The Three-Day Week / 英國「週休四日」的歡樂經濟學

英國「週休四日」的歡樂經濟學

The Three-Day Week was one of several measures introduced in the United Kingdom by the Conservative Government 1970-1974 to conserve electricity, the production of which was severely limited due to industrial action by coal miners. The effect was that from 1 January until 7 March 1974 commercial users of electricity would be limited to three specified consecutive days' consumption each week and prohibited from working longer hours on those days. Services deemed essential (e.g. restaurants, food shops and newspapers) were exempt.^[1] Television companies were required to cease broadcasting at 10.30pm during the crisis to conserve electricity.^{[citation needed]}

Background

Throughout the early 1970s, particularly in 1972 and 1973, the British economy was troubled by high rates of inflation. One of the government's strategies to tackle this was to cap pay rises. This caused unrest amongst trade unions in that wages were struggling to keep pace with prices. This extended to most industries, most notably an industry where there was a powerful union – coal mining.

By the middle of 1973, the National Union of Mineworkers had encouraged their members to work to rule - as a result, coal stocks slowly dwindled. The global effect of the 1973 oil crisis also drove up the price of coal. The Heath government entered into negotiations with the NUM, to no avail. To reduce electricity consumption, and thus conserve coal stocks, a series of measures were announced on 13 December 1973 by Heath, including the "Three-Day Work Order", more commonly known as the Three-Day Week, which was to come into force at midnight on 31 December. Commercial consumption of electricity would be limited to three consecutive days each week.^[1] Heath's objective was business continuity and survival. Rather than risk a total shutdown, working time was reduced with the intent of prolonging the life of available fuel stocks.

In the February 1974 general election the Conservative campaign emphasised the dispute with the miners and used the slogan "Who governs Britain?". The election resulted in the Conservatives losing seats and Labour becoming the largest party in the Commons, but without an overall majority. Heath failed to secure sufficient parliamentary support from the Liberal and Ulster Unionist MPs, and Harold Wilson returned to power for his third term.

The normal working week was restored on 8 March, but other restrictions on the use of electricity remained in force.^[1] A second general election was held in October 1974. This gave Labour an overall majority that was too small to survive the loss of seats in by-elections and eventually led to a Lib-Lab pact.

See also

• Winter of discontent - the period of industrial action and economic problems in the UK in 1978 - 79

Notes

^ ^{a b c} "British Economics and Trade Union politics 1973-1974". The National Archives (UK Government records). http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/releases/2005/nyo/politics.htm.

curmudgeon, misanthrope

Gregory House, M.D., is a fictional antihero[1] and title character of the American medical drama House. Portrayed by Hugh Laurie, the character is a medical genius; a diagnostician with specializations in infectious diseases and nephrology. He works as the Chief of Diagnostic Medicine at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, where he heads a team of diagnosticians. House's character has been described as a "misanthrope", a "cynic", a narcissist and a "curmudgeon".


While the show was originally set to be a medical procedural, the idea changed when the writers started to explore the possibilities of a curmudgeonly title character.[58]




misanthrope

• [mísənθròup]

[名]((形式))人間［交際］嫌いの人. （またmis・án・thro・pist）



curmudgeon
(kər-mŭj'ən)
n.
An ill-tempered person full of resentment and stubborn notions.

[Origin unknown.]

curmudgeonly cur·mudg'eon·ly adj.
curmudgeonry cur·mudg'eon·ry n.

