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Violence in London http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-14462102

From Radio 4 Today Programme 11 August 2011

0736
MPs are gathering in Parliament after a night without rioting on the streets of England. Home editor Mark Easton previews their upcoming debate about social disorder.

As people recover from four nights of violence in British cities, they are asking what caused the flare-ups. While opinion hovers around theoretical explanations to do with politics and modern society, the realization is gradually dawning that the looting was motivated solely by greed.

Since the advent of television, both American and British society have been driven, through media advertising, by the belief that self-esteem and material possessions are one and the same thing.

Given the example of bankers who regularly pay themselves millions of pounds in bonuses every year and politicians who, with every appearance of innocence, claim expenses amounting individually to thousand of pounds, poor people in Britain are asking where their entitlement lies.

The answer is to be found on the streets of London, Birmingham and Manchester, where – over recent days – members of the public have simply helped themselves to what they consider should be theirs by right.

Until a sense of moral responsibility is restored – not just in Britain’s underclass but across society as a whole – we can expect resentment, anger and further repetitions of social unrest.

The answer to current problems is not just educational. It is a fairer distribution of wealth, recognizing the value of each individual who, collectively, makes Great Britain.

How Globalization Is Creating a New European Underclass - Gabor Steingart, DER SPIEGEL

INTRODUCTION – quite short, usually about 5 or 6 lines. Make sure that you refer back to the title of the essay in your introduction.

MIDDLE – the main part fo your essay. There are two main structures (1) Argumentative: FOR ~ AGAINST (2) Descriptive, chronological, explanatory: First, then, next, finally, in conclusion

CONCLUSION – quite short, usually about 5 or 6 lines. Here you can express a personal opinion. Try to make this your best paragraph. Say something inspirational, brilliant, intelligent. You last paragraph is like the final cadence of a symphony.  It is the last thing the examiner sees.

Things to remember:

1) Make sure you keep to the subject. Write about the question you are asked.
2) Write neatly, with proper paragraphing and punctuation. Double space your lines
3) Make corrections clearly and neatly.

If you make it easier for the examiner to read and understand your work, you will probably get a higher mark regardless of anything else. Don’t make the examiner angry by illegible writing.

4) Avoid the commonest grammar mistakes: think when you use the work “the” – is it really needed. Probably not if you can put the words “en générale” after the noun

5) Be careful with the letter “s” – it is used for plurals and the 3rd person singular present tense

6) Always write adjectives of nationality, day of the week, months of the year with a CAPITAL letter

7) many / few / fewer + PLURAL
much / less / not as much + SINGULAR

9) Avoid contraction in essays. Contractions are used mainly in speech. do not ~ don’t

10) If you are confused by the difference between much and many, use “a lot of” “loads of” “heaps of” “a series of”

11) Link words are used less often by native speakers than you are told to use them by your teachers. Use the list I gave you to check that you know the correct form of the expression and also try to expand your repertoire of links words and expressions. Remember it is: One the one hand …. on the other hand … (a lot of you make mistakes with this)

12) Learn some proverbs and common sayings. Try to work in at least one in your essay. I have given you loads during this course. However, avoid “the burning issue is”, “in a nutshell” - every French students knows these. Try to be original.

Outline of the British Educational System

Pre-school education

Each child in England at the first school term after their third birthday, is entitled to five two and a half hour sessions per week – in some counties this has gone up to 15 hours. This entitlement is funded by the government through the local council. (Source Wikipedia)

Primary education

Schooling is compulsory after the age of 5.

Progress through the system is measured in YEARS from the year of entry.

Primary education encompasses YEARS 1 – 6.

Primary education is divided into two KEY STAGES.

Stage One covers Years 1 and 2. Stage Two covers Years 3 – 6.

At the end of each Key Stage there are national tests of English, Maths and Science.

Achievement is measured in terms of “levels”. By the end of Key Stage 2, most pupils achieve Level 4 (average) or Level 5 (very good). Currently between 25% and 33% of Primary Schools pupils achieve below Level 4, which means that they enter Secondary School with considerable disadvantages in English and Maths.

Secondary Education

Pupils in Secondary Education are usually aged between 11 and 18.

Key Stage 3 covers the ages from 11 to 14. (Years 7 – 9)

Key Stage 4 covers the ages from 15 – 18. (Years 10 – 11)

At the end of Key Stage 3 pupils choose which subjects they wish to study for GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education – roughly equivalent to the Brevet in France, though taken a year later).

At the end of Key Stage 4 (Year 11) pupils take their GCSE examinations in the subjects they have chosen. All pupils do examinations in Maths and English.

A good GCSE result is considered to be 5 passes at Grades A* (A star) to C in 5 subjects or more, including Maths and English. Papers are graded from A* (Excellent) to G and U (unclassified). All grades are considered in line with current notions of political correctness (author’s comment) to be pass marks.

In fact, anything less than a grade C is extremely poor and really no more than officially certified incompetence.

Papers for the various GCSE examinations are produced by Examination Boards and are sold to schools nationally. The cost is borne by government-funded Local Education Authorities, which allocate a budget to each school for staffing and materials.

The quality of national examinations is overseen by the QCDA (Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency), which was set up in order to oversee the standard of public examinations and to offer help to schools.

Under the current Coalition Government legislation is in the pipeline to abolish QCDA, which is expected to happen in early 2012. Until then the QCDA pledges to continue to support schools and colleges in national curriculum assessment and examinations delivery until autumn 2011, after which time these functions will transfer to the Department for Education. (ref.: QCDA website)

After Year 11 pupils enter the Sixth Form (Years 12 and 13) in preparation for A (advanced) Level examinations at GCE (General Certificate of Education). In order to make advanced qualifications accessible to more and more pupils, the end of course examination at the end of Year 13 has been replaced by a series of modules. Pupils who fail a module can retake it until they pass.

Unlike in France, the British Education system does not stipulate which combination of subjects a pupil must take. Pupils usually take from 2 to 4 subjects of their choice. The average is about 2 or 3. Pupils are awarded grades A to F, A-C being regarded as respectable passes. It is not compulsory to study maths or English at A-Level standard.

