2023届高三英语培优外刊阅读学案：英国话题.docxVIP

优点英语 高三英语培优外刊阅读 班级：____________学号：____________姓名：____________ 外刊精选｜伦敦的大桥真要塌了？ 近日，伦敦多座大桥因为修建时间较早，出现不同程度的损坏。出于安全考虑，这些大桥被短暂封闭。市民呼吁英国现任首相鲍里斯·约翰逊采取措施来修复大桥，而鲍里斯却表示，他更愿意把财政支出花在伦敦之外的英国中、北部地区。英国政府为何不愿把钱花在伦敦？伦敦的这些大桥能否得到修复？ Londons Bridges Really Are Falling Down By Mark Landler One by one, they stepped forward to tell their stories. Children suddenly forced to travel two hours each way to school. Pensioners whose weekly doctors’ appointments have turned into arduous, half-day treks. Shopkeepers whose businesses have been crippled by the disappearance of commuters. All because Hammersmith Bridge, a majestic but badly corroded 19th-century suspension bridge was closed last month for safety reasons. Hammersmith Bridge is an apt metaphor for all the ways the country has changed after a decade of economic austerity, years of political wars over Brexit, and months of lockdown to combat the pandemic, the last of which has decimated already-stressed public finances. It has appealed for help to Prime Minister Boris Johnson. But he won election by promising to spend money on marquee projects like a $130 billion-plus high-speed railway, not a cast-iron relic of Queen Victoria’s reign. He also wants to spread the wealth to Britain’s economically challenged Midlands and North, not rescue a leafy, affluent enclave of London, where professionals commute from gracious Regency villas to jobs in the City and students practice on the manicured playing fields of the elite St. Paul’s School. “The national government is afraid of spending money in London because it would threaten its ‘leveling up’ agenda,” said Tony Travers, an expert in urban affairs at the London School of Economics. “Promising to build shiny things for the future is more attractive than fixing road surfaces or mending bridges.” 【词汇过关】 请写出下面文单词在文章中的中文意思。 1.pensioner [?pen??n?] n. __________________________ 2.arduous [?ɑ?d?u?s] adj. __________________________ 3.trek [trek] n. __________________________ 4.cripple [?kr?pl] vt. ___