Transport for London, TfL: 2012乘客可以使用經授權的銀行卡或信用卡

英國倫敦交通局（Transport for London, TfL）計劃在2012年底以前，更新巴士及地鐵、輕軌、電車和陸上鐵的售票檢票系統，令乘客可以使用經授權的銀行卡或信用卡，代替蠔卡（Oyster Card）刷卡支付旅費。

Fox found on 72nd floor

（法新社倫敦25日電）英國官員今天表示，一隻挑戰極限的狐狸攀越巔峰，爬上英國最高的摩天大樓，在72樓體驗了將近2週「高高在上」的人生。

被暱稱為「羅密歐」（Romeo）的這隻大無畏狐狸攀上了超過288公尺高、尚未完工的Shard大樓，享受首都倫敦的俯瞰美景，並撿食工人的殘羹剩飯。

牠以狐狸的狡詐躲避近2週追捕，直到17日才終於就範，被帶離即將成為歐洲第一高的Shard大樓。據信羅密歐是從中央樓梯井攻頂。

倫敦南華克（Southwark）當局表示，羅密歐被獵捕大隊捕獲，送往市郊的動物救護中心，體檢確認沒有受傷後便野放至大樓附近，靠近牠的窩跟家人。

動物中心創立人柏登（Ted Burden）表示，「我們做了徹底的身體檢查、請牠吃了幾頓好料，並向牠解釋如果狐狸想要住在72樓，就該長翅膀。」（譯者：中央社楊盈）1000226

Fox found on 72nd floor of UK’s highest skyscraper

A fox dubbed Romeo has been found living on the 72nd floor of Europe's tallest skyscraper surviving off scraps of food left by construction workers.

Romeo the fox, the first tenant of London's Shard, is removed by Southwark Council after living the high life for two weeks.

Read more: http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/856572-fox-found-on-72nd-floor-of-uk-s-highest-skyscraper#ixzz1F6wxLssZ

Romeo spent two weeks roaming free and surviving on scraps of food left by builders at the 288 metre Shard building at London Bridge, which is still under construction.

The fox had managed to make his way to the top of the tower via the central stairwell.

Romeo was caught by Southwark Council pest control officers and taken to Riverside Animal Centre in Wallington where the hungry explorer was given a thorough medical and a few good meals.

He was then released back into the London Bridge area.

Ted Burden, Riverside Animal Centre founder said: 'We explained to him that if foxes were meant to be 72 storeys off the ground, they would have evolved wings.

'We think he got the message and, as we released him back on to the streets of Bermondsey shortly after midnight on Sunday, he glanced at the Shard and then trotted off in the other direction,' added Mr Burden.

Barrie Hargrove, cabinet member for transport, environment and recycling at Southwark Council, said: 'Romeo has certainly been on a bit of a jaunt, and proved rather elusive, but I'm glad our pest control officers were able to help out.

'He's obviously a resourceful little chap, but I'm sure he's glad the adventure is over and hopefully he'll steer well clear of skyscrapers in the future.'

U.K. State of Mind

Overheard: U.K. State of Mind

How satisfied are you with your life these days? How anxious did you feel yesterday? Rather personal questions, for sure, but the U.K.'s Office for National Statistics doesn't mind. It soon will be putting such questions to a sample of 200,000 Britons, as it tries to measure the U.K.'s national well-being for the first time.

Measuring national well-being is an idea that became popular in academic circles during the prefinancial-crisis era, when some wondered whether there is more to life than consistent economic growth amid low inflation.

These days, with U.K. inflation at 4%, the unemployment rate at 7.9%, and the imminent threat of higher interest rates as the economy teeters on the brink of recession, it isn't hard to imagine the sort of response the statisticians will get from many of their respondents.

England Finds 2012 Olympics Don’t Spur Exercise

Andrew Testa for The New York Times

Dennis Kingston, 66, exercised at the Senior Playground at Hyde Park.

By JERÉ LONGMAN

Published: February 15, 2011

arded the 2012 Olympics, organizers promised an ambitious legacy: to get two million more people in England involved in sports and physical activity.

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Andrew Testa for The New York Times

Children at soccer practice at Hyde Park.

But with the Games in less than 18 months, that commitment now resembles a wheezing jogger, bent over and winded from a New Year’s resolution whose ambition could not be matched by exertion.

London’s original pledge evolved into a plan to get one million more people around England playing sports three or more times a week for at least 30 minutes at a time, known as the 3x30 plan. Even that target is proving elusive.

