How can the train operators possibly justify yet another increase to rail passenger fares? It has become a grimly reliable annual ritual: every January the cost of travelling by train rises, imposing a significant extra burden on those who have no option but to use the rail network to get to work or otherwise. This year’s rise, an average of 2.7 percent, may be a little bit lower than last year’s, but it is still well above the official Consumer Price Index (CPI) measure of inflation(通货膨胀).
Successive governments have permitted such increases on the grounds that the cost of investing in and running the rail network should be borne by those who use it, rather than the general taxpayer. Why, the argument goes, should a car-driving pensioner from Lincolnshire have to subsidise(补贴)the daily commute(通勤)of a rail traveller from Surrey? Equally, there is a sense that the sufferings of commuters in the South East, have received too much attention compared to those who must endure the relatively poor infrastructure of the Midlands and the North.
However, over the past 12 months, those commuters have also experienced some of the worst rail strikes in years. It is all very well train operators boasting about the improvements they are making to the network, but passengers should be able to expect a basic level of service for the substantial sums they are now paying to travel. The responsibility for the latest wave of strikes rests on the unions. However, there is a strong case that those who have been worst affected by industrial action should receive compensation for the disruption they have suffered.
The Government has promised to change the law to introduce a minimum service requirement so that, even when strikes occur, services can continue to operate. This should form part of a wider package of measures to address the long-running problems on Britain’s railways. Yes, more investment is needed, but passengers will not be willing to pay more indefinitely if they must also endure cramped, unreliable services, along with regular chaos when timetables are changed, or planned maintenance is managed incompetently. The threat of nationalisation may have been seen off for now, but it will return with a revenge if the justified anger of passengers is not addressed in short order.
1. The author holds that this year’s increase in rail passengers fares ________.| A．creates extra burden on taxpayers. |
| B．has kept pace with inflation. |
| C．is beyond the expectation of commuters |
| D．remains an unreasonable practice. |
| A．Compensations are to be given to the commuters affected by the strikes. |
| B．A minimum service requirement will be likely to settle the railway problems. |
| C．In terms of service, there is a conflict between train operator’s claim and the reality. |
| D．Train operators have suffered huge losses owing to the strikes. |
| A．the loss of investment. | B．the collapse of operations. |
| C．a reduction of revenue(收入) | D．a change of ownership. |
| A．Who Are to Blame for the Ever-rising Fares? |
| B．Rail Strikes Need to Be Stopped |
| C．Enhance Railway Service, Ease Passenger Anger |
| D．Ever-rising Fares Are Unreasonable |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】All schoolchildren should have “happiness” lessons up to the age of 18 to fight growing levels of depression, according to a senior government adviser.
“Pupils should study subjects such as how to manage feelings, attitudes to work and money, channeling negative emotions and even how to take a critical view of the media,” said Lord Richard Layard, a Labor peer and professor of economics at the London School of Economics.
The proposal comes only days after the Government said that lessons in manners ---including respect for the elderly and how to say “please” and “thank you” --- should be taught in secondary schools to combat bad behaviors.
Lord Layard, the director of the wellbeing program at the LSE’s Center for Economic Performance, said: “Learning hard things takes a large amount of practice. To play the violin well takes 10,000 hours of practice. How can we expect people to learn to be happy without large amounts of practice and repetition?”
It is believed that at least two percent of British children under 12 now struggle with significant depression. Among teenagers, the figure rises to five percent. A UNICEF study involving 21 developed countries showed that British children were the least satisfied with their lives, while the World Health Organization predicts that childhood psychiatric(精神的)disorders will rise by 50 percent by 2020.
In a speech at Cambridge University, Lord Layard said that the Government’s lessons in manners did not go far enough. “We need a devotion to producing a major specialism in this area, with a serious teacher training program,” he said.
However, happiness lessons have been criticized by academics. Frank Furedi, a sociology professor at Kent University and author of Therapy Culture, said: “In pushing emotional literacy(素养), what some teachers are really doing is abandoning teaching. They are giving up and talking about emotions instead, so that children value all this activity more than maths, English or science. What is amazing about this is that time and time again, research says that it does not work.”
