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| Some features of today's British lifeSome features of today's British lifeECONOMY From 1981 to 1989 the British economy experienced eight years of
sustained growth at the annual average rate over 3%. However, subsequently Recent indications that the recovery is under may include: . an increase in manufacturing output; . a steady upward trend in retail sales; . increases in new car registrations; . record levels of exports; . increased business and consumer confidence; and . signs of greater activity in the housing market. The Government’s policy is to ensure sustainable economic growth through low inflation and sound public finances. The Government’s economic policy is set in the context of a medium-term financial strategy, which is revived each year. Within this strategy, monetary and fiscal policies are designed to defeat inflation. Short-term interest rates remain the essential instrument of monetary policy. Macroeconomic policy is directed towards keeping down the rate of inflation as the basis for sustainable growth, while micro-economic policies seek to improve the working of markets and encourage enterprise, efficiency and flexibility through measures such as privatization, deregulation and tax reforms. The economy is now benefiting from substantially lower interest rates. In INDUSTRY Private enterprises generate over three-quarters of total domestic
income. Since 1979 the Government has privatized 46 major businesses and
reduced the state-owned sector of industry by about two-thirds. The In some sectors a small number of large companies and their subsidiaries are responsible for a substantial proportion of total production, notably in the vehicle, aerospace and transport equipment industries. Private enterprises account for the greater part of activity in the agricultural, manufacturing, construction, distributive, financial and miscellaneous service sectors. The private sector contributed 75% of total domestic final expenditure in 1992, general government 24 % and public corporations 1%. About 250 British industrial companies in the latest reporting period
each had an annual turnover of more than £500 million. The annual turnover
of the biggest company, British Petroleum’, makes it the llth largest
industrial grouping in the world and the second largest in Europe. Five FINANCE The service industries, which include finance, retailing, tourism and
business services, contribute about 65% of gross domestic product and over Average real disposable income per head increased by nearly three- quarters between 1971 and 1990 and this was reflected in a rise in consumer spending of financial, personal and leisure services and on the maintenance and repair of consumer durables. Demand for British travel, hotel and catering services rose as real incomes in Britain and other countries increased. The spread of home ownership, particularly during the 1980s, increased demand for legal and state agency services. Britain is a major financial centre, housing some of the world’s leading banking, insurance, securities, shipping, commodities, futures, and other financial services and markets. Financial services are an important source of employment and overseas earnings. Business services include advertising, market research, management consultancy, exhibition and conference facilities, computing services and auction houses. By the year 2000, tourism is expected to be the world’s biggest industry,
and Britain is one of the world’s leading tourist destinations. The
industry is Britain’s second largest, employing nearly 7% of the workforce. The computing services industry continues to be one of the fastest- growing sectors of the economy, and information technology is widely used in retailing and financial services. A notable trend in the services sector is the growth of franchising, an operation in which a company owning the rights to a particular form of trading licenses them to franchises, usually by means of an initial payment with continuing royalties. The main areas include cleaning services, film processing, print shops, hair-dressing and cosmetics, fitness centres, courier delivery, car rental, engine tuning and servicing, and fast food retailing. It is estimated that franchising’s share of total retail sales is over 3%, a figure which is likely to increase. DEFENCE The strength of the regular armed forces, all volunteers, was nearly British forces’ main military roles are to: . ensure the protection and security of Britain and its dependent territories; . ensure against any major external threat to Britain and its allies; and . contribute towards promoting Britain’s wider security interests through the maintenance of international peace and security. Most of Britain’s nuclear and conventional forces are committed to NATO
and about 95% of defence expenditure to meeting its NATO responsibilities. Under these plans, the strength of the armed forces is being cut by 22%,
leaving by the mid-1990s some 119,000 in the Army, 70,000 in the RAF and . three Tornado GR1 squadrons, four Phantom squadrons, two Buccaneer squadrons and part of a squadron of Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft; . 12 submarines, nine destroyers and frigates and 13 mine . countermeasures ships; and . 327 main battle tanks.