Figures issued in December by Sport England, the governing body for community sports, indicated that participation at the 3x30 level had increased by 123,000 since 2007-8, when the one million baseline was established. But that number increased by only 8,000 in the last year. At the current rate, the goal of one million new participants would not be reached in 2012-13 as hoped but more than a decade later in 2023-24.

Meanwhile, in a country that is among the fattest in Europe, the number of couch potatoes apparently continues to grow. Surveys by Sport England indicate that the number of adults doing zero moderate sports activity rose by nearly 300,000 from 2005, when London was awarded the Olympics, to the fall of 2010.

Inadequate planning, a change in government, severe funding cutbacks to sports organizations and an apparent overestimation of the impact the Olympics can have on mass participation have all forced a rethinking of England’s Olympic legacy.

The latest plan, unveiled in November by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, omitted the one million target figure. It spoke instead of encouraging more people to take up sports through Places People Play, a program sponsored by the National Lottery.

“We haven’t yet dropped the target, but we’re looking at it fairly carefully,” Hugh Robertson, Britain’s minister for sport and the Olympics, said in a telephone interview.

What is needed is a more sensible way to define and measure sports and physical activity, Mr. Robertson and other sports experts said. Does walking to the bus stop count? If someone plays a pickup soccer match for 90 minutes, does that count as one sporting session or three?

Anecdotal evidence suggests that more people participate in sports than surveys reveal, Mr. Robertson said. But, he added, measuring participation involves a “slightly clunky mechanism.”

All Olympic bids are required to show how the Games will provide lasting benefits. Each city is allowed to devise a legacy plan. There are no specific penalties for failing to reach a target, but the fallout can undermine the reputation of a particular Winter or Summer Games and bring political opprobrium.

Some critics have accused Mr. Robertson of watering down London’s post-Olympic ambitions. He replied, “That’s emphatically what we’re not trying to do.”

Darryl Seibel, a spokesman for the British Olympic Association, said sports and government officials were determined to leave a meaningful legacy from the London Games and to transform plans “from rhetoric to reality.”

London is hardly the first host city to struggle with its Olympic legacy. In truth, international events like the Olympics and soccer’s World Cup leave a greater discernible impact on infrastructure than on sports. Roads, airports and rail systems are improved while a number of stadiums become white elephants and lingering sporting benefits remain indistinct.

Six years after Albertville, France, hosted the 1992 Winter Olympics, the figure-skating arena and speed-skating oval there were fenced off and abandoned. The magnificent Olympic stadium showcased during the 2008 Beijing Games, known as the Bird’s Nest, was seldom being used a year and a half later.

In London, there has been heated debate about whether its $854 million Olympic Stadium should be demolished after 17 days’ use and replaced with a soccer stadium or downsized and left as an arena that could host both soccer and track and field. The second option prevailed Friday in a vote by the company in charge of the Games’ legacy.

Research on the Olympic Games stimulating mass participation in sports has not produced encouraging results. In 2007, the Culture, Media and Sport Committee of the British House of Commons concluded that “no host country has yet been able to demonstrate a direct benefit from the Olympic Games in the form of a lasting increase in participation.”

A study of the 2000 Sydney Games showed that while seven Olympic sports experienced a slight increase afterward in Australia, nine showed a decline.

After the 2002 Commonwealth Games, held in Manchester, England, “there appears to have been no recorded impact on sports participation levels” in the country’s northwest, Fred Coalter, a professor of sports studies at the University of Stirling in Scotland, wrote before London won the 2012 Olympic bid.

The Olympics will leave a legacy of new and renovated stadiums, but they probably “will not result in a new wave of mass participation in sport,” according to the Center for Sport, Physical Education and Activity Research at Canterbury Christ Church University in England.

Physically active people may be enticed to become more active or to try a new sport, said Mike Weed, a professor of sport in society at Canterbury University. Those who were formerly active may be encouraged by the Olympics to renew their participation, he said. This is known as the demonstration effect.

But what this phenomenon does not do, Dr. Weed said in a telephone interview and in a recent paper, “is have any effect whatsoever on those who have never participated in sport.”

