口译笔译考试

【单选题】Perhaps we could have our children pledge allegiance to a national motto. So thick and fast tumble the ideas aboutBritishness from the Government that the ridiculous no longer seems impossible. For the very debate about what it means to be aBritish citizen, long a particular passion of GordonBrown, brutally illustrates the ever-decreasing circle that new Labour has become. The idea of a national motto has already attracted derision on a glorious scale-and there’s nothing moreBritish than the refusal to be defineD、Times readers chose as their national motto: No motto please, we’ reBritish.
Undaunted, here comes the Government with another one: a review of citizenship, which suggests that schoolchildren be asked to swear an oath of allegiance to the Queen. It would be hard to think of something more profoundly undemocratic, less aligned to Mr.Brown’s supposed belief in meritocracy and enabling all children to achieve their full potential. Today you will hear theChancellor profess the Government’s continuing commitment to the abolition of child poverty, encapsulating a view ofBritain in which the State tweaks the odds and the tax credit system to iron out inherited inequalities.
You do not need to ask how this vision ofBritain can sit easily alongside a proposal to ask kids to pledge allegiance to the Queen before leaving school: it cannot. The one looks up towards an equal society, everyone rewarded according to merit and not the lottery of birth; the other bends its knee in obeisance to inherited privilege and an undemocratic social and political system. In Mr.Brown’s view of the world, as I thought I understood it, an oath of allegiance from children to the Queen ought to be anathema, grotesque, off the scale, not even worth considering.
Why then, could No 10 not dismiss it out of hand yesterdayAsked repeatedly at the morning briefing with journalists whether the Prime Minister supported the proposal, his spokesman hedged his bets. Mr.Brown welcomed the publication of the report; he thinks the themes are important; he hopes it will launch a debate; he is very interested in the theme ofBritishness.But no view as to the suitability of the oath. It is baffling in the extreme.Does this Prime Minister believe in nothing, thenA、number of things need to be unpicked here. First, to give him due credit, the report from the formerAttorney-General Lord Goldsmith contains much more than the oath of allegiance. That is but "a possibility that’s raised". The oath forms a tiny part of a detailed report about whatBritish citizenship means, what it ought to mean and how to strengthen it.
It is a serious debate that Mr.Brown is keen to foster about changing the categories ofBritish citizenship, and defining what they mean.But it is in him that the central problem resides: the Prime Minister himself is uncertain whatBritishness is, while insisting we should all be wedded to the concept. No wonder there is a problem over what a motto, or an oath of allegiance, should contain.Britain is a set of laws and ancient institutions— monarchy, Parliament, statutes, arguably todayEU law as well.An oath of allegiance naturally tends toward these.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. In its younger and bolder days, new Labour used to argue that the traditional version ofBritain is outdateD、When Labour leaders began debatingBritishness in the 1990s, they argued that the institutions in which a sense ofBritain is now vested, or should be vested, are those such as the NHS or even theBBC, allied with values of civic participation, all embodying notions of fairness, equality and modernity absent in the traditional institutions. GordonBrown himself wrote at length aboutBritishness in The Times in January 2000: "The strongBritish sense of fair play and duty, together embodied in the ideal of a vibrant civic society, is best expressed today in a uniquelyBritish institution— the institution that f
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