1. What does Lord Layard think of the Government’s lessons in manners?| A．They can hardly meet the special demands of education. |
| B．They are quite enough to the special the present problem. |
| C．They only focused on a major specialism. |
| D．They will probably end in failure. |
| A．They suffer depression at an earlier age. |
| B．They are the least happy among the 21 developed countries. |
| C．They are the easiest to suffer childhood psychiatric disorders. |
| D．Their standard of living is the lowest among the 21 developed countries. |
| A．the British Government hasn’t fully realized the problems with British students |
| B．Lord Layard thinks little of the Government’s lessons in manners |
| C．British students are not well---behaved enough. |
| D．lessons in manners have brought about positive changes in British students |
| A．Analysis. | B．Description. | C．Argument. | D．Comparison. |
| A．happiness lessons should be taught to children |
| B．happiness lessons are just a waste of time |
| C．formal teaching can go side by side with happiness lessons |
| D．formal teaching should not give away to happiness lessons |
【推荐2】American families are accustomed to settling in faraway places, which has been a national phenomenon. Decades of data, including a more recent Gallup study, characterizes the US as one of the most geographically mobile countries in the world. “About one in four US adults(24 percent) has reported moving within the country in the past five years.” the reported noted. With the exception of Finns(23 percent) and Norwegians(22 percent), Americans move considerably more than their European peers.
Though some may move for love or family, the major reason why Americans choose to move around is, unsurprisingly, related to work. Citing data from the Current Population Survey, a post on the blog of the New York Fed noted that between 1998 and 2013, “slightly more than half of interstate(州际的) migrants said they moved for employmentrelated reasons—a category that includes moves undertaken for new jobs, job transfers, and easier commutes(通勤).”
The seeking of opportunity, particularly for an immigrant nation, is a national mythology(神话) as well as an emotional attachment to work. A new working paper analyzed by Ben Steverman at Bloomberg suggests that workers in the US now “put in almost 25 percent more hours than Europeans” in a given year. This figure has steadily risen since the 1970s, when the hours logged by workers in Western Europe and the US were roughly the same.
There are, of course, some internal factors. The US is much vaster than most European countries, plus it boasts(拥有) a common language. It is considered to be a sign of an efficient labor market that US workers can be persuaded to move to regions where there is a steady growth in jobs, such as the Sun Belt in recent years. And while American workers often have fewer labor protections than their European counterparts, as a report by the World Bank noted in 2012, American “labor laws give employers the power to fire, hire, or relocate(重新安置) workers according to their needs”， a flexibility that is thought to aid economic growth. The World Bank report added that the occupation of the average US employee in 2006 was 4 years, compared to 10 years in the European Union.
Nevertheless, while Americans remain excessively mobile, FaithKarahan and Darious Li at the New York Fed are the latest to note that US workers are moving around less than before. During the 1980s, 3 percent of workingage Americans relocated to a different state each year; that figure had been cut in half by 2010. “While part of the decline can be attributed to the Great Recession，” the authors suggest, “this
So what accounts for this phenomenon? A roundup of theories by Brad Plumer at The Washington Post included the aging of the US workforce, the further rise of twoincome households, the burdens of real estate, evolving workplace culture, as well as the flat line of wages, which makes moving away for a job, on average, a less rewarding financial proposition.
Karahan and Li put much stock in the effects of an aging workforce, to which they attribute at least half of the decline in interstate migration. “In short, a young individual today is moving less than a young person did in the 1980s because of the higher presence of older workers，” they write, suggesting that employers have shifted their employment tactics(策略) to adapt to the changing demographics(人口统计数据) of the workforce. Needless to say, movies about this era in American life, in which fewer people set out to start lives in wideranging places, will probably be much less exciting.
1. According to the passage, in the past five years, Americans have moved ________.| A．relatively less than the British | B．less frequently than Italians |
| C．slightly more than Norwegians | D．considerably more than Finns |
| A．Americans choose to move mainly for work and family. |
| B．Americans have a very strong interest in work. |
| C．Americans invested more time in work than Europeans in 1975. |
| D．Americans tended to move to Europe between 1998 and 2013. |
| A．There is a common language in the US. |
| B．The US is much vaster than most European countries. |
| C．American labor laws give employers more freedom to deal with them. |
| D．They are offered more efficient labor protections. |
| A．the Great Recession |
| B．the decline of workingage Americans' interstate migration |
| C．the reduction in the number of workingage Americans |
| D．Americans' tendency to remain mobile |
| A．By sticking to their previous policies. | B．By adjusting to it. |
| C．By improving their employees' job skills. | D．By raising employment standard. |
| A．curious | B．strange | C．confused | D．disappointed |
【推荐3】Scientists often complain that people are not rational (理性的) in their opposition to technologies such as nuclear power and genetically modified (GM) crops. From a statistical perspective, these are very safe, and so peopled fear can be explained only by emotion, strengthened by ignorance. Electricity from nuclear power has led to far fewer direct deaths than has coalfired power, yet many people are afraid of it, and hardly anyone is afraid of coal plants. Similar arguments can be made about GM crops, which studies have shown are generally safe for most people to eat.
