A World We Live In - Unit3

extremely functional, and whoever had built it had obviously scorned any ornamental additions.

The block was exactly the same on the east and the west, with big swing doors set in the center. Mrs. Oliver chose the left-hand side but immediately found that she was wrong. All this side was numbers from 100 to 200. She crossed over to the other side.

Number 67 was on the sixth floor. Mrs. Oliver pressed the button of the lift. The door opened like a yawning mouth with a menacing clash. Mrs. Oliver hurried into the yawning cavern. She was always afraid of modern lifts.

Crash. The doors came to again. The lift went up. It stopped almost immediately ( that was frightening, too! ) Mrs. Oliver scuttled out like a frightened rabbit.

She pressed the bell . Perhaps everyone was out.

However, the door opened almost at once. A tall, handsome girl stood in the doorway. "Won't you come in ?"

Mrs. Oliver accepted the invitation, and Claudia Reece-Holland led her into a sitting room. All the rooms of the flats were papered the same, with an artificial raw wood pattern. Tenants could then display their modern pictures or apply any forms of decoration they fancied. There was a foundation of modern built-in-furniture, cupboard, book-shelves, and so on, a large settee and a pull-out type of table. Personal bits and pieces could be added by the tenants. There were also signs of individuality displayed here by a gigantic Harlequin pasted on one wall, and a stencil of a monkey swinging from branches of palm fronds on another wall.

( A.Christie "Third Girl" ) pp. 19, 20, 21.

* * *

III. Read the following article and approve or disapprove of Shigenori Fujitani's and his wife Yoko's decision to move to a farm house ? Give your arguments.

Would you like to be a farmer and live in the country in your private farm house?

AND GOODBYE TO ALL THAT

More and more Japanese are giving up on city life.

As city slickers from Osaka, Shigenori Fujitani, 36 and his wife, Yoko, 31, did not know a whole lot about rural life. What they did know was that the daily grind of working at a day-care centre and paying top prices for everything from apartment space to shoelaces was becoming unbearable. So three years ago they packed up their belongings and moved to a farm house in Motegi, a rustic community 80 miles north of Tokyo. Now, instead of revelling in the excitement of the big city, their activities include riding herd over about 450 chickens and delivering fresh eggs twice a week to 40 customers in nearby towns. They love it. "I found peace of mind here", says Shigenory. "I do not have to suffer stress from dealing with other people."

Not for the time being at any rate. A decade ago many farming towns were peopled mainly by children and the elderly because young adults had gone off to seek their fortune in the booming cities. But as life in Japan's urban areas becomes increasingly crowded and costly, more and more city dwellers are heading for the hinterland. At the same time, signs of rural gentrification are becoming commonplace: modern culture centres, concert halls and museums dot the countryside. To be sure, the numbers of the new "gentry" are still small, probably no more than several thousand families, and government statistics indicate that most rural areas are still suffering from net losses the significance of even a tiny shift in the migratory tide, it is important to recall just how powerful the flood into the cities has been: between 1960 and 1970; for instance, nearly 10 per cent of Japan's entire rural population

moved to urban areas.

The experience of Motegi, where the Fujitanis settled, is typical of how once sleepy communities are being revitalized. Lured by beautiful rolling hills and peaceful valleys that surround the town, as well as by advertisements offering inexpensive farmhouses for rent, more than 40 families have arrived from various Japanese cities in the past decade. Several of the newcomers are potters, who sell their creations in two nearby towns. Mashike and Kasama, which are famous for their ceramics. Takahito Kitamura, 48, who was once an industrial designer for electronics giant Sharp Corp., came to Motegi six years ago, forsaking computer chips for clay shards. "I liked my job," he says, "but I wanted to sit down and make things with my own hands." Since then Kitamura has become highly successful, not to mention deeply contented, in his adopted craft.

