中大高级商务英语一.doc

高级商务英语练习 Unit 1 the Three Sectors of the Economy Ⅰ阅读理解 Just over ten years ago the Labour Party issued a glossy booklet entitled Modern Manufacturing Strength. It had as its subtitle Building a world class economy. It rightly complained of the destruction of much of Britain’s industrial capacity during the years of Conservative rule. It called for a new strategy to revive British industry. Labor’s booklet of ten years ago said that Conservative policy implied that manufacturing can be replaced by the service sector. ‘This is a wholly false dichotomy’, argued the booklet. ‘A strong service sector requires a strong manufacturing base’. In trading terms, Labor’s booklet said, ‘we manufacture or perish’. Labor’s booklet referred to what it described as Britain’s ‘appalling balance of payments deficit’. Today British manufacturing is even weaker than it was ten years ago. It employs fewer people. There are fewer factories. Manufacturing output represents a declining proportion of the total output of goods and services. The balance of payments on manufactured items is as bad as it has ever been. The decline in British manufacturing affects not only the old so-called ‘smoke-stack’ industries but also industries that continue to cater for a substantial or growing market. Steel, engineering, motor-vehicle manufacture, electrical goods, shipbuilding, textiles, clothing, industrial chemicals, boots and shoes, furniture, pottery, computer manufacture and many other sections have all been affected. Their market share has declined. It is an ironic commentary on this record of contraction that simultaneously under New Labour the income of the top people has leapt ahead of the general rise in the pay of working people. It is not success but failure that British capitalism has been rewarding. It is equally ironic that it now seems that our public sector, including the National Health Service and parts of the educational system, are to be injected more and more with the failed medic