Barometer | 28 July 2016

Capitalist faces

A report by the Business and Pensions select committees described Philip Green as the ‘unacceptable face of capitalism’. That was a description first coined by Edward Heath as Prime Minister in 1973 and applied to Tiny Rowland.
— Rowland at the time was engaged in a boardroom battle with fellow directors of Lonrho, the mining conglomerate of which Rowland was managing director. They accused Rowland of making decisions without consulting them. Rowland, for his part, dismissed non-executive directors as ‘Christmas tree decorations’.
— Rowland had also offended Heath’s government by breaching sanctions against Rhodesia, then under unofficial independence declared by Ian Smith.

Olympic boycotts

Russia narrowly avoided being banned entirely from the Olympics in Rio. Bans and boycotts used to be far more common. How has the number of participating countries grown?

1960 Rome	83
1964 Tokyo	93
1968 Mexico City	112
1972 Munich	121
1976 Montreal	92 (African boycott)
1980 Moscow	81 (US-led boycott over Afghanistan)
1984 Los Angeles	140 (Soviet bloc retaliatory boycott)
1988 Seoul	159
1992 Barcelona	169
1996 Atlanta	197
2000 Sydney	199
2004 Athens	201
2008 Beijing	204
2012 London	204
2016 Rio de Janeiro	206