Many towns, eager to attract upscale urban residents, have gone out of their way to enrich their cultural attractions. Last year residents of Maruko, which lies 125 miles from Tokyo, unveiled a striking concert hall. The building, which cost $1,5 million and is made of locally grown pine and cedar, cuts a rather incongruous figure on the landscape, rising from a hill surrounded by empty fields. Town officials have ambitious plants to add a lavish restaurant, open-air theatres and a museum of musical instruments, all in what is - or used to be - a backwater town of 25,000 people. Maruko, like numerous other towns, has been aided by subsidies from the national government, which is eager to decentralize the country.

Word of mouth: That campaign still has a long way to go, especially since rural life has its basic drawbacks - at least, in the view of many folk who are accustomed to the excitement and the variety - and, perhaps, the anonymity of the big city. One prominent writer tells of moving a few years ago to a small village, only to hurry back to Tokyo. "There was absolutely no privacy there," he says. "They would bring vegetables to give but their real purpose was to see if I had a girlfriend visiting or not." If word of mouth counts for anything though, the trickle to the countryside may soon swell, as Japanese measure the pleasures of a tranquil life against the pressures of city living. "Tokyo was exciting all right," says Masaru Kanda, 40, who managed a bookstore in the capital before moving to Motegi. Now he is absolutely certain he is in the right place. "First I will finish the house I am building," he says. "Then I will sit on the terrace, listen to jazz and drink coffee."

** *

THE POPULATION EXPLOSION

At the moment the world population is over 4,000 million and the overall growth rate is 1-9%; experts therefore predict that the population will have doubled by the year 2014. Unfortunately the highest growth rate is in the developing countries which are the least able to support rapidly growing populations. Air, sea and land pollution is increasing and natural resources are running out. Taking all the above facts into consideration, comment on the statement: either Mankind’s only hope of survival is to enforce population control, or

Children are the hope of the future.

** *

The real problem about the population increase is, of course, the fact that as the numbers get higher, the growth is more rapid even though the actual percentage rate is lower. This is known as exponential growth and works like this.

IV. From the histogram (bar chart) you can see that less and less time is required to produce 1,000 million people. It took many thousands of years to produce the first 1,000 million people but only 30 years to produce the next 1,000 million, and experts predict that it

will take only 10 years or less to produce 1,000 million in the future, even though the actual growth rate is dropping.

1 When would you expect the population to reach 7,000 million?

2 Why do you think the first 1,000 million was reached so slowly?

3 Comment on the statement, ‘The World Population has increased in leaps and bounds since 1930’. Take the following points into account.

Increased industrialisation - better medical facilities - control of disease - lower death rate - growth of technology - better communications - improved farming methods - increased food production - more balanced diet.

** *

WHY POLLUTE OUR PLANET?

V Read the article and answer the questions coming after it. What do you think about pollution? What measures should be taken to control it?.

People today all over the world are beginning to hear and learn more and more about the problem of pollution. Pollution is caused either by the release by man of completely new and often artificial substances into the environment, or by releasing greatly increased amounts of a natural substance, such as oil from oil tankers into the sea.

The whole industrial process which makes many of the goods and machines we need and use in our daily lives, is bound to create a number of waste products which upset the environmental balance, or the ecological balance as it is also known. Many of these waste products can be prevented or disposed of sensibly, but clearly while more and more new goods are produced and made more complex, there will be new, dangerous wastes to be disposed of, for example, the waste products from nuclear power stations. Many people, therefore, see pollution as only part of a larger and more complex problem, that is, the whole process of industrial production and consumption of goods. Others again see the problem mainly in connection with agriculture, where new methods are helping farmers grow more and more on their land to feed our ever-increasing populations. However, the land itself is gradually becoming worn out as it is being used, in some cases, too heavily, and artificial fertilisers cannot restore the balance.