As a member of NATO, Britain fully supports the Alliance’s current strategic concept, under which its tasks are to: . help to provide a stable security environment, in which no country is able to intimidate or dominate any European country through the threat or use of force; . serve as a transatlantic forum for Allied consultations affecting member states’ vital interests; deter from aggression and defend member states against military attack; and . preserve the strategic balance within Europe. THE PRESS, RADIO AND TELEVISION National Daily and Sunday Papers. The British buy more newspapers than any other people except Swedes and
the Japanese. The daily press differs in two obvious ways from that of any
similar western European country. First, all over Britain most people read These characteristics are still more salient with the Sunday press. Scotland has two important “quality” papers, “The Scotsman” in Edinburgh and the “Glasgow Herald”. The dominance of the national press reflects the weakness of regional
identity among the English. The gap in quality is not so much between Except in central London there are very few newspaper kiosks in town streets. This may be because most pavements are too narrow to have room for them. In towns the local evening papers are sold by elderly men and women who stand for many hours, stamping their feet to keep warm. Otherwise, newspapers can be bought in shops or delivered to homes by boys and girls who want to earn money by doing “paper-rounds”. Most of the newspapers are owned by big companies, some of which have
vast interests in other things, ranging from travel agencies to Canadian
forests. Some have been dominated by strong individuals. The greatest of
the press “barons” have not been British in origin, but have come to Among the “quality” papers the strongly Conservative “Daily Telegraph”
sells more than twice as many copies as any of the others. It costs less to
buy and its reporting of events is very thorough. The “Financial Times” has
a narrower appeal, but is not narrowly restricted to business news. “The The most famous of all British newspapers is “The Times”. It is not now, and has never been, an organ of the government, and has no link with any party. In 1981 it and “The Sunday Times”’ were taken over by the international press company of the Australian Rupert Murdoch, which also owns two of the most “popular” of the national papers. Its editorial independence is protected by a supervisory body, but in the 1980s it has on the whole been sympathetic to the Conservative government. The published letters to the editor have often been influential, and some lead to, prolonged discussion in further letters. Under the Murdoch regime it has continued a movement away from its old austerity. The popular newspapers are now commonly called “tabloids”, a word first
used for pharmaceutical substances compressed into pills. The tabloid
newspapers compress the news, and are printed on small sheets of paper. The two archetypal popular papers, the “Daily Mail”’ and “Daily Express”
were both built up by individual tycoons in the early 20th century. Both
had a feeling for the taste of a newly-literate public: if a man bites a
dog, that’s news. The “Daily Express” was built up by a man born in Canada. In popular journalism the “Daily Mirror” became a serious rival of the Until the 1960s the old “Daily Herald” was an important daily paper
reflecting the views of the trade unions and the Labour Party. Then it went
through several changes, until in the 1970s its successor, “The Sun”, was
taken over by Mr Murdoch’s company. In its new tabloid form it became a
right-wing rival to the “Daily Mirror”, with huge headlines and some
nudity. In the 1980s its sales reached four million and exceeded the “Daily For a very long time the press has been free from any governmental interference. There has been no censorship, no subsidy. But for several decades it has seemed that some newspapers have abused their freedom. In competing with one another to get stories to satisfy a public taste for scandal, reporters and photographers have been tempted to harass individuals who have for one reason or another been involved, directly or indirectly, in events which could excite public curiosity. Prominent people of all kinds, as well as obscure people who come into the news as victims of crimes or accidents, have been pursued into their homes for photographs and interviews. Local and Regional Papers. Local morning papers have suffered from the universal penetration of the Most local daily papers belong to one or other of the big press empires, which leave their local editors to decide editorial policy. Mostly they try to avoid any appearance of regular partisanship, giving equal weight to each major political party. They give heavy weight to local news and defend local interests and local industries. The total circulation of all provincial daily newspapers, morning and evening together, is around eight million: about half as great as that of the national papers. In spite of this, some provincial papers are quite prosperous. They do not need their own foreign correspondents; they receive massive local advertising, particularly about things for sale. The truly local papers are weekly. They are not taken very seriously, being mostly bought for the useful information contained in their advertisements. But for a foreign visitor wishing to learn something of the flavour of a local community, the weekly local paper can be useful. Some of these papers are now given away, not sold out but supported by the advertising. The Weekly and Periodical Press. Good English writing is often to be found in the weekly political and