University Education

At the beginning of Year 12 pupils apply for a university place. This involves filling out an UCAS form. UCAS is a Central organisation through which applications are processed for entry to higher education.

The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge (the most ancient and revered in the land) set their own entrance examinations. With declining standards in education, as more and more pupils are pressed to continue their studies to A-Level and beyond, other less prestigious universities are following suit by setting their own entrance examinations in an attempt to assure high academic standards.

In general, higher education is run like a business enterprise with universities now ‘selling’ courses to students. The price charged is government controlled, but universities in recent months have received permission to charge as much as 9000 GBP per year for a course of study. Since most students do not have sufficient funds to pay this money “up front”, they need to borrow from banks to finance their course of studies and living expenses. This means that they are saddled with a debt of about 30,000 GBP at the end of their studies even before they start to work.

The debt starts to be repaid as soon as an individual earns more than 15,000 GBP per year.

This contrasts starkly with the situation some 50 – 30 years ago when finance for further study was available for able students from the then DES (Department of Education and Science, now the Department for Education).

Charging young people to pursue their studies beyond GCSE and A-Level is a double irony because it not only invites less able students to pursue higher education but also leaves them with few prospects of ever finding a job at the end of it.

Unfortunately opportunities for young job seekers are poor. At the present time there are some 70 graduates (diplomés) applying for just one job. There are also approaching one million young people aged 16 – 24 who are neither in employment, education or training. So called NEETS.

Recent newspaper reports state that universities – not surprisingly – are expecting a drop of 50% in the up-take of university courses in the coming year as pupils seek less expensive or free alternatives to university education.

IN FRANCE

The equivalent of the National Health Service is La Securite Soiciale. When I go to the doctor, I pay him and I am reimbursed by La SS. The cost per visit is about 23€. He gives me a prescription. I go to the chemists. I pay for the medicine. The chemists reads the details off my Carte Vitale and I am reimbursed directly by the SS. Whether you pay and how much you pay depends on the type of medical insurance you have and the nature of the medicine. If there is a shortfall between the cost of treatment and what the SS will pay, it is necessary to take out an additional medical insurance. Children under the age of 16 are added to their parents’ Carte Vitale and don’t get their own card until they reach the age of 16. The CV holds information about your name, address and DOB (date fo birth) and also information about your health and the medicines you have taken and are taking.

IN GREAT BRITAIN

The National Health Service was the achievement of the Labour Government after the Second World War. Health care was originally completely free. You didn’t pay a penny. Obviously the system (the envy of the word) was expensive and various governments made changes according to the economic climate. Now hospital treatment is free. A visit to the doctor is free. But you have to pay for the items on your prescription (about £7 per item) if you are 16 or above or not a senior citizen (OAP – old age pensioner). Pension age in GB is 60m for women and 65 for men.

This number pales into insignificance by comparison with the number of children injured or killed on Britain’s roads.

I envy you because you are so rich and beautiful

Jesus Christ turned water into wine. But we have mobile phones. Modern technology is little short of a miracle.

It was necessary to introduce a Freedom of Information Act in the year 2000 in response to advances in digital technology, especially the ability to store personal information on computers (in databases).

The digital revolution (the power of base 2 mathematics)

To release figures

you treat a patient

to admit someone to hospital

an outpatient – a patient who visits the hospital for treatment but does not stay

to call for (urgent) action

One child out of five

One in five children

He got 7 out of ten in his test

an eating disorder

to conduct a study

figures – chiffres

to involve – imliquer

He was involved in an accident – il a ete implique

to reflect a trend

That’s the point being made here

to touch up a picture

any blemishes are removed

fearful of (literary) = afraid of

to stave something off – to avoid something through vigorous action

“Are education programmes designed to prevent social problems effective in preventing these problems or do they actually encourage people to experiment?”

270 words +/- 10%

You don’t learn by being original. You learn by copying.

Pour Gordon Brown, ministre des finances, être britannique englobe des valeurs louables telles que le ‘fair play’ et un engagement inébranlable pour la liberté. M. Brown demande depuis plusieurs années un débat national sur ce que représente le drapeau national et semble souvent etre le seul à mener le débat. Sa contribution la plus récente était de décrire une campagne, ou les anglais votent pour les lois anglaises, comme un cheval de Troie, ce qui entrainerait la disparition du membre du parlement de K & C ainsi que la séparation de l’Angleterre et de l’Ecosse et éventuellement la dissolution de la GB.

Malheureusement pour M. Brown il a mal choisi son moment. Une série de sondages récents a démontré que de plus en plus d’anglais sont pour une séparation de leurs voisins du nord du pays. Et l’édition la plus récente du BSAS, publiée le 24 janvier et qui paraît annuellement, fournit encore des indices démontre une transformation plus générale.

Par exemple, l’engagement pour les libertés civiques diminuent rapidement. En 15 ans il y a eu une baisse importante du nombre de personnes qui pensent qu’il est pire de condamner un innocent que de pardonner un coupable: de 63% en 1990 à 52% en 2005. Le nombre de personnes qui pensent que la police devrait avoir le droit d’interroger des suspects pendant une semaine sans leur permettre d’accéder à un avocat a augmenté de 9% jusqu’à 25% au cours de la même période, et le support pour les cartes d’identité obligatoire de 37% à 54%.

La notion d’être britannique devient moins populaire. De moins en moins d’habitants de l’ile de GB considèrent « britannique » comme leur première identité nationale. Cela s’explique en partie par le fait que les Écossais et les gallois dans une moindre mesure veulent exprimer leur nouvelle identité nationale. Mais cette explication est incomplète. Les habitants de l’Angleterre eux aussi se voient comme différents. Le nombre de personnes qui choisit l’étiquette « anglaise » comme celle qui décrit le mieux leur nationalité a augmenté aussi.

Non seulement ceux qui ont répondu au sondage sont moins prêts à accepter l’identité britannique mais ils ont du mal à y attribuer une signification distincte. La plupart d’entre eux trouvèrent la question difficile et se sont accrochés à des banalités comme le stoïcisme typiquement britannique et la consommation de thé. Ceux qui se considéraient comme britanniques étaient aussi moins inclins à exprimer un attachement à des institutions comme la monarchie ou le système de gouvernement. Cette semaine Alan Johnson, ministre de l’éducation, a proposé dans nos écoles un enseignement pour expliquer ce que ça veut dire d’être britannique.