Whatever its underlying reasons, there is no doubt that much of the pollution caused could be controlled if only companies, individuals and governments would make more effort. In the home there is an obvious need to control litter and waste. Food comes wrapped up three or four times in packages that all have to be disposed of; drinks are increasingly sold in bottles or tins which cannot be re-used. This not only causes a litter problem, but also is a great waste of resources, in terms of glass, metals and paper. Advertising has helped this process by persuading many of us not only to buy things we neither want or need, but also to throw away much of what we do buy. Pollution and waste is a problem everyone can help to solve by cutting out unnecessary buying, excess consumption and careless disposal of the products we use in our daily lives.

I think that I shall never see A billboard lovely as a tree.

Indeed unless the billboards fall,

I’ll never see a tree at all.

Ogden Nash

Questions

1 What is the world pollution?

2What causes pollution ?

3How is pollution caused in the sea and in the air?

4What can an individual member of the public do to control the use of the waste products which are harmful to the environment?

5Are all the wrappings and packages around the goods we buy in shops really necessary?

6Is the increasing use of the various types of plastic instead of other materials a good

idea?

7Is it possible to have a world in which there would be no pollution problems?

* * *

It May Be Small

But It's All We've Got.

It seems obvious, but the way that some people treat the world, you would think there is somewhere else to go once the earth's resources have been exhausted.

You know there isn't. Our small planet is being ravaged and its limited resources are fast disappearing.

This is why Greenpeace is trying to protect our fragile planet.

By applying international direct action with scientific research and political pressure, Greenpeace has had many notable successes.

The atmospheric testing of Nuclear weapons by the French in the Pacific has been stopped.

Commercial whaling is in the process of being stopped. Dumping of radioactive waste in the ocean has been stopped.

The large scale commercial slaughter of baby harp seals in Canada has been stopped. Incineration at sea of dangerous toxic chemicals has been stopped.

But at Greenpeace, we don't want to stop everything. What we have started is a general raising of the awareness of the environment across the globe. However, there is still a long way to go.

Deforestation and the depletion of the ozone layer are just two major problems we are aiming to overcome; there are countless others.

To carry on the work we urgently need your help.

** *

GREENPEACE

VI. What do you know about Greenpeace and its activities in Russia? Would you like to be its member?

Most people are aware that the earth is a delicate thing, and that it cannot last for ever, if we don't take care of it. Apart from the dangers of blowing each other up, there is the problem of pollution of the environment, and the destruction of wildlife by hunters.

Many species of whale, for example, are in danger of extinction because of hunters who continue whaling despite the world's attempts to limit the annual catch. Seals are also threatened; and with the increasing use of nuclear power to generate electricity, a new danger

has arisen: the pollution of ocean by nuclear waste.

The Greenpeace organisation exists to draw our attention to these problems. It is a conservationist group, and its aim is to protect the environment and maintain the balance of eco-system. It uses direct action to prevent the killing of whales and seals, and to stop the dumping of nuclear waste at sea.

As well as actually sabotaging activities in these areas, it uses diplomatic pressure to persuade governments to pass new laws to make these things illegal. It is also a supporter of alternative technology, and the use of wind, solar, and sea power to generate electricity.

In its most recent campaign, Greenpeace sent two of its ships, Sirius and Cedarlea, to the Atlantic to meet up with two Dutch ships which were dumping nuclear waste at sea. The action took place about 250 miles off the Spanish coast. Members of the Greenpeace team climbed aboard one of the Dutch ships and handcuffed themselves to a crane. Later on they launched inflatable boats and sailed underneath the falling barrels of waste. Unfortunately they had to call off their action when one of their pilots was injured; a falling barrel had turned his boat over and thrown him against the engine, knocking him unconscious.

This is the way Greenpeace operates: actions speak louder than words. It believes in trying to prevent the sea being used as a nuclear dustbin. If the barrels ever leak, they argue, nuclear contamination would quickly spread through the sea and present a serious threat to many countries. Spain would be among the first affected. For this reason the Sirius was given a very friendly reception when it called at the Spanish port of Vigo, even though the mission had been called off.