The average person may feel a disconnect from elite athletes, he said, while the most sedentary might be put off by perceived pressure to lose weight and become more active. This seemed to be borne out in recent interviews conducted with weekend warriors in Manchester.

“The Olympics are up here and we’re down here,” said Asha Solanki, 30, who works in marketing and participates in martial arts. “It seems unachievable. How many people do you know who do the 400-meter hurdles?”

The latest legacy plan, Places People Play, is a £130 million ($210 million) effort to build, maintain and repair local sports facilities; train 40,000 volunteers to organize grass-roots sports; provide competitions for primary and secondary school students; and encourage 100,000 adults to raise money for charity and test themselves in multiple Olympic and Paralympic sports.

At the plan’s unveiling, Sebastian Coe, an Olympic gold medalist runner who is the London Olympics’ chief organizer, said it would “harness the inspirational power of the Olympic and Paralympic Games to promote sport across the country.”

But Tessa Jowell, the opposition minister for sport and the Olympics, said, “However they dress it up, the Olympic legacy promise that we made to this country’s young people is yet another promise that has been broken by the coalition government.”

The plan addresses supply but says little about how to increase the demand for participation in sports, Dr. Weed, the professor said. Mr. Robertson, the sports minister, said he thought a multifaceted grass-roots initiative could succeed.

“I wouldn’t for a moment underestimate the difficulty of what we’re trying to do,” Mr. Robertson said. “But that’s not a good reason not to do it. It was the promise we made, so we’re going to try.”

For U.K. Banks, a Calamity Is Born 嚴管" 英國銀行

By DAVID ENRICH

LONDON—U.K. bank regulators are launching a new type of "stress test" that forces banks to consider unlikely but potentially disastrous scenarios like a flu pandemic or disruptions to the country's food-supply chain.

Disaster Planning

Scenarios U.K. banks are evaluating under new FSA 'stress tests'

It is a far cry from the comparatively quaint variables, bursting property bubbles and economic downturns, that regulators traditionally have used to gauge banks' financial health.

The latest exercise, which the U.K.'s Financial Services Authority instructed banks to start conducting in mid-December, is dubbed a "reverse stress test." It requires banks to identify potentially fatal events and then to work backward to find ways to revamp their businesses so they would be better prepared to withstand such shocks.

After being caught flat-footed by the financial crisis that nearly toppled two of the U.K.'s largest banks, the FSA sees the tests as part of prudent contingency planning. The agency last year told banks that the exercise is designed to spur them to "explore more fully the vulnerabilities of their current and future business plans."

Bankers call it the latest example of regulatory overkill. Executives protest that they are wasting countless hours dreaming up outlandish doomsday scenarios.

The chief executive of a major U.K. bank said the tests are predicated on "a massive confluence [of] absurd scenarios" in which executives passively watch events unfold rather than trying to stabilize the situation.

Bankers are especially worried that the process could result in them being forced to hold more capital. The FSA said in a planning document that the tests "may result indirectly in changes to the levels of capital held by firms" if the exercise "identifies business model vulnerabilities that have not previously been considered."

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An FSA spokeswoman defended the exercise. "It might seem outlandish to them, but the point is that it pushes the business model to the point it collapses," the spokeswoman said. She said the banks also should be evaluating relatively mundane situations like what they would do in the event of a major internal fraud.

The U.K. arms of foreign banks, including U.S. investment banks, also are subject to the tests, although they face a more gradual timetable than British lenders for conducting the exams. One Wall Street bank's London unit is likely to look at how it would fare in a global liquidity crisis, said a person familiar with the matter.

Meanwhile, the man likely to be Ireland's next prime minister said the government should wait until a round of stress tests on the country's banks has been completed before recapitalizing them.

In an interview Thursday, Enda Kenny said it would be "prudent and realistic" to wait "to see if there is another black hole in the banks" before they receive any new capital injections.

Under the terms of the roughly €67 billion ($92 billion) bailout it negotiated for Ireland late last year, the government had been due to inject up to €10 billion into Bank of Ireland, Allied Irish Banks and EBS Building Society by the end of this month.