Pour certains groupes être britannique a une importance spéciale. Le mot « anglais » semble signifier une identité plutôt ethnique que civique. Un aspect utile de l’étiquette britannique est que les minorités la préfèrent. En 2002 les sondeurs de MORI ont déterminé que 9% seulement des minorités ethniques s’identifiaient étroitement avec l’Angleterre, l’Écosse ou le Pays de Galles, comparé avec 39% de la population en générale.

D’autres formes d’identités sociales se changent aussi, y compris la classe sociale, l’appartenance politique et la religion. Elles sont toutes en voie de diminution. Bien qu’ autant de personnes se considèrent comme membres d’ une classe sociale, il n’y a pas de corrélation avec une collection basée sur ce qu’on croyait etre les avantages de la réparition des revenus. La guerre des classes n’est plus en mode, la marge idéologique entre les deux partis est devenue floue et le nombre de votants – 61% aux élections nationales en 2005 – est presque le plus bas depuis la guerre. Même ceux qui s’identifient avec un parti politique en particulier le font moins énergiquement qu’auparavant.

Le changement le plus frappant se rapporte au nombre de personnes qui prétendent avoir des convictions religieuses. En 1964 non seulement presque trois quarts des Britanniques appartenaient à une religion mais ils assistaient à des offices; en 2005 il ne s’agissait que de trois sur dix.

List of American words not widely used in the United Kingdom

People from Glasgow and Birmingham are wrongly judged to be less intelligent and capable because of their accents, researchers have found.

Researchers found that an “untainted snobbery” still existed over a person’s accent
By Andrew Hough

More respect is given to those who speak Queen’s English, or received pronunciation, than people who use more working class language, they found.

Researchers from King’s College London (KCL) concluded that a class divide and snobbery still exist over regional British accents.

People who speak with Queen’s English accents were more positively perceived than those who spoke with lower social class accents as the latter “tend to be stigmatised by wider society”.

Dr Julia Snell, a sociolinguistics lecturer, who led the latest research, said that while “everyone judges people according to their speech” these perceptions were usually based on social prejudices.

“What we find is that when people evaluate how we are speaking these are social, rather than linguistic, judgements,” she said.

Her research, recently published in the Journal of Sociolinguistics, was featured on Monday on a BBC Radio 4 documentary narrated by Stephen Fry.

In her research, Dr Snell reviewed several studies on dialects, which concluded that “non-standard” accents such as those from Glasgow or Birmingham “consistently rated low for traits like intelligence, competence, confidence and leadership”.

But those with an “RP accent” are often viewed negatively for being elitist and exclusive. As a result some politicians “modify their accents” to convince people they were normal.

“We live in a standard language culture where virtually everybody subscribes to the idea of correctness, where one linguistic form is right and the other is wrong,” she said.

Dr Snell, originally from Middlesbrough, also studied playground speech of schoolchildren, with the results presented at a recent conference on “Language, Education and Disadvantage”.

She found that the differences between the way working-class children and their middle-class counterparts used English were minimal.

During the documentary Fry lamented how over the past 30 years RP, or the “quintessential sound of the BBC”, had almost disappeared.

“Not that I am in any position to pretend any natural identification with the lower orders, sounding as I do. It is obvious that mine is the unmistakable voice of a ‘toff’,” the British actor told listeners.

“But I didn’t always sound like this. No, I used to sound a lot posher.”

________________________________________________
LulzSec: Shetland teen appears in court over hacking

A teenager from the Shetland Islands charged over alleged computer hacking has appeared in court.

Jake Davis, 18, is accused of unauthorised computer access and conspiracy to carry out a distributed denial of service attack on the Serious Organised Crime Agency’s website.

He appeared at City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Monday

District Judge Howard Riddle released him on bail until a Southwark Crown Court appearance set for 30 August.

Davis wore a denim shirt with black T-shirt underneath and only spoke to confirm his personal details.

His arrest on Wednesday by the Metropolitan Police’s e-Crime Unit was part of a police investigation into hacking groups known as Anonymous and LulzSec.

LulzSec has also been linked to hacking attempts on the NHS, Sony, and The Sun newspaper, the court heard.

The UK Serious Organised Crime agency took its website offline for several hours on 20 June after it appeared to be a victim of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. LulzSec claimed responsibility for the attack.

DDoS is where large numbers of computers, under malicious control, overload their target with web requests.

Ryan Cleary, 19, of Wickford, Essex, was charged last month with five offences under the Criminal Law and Computer Misuse Acts, including an alleged hacking attack against Soca’s website.

LulzSec has previously also claimed responsibility for hacking attacks on the US Senate, Sony, the CIA and the Sun newspaper.

A 16-year-old boy from south London was arrested and bailed last week, while the international investigation has also led to sixteen arrests in the United States and four in the Netherlands.

RP (Received Pronunciation)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/routesofenglish/storysofar/posh.shtml

The Story of the BBC

John Reith (1889-1971) was the founder of the BBC.  He was its first general manager when it was set up as the British Broadcasting Company in 1922; and he was its first director general when it became a public corporation in 1927.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/historyofthebbc/resources/in-depth/reith_5.shtml

The Reith Lectures – 1948 – 2011

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/the-reith-lectures/archive/

When I didn’t know owt about posh speak

Why has the best man to run the Metropolitan Police been barred from applying?

David Cameron’s US ‘supercop’ blocked by Theresa May

MONDAY  8th August

They intend to teach Britishness in our schools .

Word order in English is Subject + Verb + Object + Adverbs

Frequency adverbs and the rest

+ always, often, usually, sometimes, rarely (not often), never -

Frequency adverbs go in front of the LEXICAL verb

E.g. I can never arrive at work on time.

Modals and auxiliaries are grammatical verbs

MODALS (or secondary auxiliaries)

can – could
will – would He will come tomorrow. (You are using the PRESENT tense of this modal in order to give the idea of future) He would come if he was able (to).
shall – should
may – might (mean the same)
must – have to

PRIMARY AUXILIARIES (used for ASPECT and NEGATIVES/QUESTIONS)

do/does – did
is/am/are – was/were
have/has – had

I didn’t always smoke. I started recently.