Greenpeace has had several adventures at sea. Apart from its involvement in anti-nuclear activities, its concern for whales has also taken it to the oceans, where its methods of stopping the work of whaling ships have been just as daring.

Greenpeace places its boats between the harpoon and the whale, forming a human barrier through which the whalers are unwilling to shoot. This gives the whale time to escape. Success has rewarded the campaigners' efforts to save whales.

They are also active in trying to save the lives of the world's seals. Every year 250,000 seals are slaughtered in Newfoundland, Canada. These unfortunate seal pups are shot or clubbed to death, and their pelts are then sold in Europe. Efforts to put a stop to the slaughter have included blocking the way of the hunters' ships, protecting the seals, and making their pelts useless by daubing them with harmless but indelible dye.

In these ways Greenpeace makes us aware of how our activities disturb the eco-system, and forces official organisations to think of the long-term consequences of their actions.

(Sven Parker

From “Modern English International”)

VII. Now work in small groups to discuss the issues behind the headlines below.

Toxic plant closed for inquiry after radioactive leak kills one.

.

Save our countryside!

Save the whale!

Tougher rules on use of pesticides.

No smoking in public places!

** *

VIII. Give a literary translation of the text. What does it add to the problems being discussed?

For the first week Rossiter slept alone in the room, Ward in the cubicle outside, both there together during the day. Gradually they smuggled in a few items of furniture: two armchairs, a table, a lamp fed from the socket in the cubicle. The furniture was heavy and victorian; the cheapest available its size emphasized the emptiness of the room. Pride of place was taken by an enormous mahogany wardrobe, fitted with carved angels and castellated mirrors, which they were forced to dismantle and carry into the house in their suitcases. Towering over them, it reminded Ward of the microfilms of gothic cathedrals, with their massive organ lofts crossing vast naves.

After three weeks they both slept in the room, finding the cubicle unbearably cramped. An imitation Japanese screen divided the room adequately and did nothing to diminish its size. Sitting there in the evenings, surrounded by his books and albums, Ward steadily forgot the city outside. Luckily he reached the library by a back alley and avoided the crowded streets. Rossiter and himself began to seem the only real inhabitants of the world, everyone else a meaningless by - product of their own existence, a random replication of identity which had run out of control.

(G. Ballard "Billenium")

** *

IX. Read the article which raises the problems of modern megapolices .What do you think of them and their solution? Translate the article into English.

КАК ЗАЩИТИТЬ HOMO URBIS ?

На этот вопрос пытаются сегодня ответить западные культурологи, экономисты, социологи, психологи, экологи, поскольку, как свидетельствует поток публикаций, рассматривающих эту проблему, в конце ХХ века homo urbis (горожанин) стал жертвой экосистемы, которую он сам создавал на протяжении тысячелетий.

Характерным представляется, например, специальный репортаж американского еженедельника "Ньюсуик" "Век кошмарных городов", в котором говорится:

"В обследовании, которое недавно провел под эгидой международной организации труда профессор Женевского университета Поль Байрох, определено несколько "порогов" количества населения, за которым преимущества урбанизации ...

превращаются в свою противоположность".

Города-гиганты, такие как Нью-Йорк и Лондон, делается вывод из этого обследования, не в состоянии справиться с основными проблемами - безработицей, энергетическим голодом, бездомностью, несоответствием коммуникаций запросам многомиллионного конгломерата людей.

"Но это не идет ни в какое сравнение с хаосом, царящим в большинстве гигантских городов "третьего мира". В Каире полмиллиона человек живет среди надгробных памятников на кладбище, а сотни тысяч бездомных - на крышах. Два миллиона детей Мехико не учатся в школе ...

