoline cars needs to be cut over the next 15 years, he said.

“Fact is there’s been no reduction at all in CO2 emissions by transport since 1990,” said Baake at a Tagesspiegel newspa-per climate forum in Ber-lin. “We don’t have any answers to cut truck emis-sions right now but we do have answers for cars.”

Germany is lagging behind cuts to greenhou-se gas that transportation emits, which according to the Environment Ministry account for a fifth of the country’s carbon dioxide

Germany needs emissions-free car fleet by 2030, official says

a climate fix so risky, critics say don’t even study it

pollution. The sector needs to cut some 10 million me-tric tons of carbon dioxide over the next 5 years from a tally of about 165 million tons last year. While the country has committed to reducing emissions 40 percent by 2020 compared with 1990 levels, its adop-tion of electric cars has been sluggish.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government pledged subsi-dies this year to speed e-car sales, a move that was acce-lerated by Volkswagen AG’s emission-manipulation scandal. Buyers of all-elec-tric and hybrid vehicles can claim cash incentives, mo-ves already in operation in countries including China, Norway and France. The program may spark sales of about 500,000 electric cars

by 2020, according to the Environment Ministry.

Purely electric vehicles as a portion of all cars on Ger-man roads may reach about 8 percent in 2025 from 0.6 percent this year, according to a forecast of the Center of Automotive Management institute. The government has so far stuck with a plan to put a million hybrid and bat-tery plug- ins on the road by 2020 and 6 million by 2030

Electric car sales still re-main a fraction of all Ger-man vehicle sales. About 130,000 hybrids and 25,000 all-electric cars were registered on German roads as of January com-pared with 30 million ga-soline cars and 14.5 million diesels, according to the KBA vehicle registration authority. Bloomberg

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Rainer Baake

David Keith