I wasn’t always able to swim. I learned when I was nine.

He is often late
He often smokes a cigar after dinner
There’s nothing like [a good cigar ... ]

Je viendrai > Ego venire habeo

REDACTION

“There are obviously two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live.” Discuss in 270 words +/ 10%

James Truslow Adams quotes (American Historian, 1878-1949)

There are almost one million young people in GB aged 16 – 24 who are not in employment, education or training, so called NEETS

There are 69 graduates applying for any one job according to a report I heard on the BBC

I want you to state the obvious

There is a massive unemployment problem in this country affecting young people. (I am going to put words in  your mouth) The response of successive governents has been to raise the school leaving age, to provide incentives for pupils to stay on at school (they even pay pupils to stay in school after the age of 16) and to continue their studies at colleges and universities after school. Why? To keep young people off the streets and thus to prevent problems – theft, drug taking … etc.

Why do people do this? Because they are bored. The society we live in defines personal worth in terms of income. If people have no means of earning a living, they have little sense of self worth.

RULE BY THE FEW

“Elites, not masses, govern America,” concluded academics Thomas R. Dye and L. Harmon Zeigler in their book The Irony of Democracy. “In an industrial, scientific, and nuclear age, life in a democracy, just as in a totalitarian society, is shaped by a handful of men. In spite of differences in their approach to the study of power in America, scholars— political scientists and sociologists alike—agree that ‘the key political, economic, and social decisions are made by tiny minorities.’”

The idea that a small, wealthy ruling elite—an oligarchy—controls America appears to be well supported by the facts. A disproportionate amount of America’s resources is controlled by a handful of its 265 million population. According to a 1983 study by the Federal Reserve Board, a mere 2 percent of U.S. families control 54 percent of the nation’s wealth, and only 10 percent of the people own 86 percent of the net financial assets. The majority of American families—55 percent—have zero or negative net worth. (My emphasis)This study excluded the net worth of institutions, most of which are owned or controlled by the above-mentioned 2 percent.

This cycle of the rich getting richer while the poor get poorer has been accelerating since the 1960s through both Republican and Democratic administrations. It gained more momentum in the 1990s, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. From 1992 to 1994, the wealthiest 5 percent’s share of the national income rose 14 percent, nearly twice that of everyone else’s gain during the previous twenty-five years.

Current figures are even more gruesome. The average worker’s median pay in 1998—adjusted for inflation—is one full dollar below the 1973 hourly rate. During the past twenty years, the income gap between males with a college education and those with none has grown from 42 percent to 89 percent. Union jobs have borne the brunt of this “downsizing.” In 1970, the unions representing steel and auto workers counted nearly three million members. Today, membership is below one million.

“We have evolved into a two-tier society where people in the knowledge industries prosper, and those without a college education or technical skills fall by the wayside,” noted U.S. News & World Report’s editor-in-chief Mortimer B. Zuckerman.

From “rule by secrecy”, Jim Marrs, Harper, 2001 pp.10/11

I don’t want to force this idea down your throat. I’d rather you thought critically about it.

If people are to regain their sense of self worth, then they need to develop a new set of values which reflect the changes which have taken place in society over the last 60 years. We no longer live in a society where work is the main objective because so many are out of work. People need to learn how to live valuable and meaningful lives without having a job. This is something the government has not, or will not, recognise. The government continues to think in out-dated terms which no longer apply to the society we live in. What we are living through is the death of captialism as it arose from the time of the Industrial Revolution. Look at the current chaos in the finances of the EU and America, the massive overspending by governments who have created resources out of nothing and who have amassed huge debts they can now no longer repay.

——————————

Wednesday 10 August

COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS

David Cameron’s US ‘supercop’ blocked by Theresa May
1.    Who are the following people mentioned in the article: Bill Bratton, Sir Paul Stephenson, John Yates, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Sir High Orde?
2.    Why did Sir Paul Stephenson and John Yates resign?
3.    How did Theresa May block the Prime Minister’s suggestion that Bill Bratton should head the Metropolitan Police?
4.    Why was Mrs May “uncomfortable”?
5.    What reasons did David Cameron have for appointing someone from overseas?
6.    What personal experience did Bill Bratton have that made him suitable for the job?

Why has the best man to run the Metropolitan Police been barred from applying?
DEFINITIONS:
Hansard is the name of the printed transcripts of parliamentary debates in the Westminster system of government. It is named after Thomas Curson Hansard, an early printer and publisher of these transcripts.
The Metropolitan Police Service (the London Police) employs more than 32,500 officers together with about 14,200 police staff, 230 traffic wardens and 4,300 Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs). The MPS is also being supported by more than 3,600 volunteer police officers in the Metropolitan Special Constabulary (MSC) and its Employer Supported Policing (ESP) programme. The Metropolitan Police Services covers an area of 620 square miles and a population of 7.2 million.
Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG (born 11 March 1931) is an Australian-American global media baron and the Chairman and CEO of News Corporation, the world’s second-largest media conglomerate. Owner of The Times, The Sun and the News of the World. The last newspaper (NoW) was closed down after accusations of phone hacking.
Comprehension Questions:
1)    What is meant by “There is only one point of entry into the force”?
2)    What was the Prime Minister’s intention in his address to parliament on 20 July this year?
3)    In what way could Theresa May have been wrong in asking for a British candidate for the job of Commissioner?
4)    What do you understand by the word “establishment”?
5)    What does Mrs May’s decision show about the relationship between Government and the establishment?
6)    What positive characteristics does Bill Bratton have in the eyes of Charles Moore?
7)    Why is the job of the Police Commissioner in London different from policing in America?
8)    What do the initials ACPO stand for?
9)    Why does the writer of the article think that it is a good idea to ask someone from outside to head the Metropolitan Police?
10)    What possible counterarguments are there?
11)    What criticisms does Charles Moore make of the way the police operates?
12)    In what ways does the Police differ from other “leaders of various trades”?
13)    What explanation is offered for the Police’s ineptitude in this country?

