STUDY FOR CAE: ENGLISH IN USE
Part 4: Word Formation
Complete with words formed from those given. In the Advanced Certificate, the time for this exercise would be 15 minutes.
Looking Back at the Thatcher Years
A (01) ................... has descended upon the land. Fingers no longer wag. Men once again hold discourse in calm and measured tones. No handbag swings, for she has gone, she who must be obeyed, the Nation's Nanny, the leaderene, the grocer's daughter, the Iron Lady, Attila the Hen, La Pasionara of privilege. Looking back, one asks oneself how it was that they, the powers that be, the establishment, gave her all that power?
Now the dust has settled, it is a good time to ask how the country fared in the eighties while she was in power. The answer is, not much different from the seventies, when she wasn't. The basic economic (02) ................... have changed (03) ................... little: in 1979, inflation was 10.3 per cent; on her (04) ................... , it was 10.9 per cent. The balance of (05) ................... was half a billion pounds: after ten years, it is now 15 and a half billion. GDP has increased at just over two per cent a year, one per cent ahead of government spending. A (06) ................... change has been the remarkable reduction in the rate of income tax: the top rate from 90 per cent to 40 per cent, and the basic rate from 33 to 25 per cent. The benefits to the few on the top rates of tax have been considerable. For the great (07) ................... , however, although the reductions make good headlines, they are (08) ................... . Tax paid as a percentage of earnings has in fact increased over the past ten years, from 35 per cent to 38. Such tax includes not only income tax, but national (09) ................... , VAT, excise duties on alcohol and tobacco, and local rates or poll tax.
During the eighties, the economic fashion was for (10) ................... . It was thought that the translation of state monopolies into private monopolies would mean increased (11) ................... . To some extent, the service provided by British utilities, such as the telephone and gas (12) ................... , has improved. On the other hand, the price paid for these basic services has increased far beyond the rate of inflation. Such price increases fall most heavily on the badly paid. One service which has not improved is the railways, grossly (13) ................... . Indeed, the transport infrastructure, both road and rail, is as inefficient now as it was in 1979. One would have thought that the billions realised by North Sea oil revenues could have been used to make the country more (14) ................... , but they have in fact been used to pay off government debt so that government spending, as a percentage of GNP, has fallen from 44 to 39 per cent.
©English Teaching Systems May 2000
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