Лишь десятая часть населения крупных городов может позволить себе купить машину , и тем не менее улицы забиты транспортом. Богатые живут с кондиционерами, тогда как больше чем у половины жителей нет возможности пользоваться проточной водой ... Города все растут и растут, превращаясь в мегаполисы, в которых социальные контрасты достигают апогея.

На дне высохшего озера около Мехико "живет" три миллиона людей, их называют "паракаидистас" - "парашютистами", ведь они "приземляются" на любом незанятом клочке земли ... В Рио-де-Жанейро такие поселения называются "фавелас", в Буэнос-Айресе - "вилас мизерас", в Маниле - "баронг-баронг". У них разные названия, обозначающие одно - трущобы ..."

Мегаполисы, как утверждают многочисленные западные исследования, "выходят из под контроля государственной системы", и все порождаемые ими проблемы становятся неразрешимыми. По подсчетам футурологов, к 2000 году в мире будет 163 мегаполиса, треть из которых будет связана с еще более крупными образованиями. Вот несколько примеров тяжких последствий урбанизации, почерпнутых из английской и американской прессы. Каждый второй англичанин и каждая третья женщина Англии страдают от неврозов шумогенного происхождения. По статистике, приведенной лауреатом Нобелевской премии, профессором Лондонского университета, физиком Д.Габором, в книге "Изобрести будущее" в США - 4 миллиона неизлечимых алкоголиков.

"Алкоголизм, как и преступность, - это та цена, которую наше общество платит за преимущества американского образа жизни", - с горечью констатирует он.

А по словам генерального инспектора службы здравоохранения во Франции, жизнь в многоэтажных густонаселенных домах порождает психосоматические болезни: язву желудка, сердечные заболевания, кожные болезни.

Город против человека - именно под таким углом рассматриваются сегодня на Западе условия жизни горожанина. Регулировщик в центре города, например, за день вдыхает столько вредных газов, как если бы он выкуривал сто сигарет. Американец поглощает в сто раз больше свинца, чем житель древних Фив. В каждом кубическом сантиметре контрольной пробы воздуха за городом французские исследователи обнаружили 1 - 4 микроба. А в воздухе, взятом в парижских магазинах, - до 4 миллионов микробов! Жизнь в городе означает для каждого до десяти встреч с себе подобными ежедневно. Эти встречи поглощают огромную долю нашей нервной и психической энергии.

Неудивительно, что в последнее время растет число сторонников "деурбанизации". Многие считают, что решение ряда проблем заключается в сдерживании роста городов-гигантов за счет культивации малых городов, которые сочетают в себе и приметы "города Солнца" Кампанеллы и сохраняют контакт человека с природой.

Одно из интересных выступлений такого рода - очерк английского писателя, автора романов "Спеши вниз", "Зима в горах", "Малое небо" Джона Уэйна - "Жить за пределами Лондона".

"Жить можно только в небольшом разноликом городке, который еще не задушили шум, страх и грязь мегаполиса, короче говоря, я понимаю - не было бы Оксфорда, не было бы мне места на земле, вот почему я так благодарен ему, хотя у него столько недостатков".

"Самая главная достопримечательность его - он построен на канале и берегах двух рек. Повсюду вода. И повсюду лес. Выходите на площадь Рэтклиф - и вы найдете здесь все породы деревьев, какие растут в Англии... Оксфорд - город парков и речных просторов, его узкие улочки, застроенные старыми домами из мягкого золотистого камня, бегут к заливным берегам и приземистым холмам, что окружают Оксфорд".

Но читаешь очерк Уэйна и убеждаешься, что зеленый Оксфорд являет собой, пусть в микросрезе , все то же кричащее противоречие: Город против Человека.

"Оксфорд сегодня - это бензин и шины и отчаянные поиски свободного пятачка, чтобы припарковать машину, и толпы снующих по огромным магазинам людей..."

