In order to “change lives for the better” and reduce “dependency,” George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, introduced the “upfront work search” scheme. Only if the jobless arrive at the jobcentre with a CV, register for online job search, and start looking for work will they be eligible for benefit—and then they should report weekly rather than fortnightly. What could be more reasonable?More apparent reasonableness followed. There will now be a seven-day wait for the jobseeker's allowance. “Those first few days should be spent looking for work, not looking to sign on,” he claimed. “We’re doing these things because we know they help people stay off benefits and help those on benefits get into work faster.” Help? Really? On first hearing, this was the socially concerned chancellor, trying to change lives for the better, complete with “reforms” to an obviously indulgent system that demands too little effort from the newly unemployed to find work, and subsidises laziness. What motivated him, we were to understand, was his zeal for “fundamental fairness”—protecting the taxpayer, controlling spending and ensuring that only the most deserving claimants received their benefits.Losing a job is hurting: you don't skip down to the jobcentre with a song in your heart, delighted at the prospect of doubling your income from the generous state. It is financially terrifying, psychologically embarrassing and you know that support is minimal and extraordinarily hard to get. You are
Some people find that certain foods（ ） their headaches.
My bones have been aching again, as they often do in humid weather. They ache like history: things long done with, that still remain as pain. When the ache is bad enough it keeps me from sleeping. Every night I yearn for sleep, I strive for it; yet it flutters on ahead of me like a curtain. There are sleeping pills, of course, but the doctor has warned me against them.Last night, after what seemed hours of damp turmoil, I got up and crept slipperless down the stairs, feeling my way in the faint street light that came through the window. Once safely arrived at the bottom, I walked into the kitchen and looked around in the refrigerator. There was nothing much I wanted to eat: the remains of a bunch of celery, a blue-tinged heel of bread, a lemon going soft. I've fallen into the habits of the solitary; my meals are snatched and random. Furtive snacks, furtive treats and picnics. I made do with some peanut butter, scooped directly from the jar with a forefinger: why dirty a spoon?Standing there with the jar in one hand and my finger in my mouth, I had the feeling that someone was about to walk into the room ~ some other woman, the unseen, valid owner ~ and ask me what in hell I was doing in her kitchen. I’ve had it before, the sense that even in the course of my most legitimate and daily actions — peeling a banana, brushing my teeth ― I am trespassing.At night the house was more than ever like a stranger's. I wandered through the front room, the dining room, the parlour, hand on the wall for balance. My various possessions were floating in their own pools of shadow, denying my ownership of them. I looked them over with a burglar’s eye, deciding what might be worth the risk of stealing, what on the other hand I would leave behind. Robbers would take the obvious things ~ the silver teapot that was my grandmother’s, perhaps the hand-painted china. The television set. Nothing I really want.1.The author could not fall asleep because（ ）.2.The author did not like the food in the refrigerator because it was NOT（ ）.
The government will consider（ ）future actions against terrorist bombers.
France's（ ） of nuclear testing in the South Pacific last month triggered politicaldebates and mass demonstrations.
The interstates the official name, still, is the Dwight D. Eisenhower System of Interstate and Defense Highways--tore down the invisible walls around U.S. towns.President Eisenhower was in favor of building the interstates because he believed that, in a time of war, they would be helpful in moving troops and supplies. But their immediate effect was to make Americans feel that certain doors had been unlocked. With the interstates came an exhilarating sense of freedom: A person could drive anywhere—everywhere--easily and without paying tolls.Suddenly, horizons were unlimited. “Local” didn’t mean quite the same thing it used to. You didn’t have to stay put. Getting away was effortless.And then, later in the 20th century, the Internet came along and with it the promise of the erasure of all symbolic borders. If the interstate highways had allowed physical freedom, the Internet allowed a different kind of freedom, one unprecedented in human experience.It was no coincidence that it was initially referred to as the information superhighway: Seemingly overnight, the knowledge (and trivia and gossip) of the world was available to anyone with a keyboard and a modem; people who had never met and would never meet could communicate as if they were lifelong friends.