VOCABULARY TO SPEAK ABOUT SOCIAL DISADVANTAGE IN BRITAIN

Ian Duncan Smith – social guru

the growth of a more menacing underclass

rioting, looting and arsen

a new generation of disturbed and aggressive young people

it had been thought that under Labour the word ‘underclass’ had been expunged (erradicated) from the lexicon (dictionaty) but it is back

the undeserving and dangerous poor who are buring and robbing their own ciommunities

in 1997 Tony Blair set up a ‘social exclusion unit’

Margaret Thatcher’s underclass – skilless, workless, often homeless and hopless cut of from mainstream society, what was dubbed the entrenched 5%

huge sums were pumped into schemnes

hostile to officialdom (authority)

ambition couldn’t translate into outcome (results)(They are failures)

Tony Blair went down the respect agenda route preempting the rhetortic of responsibility and good manners that is now the language of the Coalition (The Conservatives and the Lib Dems)

countless urban sink estates (like HLM in France, social housing)

teenage lads (boys) baffled (totally confused) and resentful at their lack of opportunity to participate in the consumer society they care so much about

It comes as no surprise that the looters have targeted sports shops

Laissez-faire liberalism of the right economically and the left culturally has left too many people adrift (to drift = dériver, a boats drifts)especially in the inner city without a sufficient sense of structure or meaning in their lives

The problem is a complete lack of responibility, a lack of proper parenting, of proper upbrining, a lack of proper ethics, a lack of proper morals
The social exclusion task force has been wound up  (terminated)

Mr Cameron stresses the importance of discipline in schools, a wellfare system which does not reward idleness
no fixed abode = no single place to live, moving around, vagrant

MONDAY 15 August

How Globalization is Creating a New European Underclass

White trash – trash = American for rubbish

He has a roof over his head

He is better off  - plus aise

Destitute -  penniless, impecunious

The labourer of old – l’ouvrier d’antan

To seek – sought – sought – to look for

Pauper – a very poor person

In hindsight – looking at the past

An outsider – someone excluded from society

To keep to one’s self  - to have no contact with other people

Cocooned – confined

Apartment blocks – leurs cités

Hare – like a rabbit “The hare and the tortoise”

To tap into – to access

The social safety net

A warehouse – a large building where firms keep their stock

To cast a vote

To set apart – differentiate

Sheer lack of interest – complete lack …

To shun – to turn one’s back on, reject

Personal betterment – person  improvement

Likewise – de meme

To match – se conjugue (?), va de paire avec

To shrink – lit retrecir, reduce

To mince words – to avoid telling the truth

To call a spade a spade – to tell the truth in a very open way

In tandem with – en meme temps que

To face off against each other – (unusual expression) confront each other

Outlet – deversoire

Outcome – result

Contraction:

Les citoyens sont a la base de l’innivation

Politicians are facing environmental problems today that transcend (go beyond) national boundaries. However, government from above is not the only motivator of change: society itself is a powerful source of change at a local level.

Totnes in the Southwest of England is a prime example. People there are exploring environmentally friendly ways of living together and using natural resources to the best advantage. More than 30% of the population is involved in thirty projects promoting sustainable development.

Barack Obama is unusual in having recognised the importance of such grassroots developments and has set up an prout office of social innovation within the White House. As for France, we still cling to the classical view of top down government, ignoring the wealth of possibilities our very diversity affords. 125 words

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There are two houses:  the House of Commons and the House of Lords
House of Commons – 650 members

Three main parties: The Labour Party (traditionally left wing) the Conservative Party (sometimes called the Tories and traditionally Right wing), the Liberal-Democrats (the smallest party with about 50 seats, left of centre)

Leaders: Labour – Ed Milliband
Conservatives – David Cameron
Lib Dems – Nick Clegg

Parties are elected for a period of four years.

Britain has no written constitution (unlike Germany, USA and France). Bills are introduced into parliament. They are debated. They are ratified in the House of Lords and then become Acts of Parliament (N.B. the difference between a Bill and an Act of parliament)

In the House of Commons, the Conservatives sit on the Right, the Labour members on the Left and the Lib Dems with whatever party they support.

The Prime Minister answers questions in Parliament every Wednesday at Prime Minister’s question time. When the PM speaks he speaks from the despatch box (A despatch box (alternatively dispatch box) is a wooden box used as a lectern from which frontbench members of Parliament deliver speeches to their parliamentary chamber.)

A despatch box (alternatively dispatch box) is a wooden box used as a lectern from which frontbench members of Parliament deliver speeches to their parliamentary chamber.

The Speaker of the House of Commons chairs debates in the Commons chamber and the holder of this office is an MP who has been elected by other Members of Parliament.

The Speaker is the chief officer and highest authority of the House of Commons and must remain politically impartial at all times. During debates they keep order and call MPs to speak.

The Speaker also represents the Commons to the monarch, the Lords and other authorities and chairs the House of Commons Commission.

THE HOUSE OF LORDS

The House of Lords as an upper chamber has the primary purpose of scrutinising Legislation proposed by the Lower House through the form of debate and through proposing amendments to legislation. Bills are able to be introduced into either House for debate and reading. Peers of the House of Lords may also be in Cabinet. The Speech from the throne is delivered from the House of Lords, a tradition still emulated in other Commonwealth Realms as a reminder of the constitutional position of the Monarch. The House also has a minor Church of England role in that through the Lords Spiritual Church Measures must be tabled within the House.

Unlike the House of Commons, members of the House of Lords are not democratically elected but attained by appointment, or by virtue of their ecclesiastical role within the established church (Lords Spiritual), or through a by-election. The Lords Spiritual are 26 senior bishops of the Church of England. The Lords Temporal make up the rest of the membership; of these, the majority are life peers who are appointed by the Monarch on the advice of the Prime Minister, or on the advice of the House of Lords Appointments Commission.  Membership was once a right of birth to hereditary peers but, following a series of reforms, as of 1 July 2011 (2011 -07-01) only 90, elected by the House from the hereditary peers, members sitting by virtue of a hereditary peerage remain. The number of members is not fixed; as of 6 June 2011 (2011 -06-06)[update] the House of Lords has 789 members (plus 38 who are on leave of absence or otherwise disqualified from sitting), as against the fixed 650-seat membership of the House of Commons.