Уэйн не скрывает: для него Оксфорд обладает притягательной силой еще и потому, что это - самый древний очаг британской культуры, что, по его мнению, благотворно сказывается и на тех, кто представляет ее сегодня, - писателях, ученых, студентах, ибо систему нравственных установок теперь заменил "стиль жизни", подразумевающий умение отвечать запросам толпы. Информированность пришла на

смену внутренней культуре, поведенческий код - этике, обозначение той или иной реакции организма - эмоциональной и духовной жизни. Жизнь в больших городах обезличивает отношения между людьми; эмоциональное, личностное отношение вытесняется функциональным. Каждый участник "контакта" может быть без особого труда заменен другим.

Во всех статьях и дискуссиях на тему "Человек и город" явственно прослеживается одна особенность - при всей глобальности, всеохватности и универсальности проблематики, связанной с этой темой, она имеет дело с сугубо индивидуальным, тончайшим и сложным микромиром - Человеком. И постановка любой из проблем: будь то рост города или рост населения, разрушение семьи или разрушение коммуникативных связей в огромном конгломерате людей, коим стали теперь "общины", "поселения", - непреложно имеет отношение к каждому члену общества. А этот микрокосм жестче, чем когда-либо, вписан сегодня в микрокосм - общество. Характер общества, в котором живет человек, и определяет пути разрешения стоящих перед современным человечеством глобальных проблем, одна из которых - проблема современного города. Это важнейшее обстоятельство редко принимается в расчет современными западными учеными и художниками. Однако последние порой преодолевают подобную "близорукость" благодаря природе своего таланта. Поэтому картина мира, увиденная художником, часто достовернее графиков и прогнозов ученых.

А. Николаевская ИЛ, 1984, №7

X. In groups, plan your ideal town. Here are some ideas to start you thinking

Age?

Climate?

Art?

Industry?

Tourism?

Population?

* * *

IX. And now read the story “How To Build A Town” by G. Mikes. Do the writer’s pieces of advice coincide with your plan? What do you think of them? Which of them would you follow?

HOW TO PLAN A TOWN

BRITAIN, far from being a “decadent democracy”, is a Spartan country. This is mainly due to the British way of building towns, which dispenses with the reasonable comfort enjoyed by all the other weak and effeminate peoples of the world.

Medieval warriors wore steel breast-plates and leggings not only for defence but also to keep up their fighting spirit; priests of the Middle Ages tortured their bodies with hair-shirts; Indian yogis take their daily nap lying on a carpet of nails to remain fit. The English plan their towns in such a way that these replace the discomfort of steel breast-plates, hair-shirts and nail-carpets.

On the Continent doctors, lawyers, booksellers - just to mention a few examples - are sprinkled all over the city, so you can call on a good or at least expensive doctor in any district. In England the idea is that it is the address that makes the man. Doctors in London are

crowded in Harley Street, solicitors in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, second-hand-bookshops in Charing Cross Road, newspapers offices in Fleet Street, tailors in Saville Row, car-merchants in Great Portland Street, theatres around Piccadilly Circus, cinemas in Leicester Square, etc. If you have a chance of replanning London you can greatly improve on this idea. All greengrocers should be placed in Hornsey Lane (N 6), all butchers in Mile End (E1), and all gentlemen’s conveniences in Bloomsbury (WC).

Now I should like to give you a little practical advice on how to build an English town. You must understand that an English town is a vast conspiracy to mislead foreigners.

You have to use century-old little practices and tricks.

1. First of all, never build a street straight. The English love privacy and do not want to see one end of the street from the other end. Make sudden curves in the streets and build them S-shaped too; the letters L, T, V, W and O are also becoming increasingly popular. It would be fine tribute to the Greeks to build a few and -shaped streets; it would be an ingenious compliment to the Russians to favour the shape ß, and I am sure the Chinese would be more than flattered to see some -shaped thoroughfares.

2.Never build the houses of the same street in a straight line. The British have always been a freedom-loving race and the “freedom to build a muddle” is one of their most ancient civic rights.