But the departing finance minister, Brian Lenihan, postponed the plan Wednesday until after the election, scheduled for Feb. 25, effectively leaving the decision to the next government.

In the U.K., the griping about the reverse stress tests comes as bankers mount a counteroffensive against what they perceive as overzealous U.K. regulation, especially when it comes to the amounts of capital and funding they are required to keep on hand.

Barclays PLC Chairman Marcus Agius complained in a letter last month to Treasury chief George Osborne that the situation is "resulting in a nonlevel playing field." Mr. Agius attached an eight-page report listing examples, including the reverse stress tests, of the FSA outpacing other regulators and international rules.

The new testing process highlights the lengths to which regulators are going to guard against a repeat of the global financial crisis, in which a confluence of events crippled banks around the world and sent many economies into recession.

In November 2008, the FSA pioneered the use of stress tests to determine how much more capital banks would need to weather a variety of unpleasant but plausible economic environments. The U.S. adopted that model in 2009 to help ease its banking crisis.

The European Union last year conducted stress tests of 91 banks, but they were widely panned for giving passing marks to almost all banks, including some that subsequently required taxpayer bailouts.

European officials now are negotiating the variables they will use in a second round of tests this spring. Those variables include factors such as economic growth rates and real-estate values.

Those exams are tame compared with the reverse stress tests getting under way at U.K. banks and other financial institutions.

In those, bank executives are supposed to run simulations of a series of scenarios and then take steps to fortify their companies to withstand such crises. Such steps could include drawing up new contingency plans, restructuring business lines or beefing up cash reserves.

The FSA doesn't dictate the terms of the exams, leaving it up to banks to choose the catastrophes that they prepare for. But those situations are subject to FSA vetting and, in at least some recent cases, agency officials have told executives they aren't looking at sufficiently severe events, according to people familiar with the matter. The FSA has insisted those banks take into account more-extreme possibilities.

The banks appear to be "having difficulty thinking of something that will satisfy the regulators," said Irving Henry, a director at the British Bankers' Association who specializes in regulatory issues.

As a result, bankers are evaluating some seemingly far-fetched possibilities, according to people involved in the process.

For example, they are calculating what would happen if a swine-flu pandemic wiped out most of their employees, contemplating questions regarding how the bank continues to operate and even who would restock cash machines.

Another scenario posed involves the potential for a Latin American coup that would knock out the bank's local operations, potentially trapping large sums of money thousands of miles away.

And at least one bank was asked to asses the impact of a full-fledged trade war between the U.S. and China.

Some scenarios are easier to imagine. Last spring, an Icelandic volcano erupted, sending a big ash cloud floating over the U.K. and other parts of Western Europe. What if a future eruption prevented air travel for months rather than weeks?

The banks maintain that they would be doing this type of contingency planning without prodding from the FSA. Having regulators looking over their shoulders, demanding clear-cut answers and the completion of hundreds of spreadsheets, is simply making the process more cumbersome, bank officials said. It is "risk planning gone mad," one bank executive said.

—Guy Chazan contributed to this article.

Write to David Enrich at david.enrich@wsj.com

Canterbury

Canterbury ：坎特伯裏：英格蘭首席主教座堂所在地，為英國使徒聖奧斯定（ St. Augustine of Rome ）所建。著名殉道者多瑪斯．白克（ St. Thomas Becket, 1117-1170 ）曾任該地主教；直到 1558 年前為天主教所管轄。

1. 坎特伯里 英國

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2. Canterbury Tourism Website | Herne Bay & Whitstable | Days Out ...

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   Welcome to Canterbury tourism -The official tourist information website for the district of Canterbury, in Kent, covering the beautiful Herne Bay and ...
   

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3. Canterbury - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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   Canterbury is an English city which lies at the heart of the City of Canterbury, a district of Kent in South East England. It lies on the River Stour. ...