Scientific illiteracy (无知) may be part of the problem. Most of us are afraid of things we don’t understand, and studies have shown that scientists tend to be more accepting of potentially risky technologies than laypeople. This suggests that when people know a lot about such technologies, they are usually reassured.
But there’s more to the issue than meets the eye. It is true that many of us fear the unknown, but it is also true that we don’t care enough about routine risks. Part of the explanation is complacency: we tend not to fear the familiar, and thus familiarity can lead us to underestimate risk. The investigation into the Deepwater Horizon blowout and oil spill (原油泄漏) in 2010 showed that complacency—among executives, among engineers and among government officials-was a major cause of that disaster. So the fact that experts are unworried about a threat is not necessarily reassuring.
Scientists also make a mistake when they assume that public concerns are wholly or even mostly about safety. Some people object to GM crops because these crops facilitate the increased use of chemicals. Others have a problem with the social impacts that switching to GM organisms can have on traditional farming communities or with the political implications of leaving a large share of the food supply in the hands of a few corporations.
Geoengineering (地球工程学) to lessen the impacts of climate change is another example. Laypeople as well as scientists are more concerned about oversight (监管) than safety. Who will decide whether this is a good way to deal with climate change? If we undertake the project of setting the global temperature by controlling how much sunlight reaches Earth’s surface, who will be included in that “we” and by what process will the “right” global temperature be chosen?
Can we say which group’s view is closer to an accurate assessment?
1. The underlined word “complacency” in Paragraph 3 probably means ________.| A．overconfidence | B．prediction |
| C．underestimation | D．carelessness |
| A．safety is not the whole concern of the public |
| B．geoengineering is highly recognized by scientists |
| C．the public are unnecessarily troubled by climate change |
| D．lessening the impacts of climate change is a great challenge |
| A．Scientific illiteracy is a major cause of disasters. |
| B．The safety of technologies can be accurately assessed. |
| C．Scientists misjudge people’s opposition to technologies. |
| D．People are unworried about risks with proper oversight. |
| A．Ignorance or Safety |
| B．Who Is Rational About Risk |
| C．Why Can’t People Trust Technology |
| D．Should Scientists Have a Say in Risk |
【推荐1】Since the novel corona-virus (新冠病毒) outbreak, many people have been forced to stay at home for long periods of time to protect themselves from the virus. This has given people more free time to learn new skills and find different ways to entertain themselves.
Some of these activities include things like singing, learning to cook and ordering fresh food online. All of these things can be done in the palm of your hand with mobile apps.
Before, young people would go outside and meet friends at karaoke bars (卡拉OK酒吧). Now, friends can meet and sing on the mobile karaoke app Changba. “The Changba app not only gives me the chance to share my songs with friends, but also lets me sing whatever I like at home.” said an app user.
Some people have also taken up cooking as a new hobby to pass the time. You don’t need to attend culinary (烹饪的) school, thanks to apps like Xiachufang and Ecook, which make it easier for those who want to learn how to cook. These apps provide a platform for users to look up different recipes (菜谱) and to share their own recipes with others. “Using this app, I have learned many new and healthy dishes which help me eat better.” an app user commented on the app’s website.
To help people avoid crowded places like grocery stores, apps that deliver (递送) goods right to your door have also become very popular. “It is obvious that the epidemic (疫情) has attracted new groups of consumers (消费者), such as elderly people, who originally didn’t belong to our target user group.” Zhang Yi, an analyst from the market research company, said.
Indeed, during this special time, these apps have opened up a whole new world of opportunities for people of all ages and backgrounds.
1. According to the passage, what can people do during the period of novel corona-virus outbreak?| A．Singing at karaoke bars. | B．Learning to cook at home by apps. |
| C．Buying food in crowded markets. | D．Meeting friends at restaurants. |
| A．It is more user-friendly than karaoke bars. |
| B．It helps users to discover their singing talent. |
| C．It provides chances for users to share songs with friends. |
| D．It allows users to improve their singing skills fast. |
| A．They have lost many young customers. |
| B．They have opened culinary classes for their users. |
| C．They have more elderly users than before. |
| D．They have caused many grocery stores to close. |
| A．①--②--③④⑤--⑥ | B．①--②③④⑤⑥ | C．①--②③④⑤--⑥ | D．①②③④⑤--⑥ |
【推荐2】Public distrust of scientists stems in part from the blurring of boundaries between science and technology, between discovery and manufacture. Most governments, perhaps all governments, justify public expenditure on scientific research in terms of the economic benefits the scientific enterprise has brought in the past and will bring in the future. Politicians remind their voters of the splendid machines “our scientists” have invented, the new drugs to relieve old disorders, and the new surgical equipment and techniques by which previously unmanageable conditions may now be treated and lives saved. At the same time, the politicians demand of scientists that they tailor their research to “economics needs”, and that they award a higher priority to research proposals that are “near the market” and can be translated into the greatest return on investment in the shortest time. Dependent, as they are, on politicians for much of their funding, scientists have little choice but to comply. Like the rest of us, they are members of a society that rates the creation of wealth as the greatest possible good. Many have reservations, but keep them to themselves in what they perceive as a climate hostile to the pursuit of understanding for its own sake and the idea of an inquiring, creative spirit.
