Here we are, finally. It's the last one. Making first interview next week with a Finnish girl I know, she's quite funny, so it could be ok. This one I won't be in the studio for but it gives me the opportunity to try out all the exciting sound stuff my computer is now armed with, woo!
The guy who is our anchorman is changing, but the new one seems nice too, and also knows how to mail! Great..

------Begins with song from Aryan.. oh which one.. it's about going out until sunrise with your "sun that never sets" in your arms, etc.

Parklife, as a concept rather than a Blur single, is bigger in Iran than it ever was here. Because of government restrictions on the mixing of the sexes in universities and in the workplace, the park has become the place to go looking for your dream partner. The most practised technique is the passing on of mobile numbers on little pieces of folded paper, usually by the best friends of the interested parties – and it’s traditional that the relationship of the giggling go-betweens flourishes alongside that of the intended matchmaking, which makes it good sport for all.

Tehran is rich in parks, ranging from modest affairs - furnished with wooden benches sprinkled evenly with snoozing old men during the daylight hours, and arranged round a random community facility such as a giant chess set - to the vastness of the Park-e Melat, the national park with a several levels comprising flowers and trees, fountains, kiosks, and places for playing all kinds of sport – as well as a million dark, secret nooks, whose possibilities are explored by young unmarried couples with half an eye scanning the horizon for a raid by the morals police. Being caught in such circumstances with someone you can’t explain away as your brother or sister is an arrestable offence, and could mean a flogging, if you don’t have enough to pay the necessary bribe. But the young Iranians just keep on doing it – getting into their best clothes, slapping on the makeup and the hair grease, and heading to the parks for a night out. Often a mixed group of friends will travel divided into boys’ and girls’ cars, with the aim of avoiding the attentions of the police – only to race each other at breakneck speed through the four-lane highways which slice through Tehran, breaking every traffic law east of Istanbul. They secure a parking space for themselves between the thousands of other cars lining the streets around the park by dint of inching backwards and forwards for fifteen minutes with the steering wheel wrenched alternately in one direction and then the other – or simply just by parking two deep.

Young Iranians are geniuses in finding ways of living their lives the way they want in the face of government restrictions. Signs of a western-style youth culture are everywhere, but measures are privately taken in order to make them less objectionable to conservative elements. In the shopping malls, shops selling ever shorter and tighter girls’ clothes display clear messages at the door proclaiming, “This shop welcomes observers of correct Islamic dress”. At a fast-food pizza parlour, where the girls are invariably dressed in bright colours with headscarves so ethereal they might as well not be there, I came across an advertisement for a special offer – a free salad for anyone judged to be dressed modestly enough. Presumably when the police come round, the owners of such places are called upon to point to these signs and shrug sadly as though reflecting on the decline of morals amongst the youth, whilst the profits of their consumerism jingle in their pockets.

Although there is an exciting atmosphere in Iran because of the freedoms which the young are winning, the rise of youth culture brings mixed results. Iran faces rising statistics of drug abuse – Tehran is a large market for the more unsavoury products of neighbouring Afghanistan. Nightclubs are illegal, and drugs are often taken at house parties where strangers meet and drink alcohol.

There is an ugly divide between those who are embracing the western-style reaction to the government, and those who remain more closely, if not entirely, aligned to the conservative line of the government. Girls in chadors and girls in short coats rarely mix – their choice of dress, even inadvertently, makes a political and social statement which can’t be ignored. The western-style youth find the Islamic dress a sign of backwardness, and those who observe it find the western style degrading.

The Iranian government is pro-modernisation, but anti-western. The Islamic revolution itself was the product of the large-scale popular rejection of the forced westernisation schemes of the Shahs. I spoke to Sara, who had worked as a tour guide before September 11th all but wiped the income of international tourism from Iran’s balance sheet. She dressed to the limit, in lime-green short coats and headscarves so transparent and airy that they seemed to be disintegrating before your eyes. She talked to me about the time of the shah, when women who wished to show themselves progressive dressed in miniskirts, trying to look more western than western women. But she was not uncritical of this, noting that whilst this dress was accepted as a sign of modernisation, women were still effectively barred from numerous professions, and the vast majority of women would remain in the home. Within the Islamic Republic, they are steadily progressing into almost professions and areas of society. Sara herself, though she disliked being told what to wear, was not really bothered – “it’s only clothes, and anyway I want to look Iranian”, she said. She hopes that attitudes will be allowed to develop, and the clothes will eventually follow on from that, so that if a change is to take place, it will be more deep-rooted and lasting than has been the case in the past.

The divisions between the people of the Iranian nation are obvious, but it is an ancient nation with a distinct culture and heritage. There are easily as many factors binding Iranians together as there are straining them apart. It’s not impossible to imagine that Iran’s gigantic birth rate – meaning that in 2002, 30% of the population were under 14 – might do something towards unifying them. Those who were born after 1979 have only ever lived in Iran under the laws of the Islamic Republic – and although those laws might be called discriminatory, they discriminate equally against all Iranians together. A young woman from a secular family living under Islamic law now probably has more in common with a young woman from a conservative religious family, who is influenced by satellite TV and the internet, than their respective parents could ever have done. At the moment, were the Islamic system to collapse and a secular government to be put in place, it is likely that vigilante groups would make life impossible outside the home for girls who chose not to dress in the traditional way, let alone forward their integration into society. Iranian opinions on the subject of civil rights have been gathered for a long time around two extreme points, a process aggravated in both directions by aggressive governments and forces of reaction. However, it is to be hoped that young Iranians may come to make use of their force of numbers to bring about more than just an exchange of symbols, but real social change, the desire for which seems to unite them now perhaps as never before. The blacklisting of so many reformist candidates in the run-up to the country’s upcoming elections indicates that the current regime is all too aware of this.

Good news- lots of international students willing to be interviewed about their countries, Britain etc. Should be really interesting. Glad to get lots of replies - but I wrote to the international societies, and got replies from individuals, so bit muddled as to who's from where.

Hello. Lean closer - see, the blog's still breathing - just deeply asleep, full of Christmas chocolate. Think there is no broadcast till next week.