3.Now there are further camouflage possibilities in the numbering of houses. Primitive continental races put even numbers on one side, odd numbers on the other, and you always know that small numbers start from the north to west. In England you have this system, too; but you may start numbering your houses at one end, go up to a certain number on the same side, then continue on the other side, going back in the opposite direction.

You may leave out some numbers if you are superstitious; and you may continue the numbering in a side street; you may also give the same number to two or three houses.

But this is far from the end. Many people refuse to have numbers altogether, and they choose names. It is very pleasant, for instance, to find a street with three hundred and fifty totally similar bungalows and look for “The Bungalow”. Or to arrive in a street where all the houses have a charming view of a hill and try to find “Hill View”. Or search for “Seven Oaks” and find a house with three apple-trees.

4.Give a different name to the street whenever it bends; but if the curve is so sharp that it really makes two different streets, you may keep the same name. On the other hand, if, owing to neglect, a street has been built in a straight line it must be called by many different names (High Holborn, New Oxford Street, Oxford Street, Bayswater Road, Notting Hill Gate, Holland Park and so on).

5.As some cute foreigners would be able to learn their way about even under such

circumstances, some further precautions are necessary. Call streets by various names: street, road, place, mews, crescent, avenue, rise, lane, way, grove, park, gardens, alley, arch, path, walk, broadway, promenade, gate, terrace, vale, view, hill, etc.

Now two further possibilities arise:

* While this book was at the printers a correspondence in The Times showed that the

English have almost sixty synonyms for “street”. If you add to these the street names which stand alone (Piccadilly, Strand, etc.) and the accepted and frequently used double names

(“Garden Terrace”, “Church Street”, “Park Road”, etc.) the number of street names reaches or exceeds a hundred. It has been suggested by one correspondent that this clearly proves what wonderful imagination the English have. I believe it proves the contrary. A West End street in

London is not called “Haymarket” because the playful fancy of Londoners populates the district with romantically clad medieval food dealers, but simply because they have not noticed as yet that the hay trade has considerably declined between Piccadilly and Pall Mall in

the last three hundred years.

(a)Gather all sorts of streets and squares of the same name in one neighbourhood: Belsize Park, Belsize Street, Belsize Road, Belsize Gardens, Belsize Green, Belsize Circus, Belsize Yard, Belsize Viaduct, Belsize Arcade, Belsize Heath, etc.

(b)Place a number of streets of exactly the same name in different districts. If you have about twenty Princes Squares and Warwick Avenues in the town, the muddle - you may claim without immodesty - will be complete.

6. Street names should be painted clearly and distinctly on large boards. Then hide these boards carefully. Place them too high or too low, in shadow and darkness, upside down and inside out, or, even better, lock them up in a safe in your bank, otherwise they may give people some indication about the names of the streets.

7. In order to break down the foreigner’s last vestige of resistance and shatter his morale, one further trick is advisable: Introduce the system of squares - real squares, I mean - which run into four streets like this:

Princes Square			Leinster Square

Princes Square

Leinster Square

With this simple device it is possible to build a street of which the two sides have different names.

P.S. - I have been told that my above-described theory is all wrong and is only due to my General European conceit, because the English do not care for the opinion of foreigners. In every other country, it has been explained, people just build streets and towns following their own common sense. England is the only country of the world where there is a Ministry of Town and Country Planning. That is the real reason for the muddle.

Situational Topics

1.Modern world and its people.

2.The problem of big cities (megapolices) and how to overcome them.

3.Where will the people live in the 21st century?

4.How to save our civilization. Could you suggest any projects?

5.Organizations protecting the environment from pollution.

Role Play

1. You are participating in a regular TV programme “The World We Live In”. This time it is devoted “The World Pollution”.

Roles:

The reporter, biologists, zoologists, dwellers of the village, the representatives of the authorities (of the committee on ecology), members of Greenpeace.

The reporter - you ask questions which worry the participants of the programme, the