In such circumstances no one should be too hard on people who are suspicious of conflicts of interest. When we learn that the distinguished professor assuring us of the safety of a particular product holds a consultancy with the company making it, we cannot be blamed for wondering whether his fee might conceivably cloud his professional judgment. Even if the professor holds no consultancy with any firm, some people may still distrust him because of his association with those who do, or at least wonder about the source of some of his research funding.
This attitude can have damaging effects. It questions the integrity of individuals working in a profession that prizes intellectual honesty as the supreme virtue, and plays into the hands of those who would like to discredit scientists by representing them as corruptible. This makes it easier to dismiss all scientific pronouncements, but especially those made by the scientists who present themselves as “experts”. The scientist most likely to understand the safety of a nuclear reactor, for example, is a nuclear engineer, and a nuclear engineer is most likely to be employed by the nuclear industry. If a nuclear engineer declares that a reactor is unsafe, we believe him, because clearly it is not to his advantage to lie about it. If he tells us it is safe, on the other hand, we distrust him, because he may well be protecting the employer who pays his salary.
1. What is the chief concern of most governments when it comes to scientific research?| A．The decline of public expenditure. | B．Quick economic returns. |
| C．The budget for a research project. | D．Support from the voters. |
| A．They realize they work in an environment hostile to the free pursuit of knowledge. |
| B．They know it takes incredible patience to win support from the public. |
| C．They think compliance with government policy is in the interests of the public. |
| D．They are accustomed to keeping their opinions secrets to themselves. |
| A．some of them do not give priority to intellectual honesty |
| B．sometimes they hide the source of their research funding |
| C．they could be influenced by their association with the project concerned |
| D．their pronouncements often turn out to be short-sighted and absurd |
| A．Scientists themselves may doubt the value of their research findings. |
| B．It may wear out the enthusiasm of scientists for independent research. |
| C．It makes things more trivial for scientists to seek research funds. |
| D．People will not believe scientists even when they tell the truth. |
【推荐3】Many scientists today are convinced that life exists elsewhere in the universe---life probably much like that on our own planet. They reason in the following way.
As far as astronomers can determine, the entire universe is built of the same matter. They have no reason to doubt that matter obeys the same laws in every part of the universe. Therefore, it is reasonable to guess that other stars, with their own planets, were born in the same way as our own solar system. What we know of life on earth suggests that life will arise wherever the proper conditions exist.
Life requires the right amount and kind of atmosphere. This eliminates(除去) all those planets in the universe that are not about the same size and weight as the earth. A smaller planet would lose its atmosphere; a larger one would hold too much of it.
Life also requires a steady supply of heat and light. This eliminates double stars, or stars that flare up suddenly. Only single stars that are steady sources of heat and light like our sun would qualify.
Finally, life could evolve(进化) only if the planet is just the right distance from its sun. With a weaker sun than our own, the planet would have to be closer to it. With a stronger sun, it would have to be farther away.
If we suppose that every star in the universe has a family of planets, then how many planets might support life? First, eliminate those stars that are not like our sun. Next eliminate most of their planets; they are either too far from or too close to their suns. Then eliminate all those planets which are not the same size and weight as the earth. Finally, remember that the proper conditions do not necessarily mean that life actually does exist on a planet. It may not have begun yet, or it may have already died out.
This process of elimination seems to leave very few planets on which earthlike life might be found. However, even if life could exist on only one planet in a million, there are so many billions of planets that this would still leave a vast number on which life could exist.
1. The existence of life depends on all of the following factors EXCEPT .| A．the right amount of atmosphere | B．our own solar system |
| C．steady heat and light | D．the right distance from the sun |
| A．The planet must be as big and heavy as the earth. |
| B．Proper conditions are essential to the existence of life. |
| C．Double stars can provide steady light and heat. |
| D．The distance between a planet and its sun should be right. |
| A．Most of the planets of the stars. | B．Stars similar to our sun. |
| C．Planets similar to the earth. | D．Planets with proper conditions. |
| A．it is impossible for life to exist on planets. | B．earthlike life could only exist on a few planets. |
| C．life could exist on only one planet in a million. | D．life could exist on a great number of planets. |