THE GENERAL ELECTION

England is dividied up into constituencies (political units) and at the General Elections representatives of different political parties represent each constituency and stand for election. The election process takes about two days from beginning to end. Voters go to the poll and cast their votes. The votes are quickly counted and the country waits with baited breath as the results come in.

For a party to form a government, it must have a clear majority. In 2010 the Conservatives did not have a majority without the support of the Lib Dems. David Cameron struck a deal with Nick Clegg, promising a referendum on electoral reform.

The Liberal Party has not been in power since about 1920 and has always claimed that the existing “first past the post” system is an unfair: the party with the most votes gets the most seats. This means that since about 1950, every government has been voted in on less than 50% of the vote. The Lib Dems want to replace the current system by proportional representation. NOTE: Tony Blair was able to go to war against Iraq with only 36% support in the country.

A referendum was held in April this year on AV (the alternative vote – a step towards PR) but it was rejected largely as a protest against Nick Cleggs U-turn on major Lib Dem policies, like not raising student fees.

WHERE DOES THE QUEEN COME INTO ALL OF THIS?

The Queen  (the Monarch) has no legislative power.

The history of this goes back to the beginning of the 17th C when James 1st got into conflict with Parliament. After a long, drawn out conflict, the Monarch was divested of power and now has a merely symbolic role in government.

The Queen opens each session of parliament with the Queen’s Speech.

FAMOUS CHARACTERS

Margaret Thatcher – Conservative Prime Minister 1979 – 1990

Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, PC, FRS (née Roberts; born 13 October 1925) is a former Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom who served from 1979 to 1990.

Born in Grantham, Lincolnshire, Thatcher studied chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford before qualifying as a barrister. In the 1959 general election she became MP for Finchley. Edward Heath appointed Thatcher Secretary of State for Education and Science in his 1970 government. In 1975 she was elected Leader of the Conservative Party, the first woman to head a major UK political party, and in 1979 she became the UK’s first female Prime Minister.

After entering 10 Downing Street Thatcher was determined to reverse what she perceived as a precipitous national decline. Her political philosophy and economic policies emphasised deregulation, particularly of the financial sector, flexible labour markets, the sale or closure of state-owned companies, and the withdrawal of subsidies to others. Thatcher’s popularity waned amid recession and high unemployment, until economic recovery and the 1982 Falklands War brought a resurgence of support resulting in her re-election in 1983.

Thatcher survived an assassination attempt in 1984, and her hard line against trade unions and tough rhetoric in opposition to the Soviet Union earned her the nickname of the “Iron Lady”. Thatcher was re-elected for a third term in 1987, but her Community Charge was widely unpopular and her views on the European Community were not shared by others in her Cabinet. She resigned as Prime Minister and party leader in November 1990 after Michael Heseltine’s challenge to her leadership of the Conservative Party.
Thatcher holds a life peerage as Baroness Thatcher, of Kesteven in the County of Lincolnshire, which entitles her to sit in the House of Lords.

NEIL KINNOCK

Neil Gordon Kinnock, Baron Kinnock (born 28 March 1942) is a British politician belonging to the Labour Party. He served as a Member of Parliament from 1970 until 1995 and as Labour Leader and Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition from 1983 until 1992.
Following Labour’s defeat in the 1992 election, Kinnock resigned as party leader and after his departure from the House of Commons three years later served as a European Commissioner from 1995–2004. Until the summer of 2009 he was the Chairman of the British Council. Kinnock served as President of Cardiff University from 1998 until 2009. Today, he is regarded as one of Labour’s elder statesmen.

TONY BLAIR

Anthony Charles Lynton “Tony” Blair (born 6 May 1953)[1] is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He resigned from all of these positions in June 2007.

Blair was elected Leader of the Labour Party in the leadership election of July 1994, following the sudden death of his predecessor, John Smith. Under his leadership, the party adopted the term “New Labour” and moved away from its traditional left wing position towards the centre ground. Blair subsequently led Labour to a landslide victory in the 1997 general election. At 43 years old, he became the youngest Prime Minister since Lord Liverpool in 1812. In the first years of the New Labour government, Blair’s government implemented a number of 1997 manifesto pledges, introducing the minimum wage, Human Rights Act and Freedom of Information Act, and carrying out devolution, establishing the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales, and the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Blair’s role as Prime Minister was particularly visible in foreign and security policy, including in Northern Ireland, where he was involved in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. From the start of the War on Terror in 2001, Blair strongly supported the foreign policy of US President George W. Bush, notably by participating in the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and 2003 invasion of Iraq. Blair is the Labour Party’s longest-serving Prime Minister, the only person to have led the Labour Party to three consecutive general election victories, and the only Labour Prime Minister to serve consecutive terms more than one of which was at least four years long.

He was succeeded as Leader of the Labour Party on 24 June 2007 and as Prime Minister on 27 June 2007 by Gordon Brown. On the day he resigned as Prime Minister, he was appointed the official Envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East. In May 2008, Blair launched his Tony Blair Faith Foundation. This was followed in July 2009 by the launching of the Faith and Globalisation Initiative with Yale University in the USA, Durham University in the UK and the National University of Singapore in Asia to deliver a postgraduate programme in partnership with the Foundation.

GORDON BROWN
James Gordon Brown (born 20 February 1951) is a British Labour Party politician, who has been a Member of Parliament (MP) since 1983, currently for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath. He served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 until 2010. Brown became Prime Minister in June 2007, after the resignation of Tony Blair and three days after becoming leader of the governing Labour Party. Immediately before this, he had served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour Government from 1997 to 2007. His tenure ended in May 2010, when he resigned as Prime Minister and Leader of the Labour Party. Brown was one of only three people to serve in the Cabinet continuously from Labour’s victory in 1997 until its defeat in 2010, the others being Jack Straw and Alistair Darling.

Brown has a PhD in History from the University of Edinburgh and spent his early career working as a lecturer at a further education college and a television journalist. He has been a Member of Parliament since 1983; first for Dunfermline East and since 2005 for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath. As Prime Minister, he also held the offices of First Lord of the Treasury and the Minister for the Civil Service.