英國的National Apprenticeship Week 等制

據

《倫敦旗幟晚報》(London Evening Standard)週一報導﹐微軟公司(Microsoft Co., MSFT)計劃未來三年在倫敦招收1,000名實習生。

這一消息是英國商務大臣凱布爾(Vince Cable)和倫敦市長Boris Johnson在倫敦啟動全國實習生週(National Apprenticeship Week)的活動時宣佈的。

他們呼籲更多大公司仿效微軟的做法﹐創造數千個崗位﹐以解決年輕失業者人數飆升的問題。

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Apprenticeship Awards 2010 »

England’s top eight apprentices and employers have been revealed at the National Apprenticeship Awards 2010 presented by City & Guilds in Westminster.

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Cable urges more businesses to say 'you're hired' to an apprentice 7 February 2011

Today Business Secretary Vince Cable and Skills Minister John Hayes urged more employers to drive economic growth through Apprenticeships.

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You can now view and download a wide range of marketing and collateral relating to Apprenticeships.

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President Reagan was a true ally of U.K.

列根銅像七月倫敦揭幕

2011-02-06 16:30:00

美 國已故總統列根的一座銅像定於今年七月美國國慶日當天，在倫敦的格羅夫納廣場揭幕，以紀念列根一百歲壽辰。　　該個三公尺（約十呎）高的銅像將會矗立在美 國駐倫敦大使館附近一個基座上面，與現有的其他兩位二十世紀美國領袖艾森豪威爾（Dwight Eisenhower）和羅斯福（Franklin D Roosevelt）的雕像並立。雖然美國大使館將於明年遷往一個新地點，但這三座雕像仍會留在倫敦中部的梅菲爾區。　　列根的銅像定於今年七月四日美國 國慶日舉行揭幕儀式。列根基金會已邀請英國前首相戴卓爾夫人（Margaret Thatcher）和現任首相卡梅倫出席揭幕禮。

Statue honour for Ronald Reagan

American artist Chas Fagan will sculpt the 10ft high bronze statue

Former US president Ronald Reagan is to be honoured with a new memorial in central London.

A statue of Mr Reagan, who died in 2004, will be placed outside the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square.

Westminster City Council has changed its usual policy of only allowing memorials to people who have been dead for 10 or more years.

The former actor served as US president from 1981 until 1989 and died at the age of 93.

'True ally'

To recognise Mr Reagan's contribution to the end of the Cold War, a piece of the Berlin Wall will be installed in front of the artwork.

American artist Chas Fagan will sculpt the 10ft-high bronze figure, which will stand opposite a statue of former US president Dwight D Eisenhower on a Portland stone plinth, outside the embassy.

Steve Summers, from Westminster City Council, said: "Regardless of politics, nobody can dispute that President Reagan was a true ally of this country.

"It is only right and proper we exempt President Reagan, as a former head of state, from the usual rules on statues."

We are obviously delighted that the application has been approved. We also hope the statue will be educational. Jennie Elias, president of the Reagan Memorial Fund Trust

The statue will cost up to £200,000, with the majority being raised by the California-based Ronald Reagan Foundation. However, some funds will be raised in the UK.

Westminster City council will also pay an estimated £50,000 towards the maintenance of the sculpture.

Jennie Elias, president of the Reagan Memorial Fund Trust, submitted the application for the memorial, which was approved by the council on Thursday.

Ms Elias said: "We are obviously delighted that the application has been approved but this is the first stage of the project. We also hope the statue will be educational."

Inside Europe | 05.02.2011 | 07:05

Brits grapple with their foreign language record

Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift:

A new study in the UK reveals that the number of teenagers studying a foreign language has plummeted in state schools to just 40%. There are concerns that this trend is preventing young people from getting top jobs with multinational companies. And that the Brits are jeopardizing their leverage on the world stage and global competitiveness by failing to speak enough languages.

The Ministry of Education recently signalled the possible return of a compulsory foreign language for British teenagers, seven years after the requirement was dropped by the previous

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government. Nina-Maria Potts has more from London.

• Brits grapple with their foreign language record