literary journals, all based in London, all with nationwide circulations in
the tens of thousands. “The Economist”, founded in 1841, probably has no
equal everywhere. It has a coloured cover and a few photographs inside, so
that it looks like “Time”’, “Newsweek” or “Der Spiegel”, but its reports
have more depth and breadth than any these. It covers world affairs, and
even its American section is more informative about America than its “The Times” has three weekly supplements, all appeared and sold separately. The “Literary Supplement” is devoted almost entirely to book reviews, and covers all kinds of new literature. It makes good use of academic contributors, and has at last, unlike “The Economist”, abandoned its old tradition of anonymous reviews. “New Scientist”4, published by the company which owns the “Daily Mirror”, has good and serious articles about scientific research, often written by academics yet useful for the general reader. One old British institution, the satirical weekly “Punch”’, survives,
more abrasive than in an earlier generation yet finding it hard to keep the
place it once had in a more secure social system. Its attraction,
particularly for one intellectual youth, has been surpassed by a new rival, Glossy weekly or monthly illustrated magazines cater either for women or
for any of a thousand special interests. Almost all are based in London,
with national circulations, and the women’s magazines sell millions of
copies. These, along with commercial television, are the great educators of
demand for the new and better goods offered by the modern consumer society. These specialist magazines are not cheap. They live off an infinite variety of taste, curiosity and interest. Their production, week by week and month by month, represents a fabulous amount of effort and of felled trees. Television has not killed the desire to read. Radio and Television. Since the 1970s 98% of British households have had television sets able
to receive four channels, two put out by the BBC, two by commercial
companies. Commercial satellite and cable TV began to grow significantly in Every household with TV must by law pay for a licence, which costs about the same for a year as a popular newspaper every day. Unlike the press, mass broadcasting has been subject to some state control from its early days. One agreed purpose has been to ensure that news, comment and discussion should be balanced and impartial, free of influence by government or advertisers. From 1926 first radio, then TV as well, were entrusted to the BBC, which still has a board of governors appointed by the government. The BBC’s monopoly was ended in 1954, when an independent board was appointed by the Home Secretary to give licences to broadcast (“franchises”) to commercial TV companies financed by advertising, and called in general independent television (ITV). These franchises have been given only for a few years at a time, then renewed subject to various conditions. In 1990 Parliament passed a long and complex new Broadcasting Act which
made big changes in the arrangements for commercial TV and radio. The old The general nature of the four TV channels functioning in 1991, seems
likely to continue, with BBC1 and ITV producing a broadly similar mixture
of programmes in competition with each other. ITV has a complex structure. By international standards it could reasonably be claimed that the four
regular channels together provide an above-average service, with the
balance giving something to please most tastes and preferences. Some quiz-
shows and “soap operas”’, or long-running sagas, attract large numbers of
viewers and to some extent the BBC competes for success in this respect. Television is probably the most important single factor in the continuous contest for the public’s favour between the political parties. Parties and candidates cannot buy advertising time. At intervals each channel provides time for each of the three main political parties for party-political broadcasts, and during an election campaign a great deal of time is provided for parties’ election, always on an equal basis. Minor parties get time, based partly on the number of their candidates. BBC TV Europe broadcasts some of its own programmes by satellite, and
from 1991 BBC TV International began to sell and distribute its World The BBC’s Radio 4 is the main general interest radio service, with some
items run by regional studios. Radio 3 is for minority interests, including
music, “2” for light entertainment, “1” for pop music and “5” for sport,
education and children’s programmes. There are also several dozens local The BBC runs several dozens of local radio stations, which compete with independent commercial rivals, financed by advertisements. All provide a mixture of local news and comment, with some entertainment matter, mainly pop music, in between. In the 1990s there should be one or more new commercial radio stations broadcasting nationwide, including one “non-pop” station, possibly for continuous broadcasts of classical music. |
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