Brown’s time as Chancellor was marked by major reform of Britain’s monetary and fiscal policy architecture, transferring interest rate setting powers to the Bank of England, by a wide extension of the powers of the Treasury to cover much domestic policy and by transferring responsibility for banking supervision to the Financial Services Authority. Controversial moves included the abolition of advance corporation tax (ACT) relief in his first budget, and the removal in his final budget of the 10% “starting rate” of personal income tax which he had introduced in 1999.

After initial rises in opinion polls following Brown’s selection as leader, Labour performed poorly in local and European election results in 2009. A year later, Labour lost 91 seats in the House of Commons at the 2010 general election, the party’s biggest loss of seats in a single general election since 1931, giving the Conservative Party a plurality and resulting in a hung parliament. On 10 May 2010, Brown announced he would stand down as leader of the Labour Party, and instructed the party to put into motion the processes to elect a new leader. On 11 May 2010, Brown officially resigned as Prime Minister and Leader of the Labour Party. He was succeeded as Prime Minister by David Cameron, and on 25 September 2010, he was succeeded as Leader of the Labour Party by Ed Miliband.
July 13th

Why I’m becoming an American (Newsweek)

Vast – enormous
Overjoyed at – ravi de delighted at the idea
Delighted with out new car
Shabby – old and worn out
Shabby life – unattractive, unappealing
My father got cold feet – My father gave up the idea because he was afraid
To vow – to make a solemn promise
To pledge, to swear, to promise
You sign a pledge (written)
You swear an oath (spoken)
Marriage vows –
Traveled (American spelling) = travelled
A blow job –
To splutter – balbutier en envoyant des postillons
To befall (unusual) – to happen to
Ponderous – heavy and clumsy (maladroit)
To crank – to turn a lever to make something work
A crank handle is used to start an old fashioned car
To crank up the economy – to get the economy moving
To get rid of – se debarasser de
To stem from – provenait de
A stem of a flower – tige
To loathe – to hate greatly
To strip – to take everything off
He was stripped of his medals = They took his medals away from him
The dancer stripped in front of the amazed audience
Stripped to the waist
To strip wallpaper
Paint stripper
A stripper – a striptease artist
A mire = a bog, a march (un marais)
To mire in – to roll in something like mud (DO NOT USE)
The Levan (unusual) – the East, the Orient
To fade – faner, s’evanouir, disparaitre
Memories of the past fade (away)
Steady – unmoving
My longing grew steadily more powerful – continually
Hold the horse steady
He’s a steady driver
His work is improving steadily
A tug of war – two teams pull on opposite ends of a rope
Memories of their lost child tugged at the heartstrings
I will have no qualms about telling him the truth
I was beholden (unusual) / indebted to him for his generosity
I want to throw in my lot – I wanted to join, become a part of
A cap – beret
A cap – something you put on top
A capstone = the very top stone of a building
To cap it all the said he had changed his mind and wasn’t coming with us.
He looked me straight in the eye and told me a bare faced lie.
He was so ashamed he couldn’t look me in the eye
The blindfolded pirate was made to walk the plank
The government didn’t want to go into the matter blindfolded (= without knowing all the details, ignorant)
It takes all kinds (to make a world)

Explain what thoughts Simon Winchester had about becoming an American
and comment on them.

Essential points (1) Advantages of America (2) Disadvantages of Britain
(3) Do you agree with Simon Winchester?

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Letter from India – India’s activist author indignant at Bush Visit

Last week Arundati Roy found herself standing at traffic lights in a sleazy district of Delhi, handing out stickers bearing the slogan “Bush quit India” to passing traffic. No one recognised her as the Booker Prize winning writer. It was a curiously anonymous form of protest for a woman adept at using her celebrity to draw attention to forgotten causes. Amid the noisy street demonstrations to protest George W Bush’s trip to India Roy provides a sober but quietly strident voice of opposition to the United States. Such is her fury at the new Indian tilt towards Washington that she is giving the campaign all her energy. Not content with pouring her literary talents into sharp-tongued protest, she has joined students in night time vigils mourning the event and become an enthusiastic distributor of anti-Bush stickers.

Since “The God of Small Things” appeared in 1997, selling more than 6M copies, Roy has moved away from fiction and devoted herself instead to campaigning against the brand of globalisation that Bush’s visit aims to promote.

“What is very, very worrying is that if you look at the record of countries that have cooperated with America that have entered that embrace most of them have been incinerated,” she said. “I’m not talking about the first world but look at Africa and Indonesia, Latin America. See what happens.”

She bridles at being branded anti-American. The term anti-American is usually used by the American establishment to discredit and, not falsely but shall we say inaccurately, define its critics. She wrote in a recent essay. Once someone is branded anti-American the chances are that he or she will be judged before they are heard and the argument will be lost in the welter of bruised national pride. What does the term anti-American mean? Does it mean you are anti-jazz or you are opposed to free speech?

Besides, in this current protest her condemnation of the United States is matched by her criticism of the Indian administration . At a time of surging optimism about India’s economic prospects Roy has become a champion of those left out of the new economic order, those dispossessed by the construction of big dams, the farmers driven to suicide by debts, the emaciated labourers who work through the night by candle-light to lay fibre-optic cables to speed up our digital revolution.

“It is not always easy,” she finds, ” to draw the nation’s attention to their plight. It is almost as if the light is shining so brightly that you do not notice the darkness,” she says.

Adapted form the International Herrald Tribune, 2006.

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British Waning Identity

Gordon Brown is a firm believer in Britishness and deplores current moves to exclude non-English citizens from voting on English affairs.

Recent polls reveal an ever increasing lean towards Scottish, Welsh and English nationalism. Support for British civil liberties seems to be on the decline with more people demanding national ID cards, increased police powers and a stricter judicial system.

So many people have lost a sense of what it really means to be British that the Education Secretary has suggested teaching Britishness in schools.

Only ethnic minorities prefer the more general epithet British to English. Class, political and religious affiliations are also weakening. The latter has changed most dramatically. 75% went to church in 1964 in contrast to only 30% in 2005. (123 words)

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English Language course provided by Travel Management Global in conjunction with Suzanne Sparrow (Plymouth) English Language School

Cow Parsley, skirting a Devon hedgerow

Texts:

Texts are saved in Word 1997-2003 format but will open in Wordpad or another suitable word processor. They may also be downloaded using Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Catenative and Phrasal Verbs [PDF]

Development of the English Language (The Lord’s Prayer) [PDF]

Lewis Carrol [PDF]

Conditional Sentences [PDF]

Geoffrey Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales [PDF]

Jabberwocky (Poem)

You are Old Father William (Poem)

Ralph Vaughan Williams [PDF]

George Butterworth [PDF]

Serenade to Music (Vaughan Williams) [PDF]

Scarborough Fair (Lyrics)

Scarborough Fair (Comments)

William Shakespeare [PDF]

Sonnet 18

Purple Passages from Shakespeare [PDF]

Music:

Scarborough Fair

The King’s New Clothes

The Banks of Green Willow(Butterworth)

The Lark Ascending (Vaughan Williams)

The Lord’s Prayer in Old English

Links:

The Book Depository - a good source of discounted books. Delivery free of charge anywhere in the world.

Deezer – Find and listen to music on line. Songs cannot be downloaded.

And finally:

Time – Who knows when we shall meet again. (Alan Parsons) Lyrics

“Thomas Stephen Szasz (pronounced Saas); born April 15, 1920) is a psychiatrist and academic. Since 1990[1] he has been Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, New York. He is a well-known social critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry, and of the social control aims of medicine in modern society, as well as of scientism. He is well known for his books, The Myth of Mental Illness (1960) and The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement (1970) which set out some of the arguments with which he is most associated.

His views on special treatment follow from classical liberal roots which are based on the principles that each person has the right to bodily and mental self-ownership and the right to be free from violence from others, although he criticized the “Free World” as well as the Communist states for its use of psychiatry and “drogophobia”. He believes that suicide, the practice of medicine, use and sale of drugs and sexual relations should be private, contractual, and outside of state jurisdiction.” – Wikipedia

 See also: <Science of deception> (cf. here) and <Violence in schools>

Further reading:

Naughty Boys: Anti-social Behaviour, ADHD and the Role of Culture (Paperback)

The Mind Game, Phillip Day

· adding
· subtracting
· multiplying
· dividing

in that order and in varying degrees of complexity according to age and natural ability.

Maths is to do with space, bigger and smaller, more and less, the order in which things come and the beauty and elegance inherent in order. A lot of early learning has to do with developing a sense of space, size and number. Nursery rhymes encourage a sense of timing; board and card games develop a child’s ability to count backwards and forwards. Playing these types of ‘maths’ games should be just as much a part of children’s learning at an early stage as reading to them and listening to them read.

The approach to number is progressive and follows roughly the following steps in Years 1 – 4:

1) learning how to count
2) what comes before and what comes after specific numbers (to develop a sense of sequence and order)
3) addition – simple number bonds under 10. e.g. 3 + 4 = 7
4) addition – number bonds up to 20, e.g. 8 + 16 = 14
5) subtraction – under ten, e.g. 7 – 3 = 4
6) subtraction – using numbers up to 20 (e.g. 14 – 9)
7) subtraction – numbers over 20 (e.g. 34 – 9, 34 – 27)
8) multiplication – some times tables are easier than others (e.g. 2x 5x 9x 10x 11x 12x)
9) multiplication – 3x 4x
10) multiplication – 6x 7x 8x
11) multiplication by 10, 100, 1000 …etc
12) multiplication – e.g. 56 x 7
13) multiplication – e.g. 56 x 27
14) division – within the tables 2x – 10x
15) division – short division involving numbers beyond 100, e.g. 151 ÷ 7
16) division – long division 432 ÷ 16 = 27
17) division – long division 433 ÷ 16  = 27 r1
18) division by 10, 100, 1000 … etc

Into this work measurement can gradually be integrated in Years 3 & 4: weight, distance, area, perimeter, time and conversion from one unit to another, e.g. centimetres to metres, hours to minutes.

After a solid foundation in basic number work, more advanced topics can be approached in Years 5 & 6:

1) Fractions
2) Ratios
3) Percentages
4) Decimals

In fact fractions, percentages and decimals are closely related and pupils need to know and understand such equivalences as ¼ , 25% and .25 so that they can exchange one for the other to make word problems simple to solve. For example, it is easier to work out ¼ of 168 than 25%, if that is what the problem requires.

By the end of Year 6, the aim is for pupils to be able to …

1. Recite all tables to 10 x 10, especially for division,
e.g. 63 ÷ 7 = 9, and quickly work out remainders.
2. Multiply and divide decimals by 10 or 100 in their heads,
e.g. 2.61 x 10, 53.2 ÷ 100.
3. Put numbers, including decimals, in order of size,
e.g. 1.06, 0.099, 0.25, 1.67.
4. Use pencil and paper to add and subtract decimals, e.g. 3.91 + 8.04 + 24.56, or 13.3 -1.27.
5. Use pencil and paper to multiply and divide, e.g. 387 x 46, 21.5 x 7, 539 ÷ 13, 307.6 ÷ 4.
6. Cancel fractions e.g. reduce 4/20 to 1/5, and work out which of two fractions is bigger, e.g. 7/12 or 2/3.
7. Work out simple percentages of whole numbers, e.g. 25% of £90 is £22.50.
8. Work out the perimeter and area of simple shapes that can be split into rectangles
9. Solve one and two stage word problems and explain their methods
10. Use co-ordinates to plot the position of points.
11. Understand and use information in graphs, charts and tables.

In my experience many pupils at the beginning of Year 5 do not know their times tables and this is the single main contributing factor in poor performance in maths. This is not simply a question of intelligence but a lack of thorough knowledge as acquired through constant repetition and practice. Parents concerned about their child’s performance in maths should ensure in the first place that their child learns the times tables. A little and often is all that is required.

It is also worth checking that a child knows how to use the basic mathematical operations. Adding is rarely a problem, but many children have a poor understanding of subtraction, multiplication and division in the last years of primary school. And without these basic skills they are poorly equipped to tackle a maths SATs paper at Key Stage2 or to extend their knowledge of maths at Secondary Level.