For Tony Blair, home is a messy sort of place, where the prime minister"s job is not to uphold eternal values but to force through some unpopular changes that may make the country work a bit better. The area where this is most obvious, and where it matters most, is the public services. Mr. Blair faces a difficulty here which is partly of his own making. By focusing his last election campaign on the need to improve hospitals, schools, transport and policing, he built up expectations. Mr. Blair has said many times that reforms in the way the public services work need to go alongside increases in cash. Mr. Blair has made his task harder by committing a classic negotiating error. Instead of extracting concessions from the other side before promising his own, he has pledged himself to higher spending on public services without getting a commitment to change from the unions. Why, given that this pledge has been made, should the health unions give ground in return? In a speech on March 20th, Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the exchequer, said that "the something-for-nothing days are over in our public services and there can be no blank cheques." But the government already seems to have given health workers a blank cheque. Nor are other ministries conveying quite the same message as the treasury. On March 19th, John Hutton, a health minister, announced that cleaners and catering staff in new privately-funded hospitals working for the National Health service will still be government employees, entitled to the same pay and conditions as other health-service workers. Since one of the main ways in which the government hopes to reform the public sector is by using private providers, and since one of the main ways in which private providers are likely to be able to save money is by cutting labor costs, this move seems to undermine the government"s strategy. Now the government faces its hardest fight. The police need reforming more than any other public service. Half of them, for instance, retire early, at a cost of ＆1 billion a year to the taxpayer. The police have voted 10-1 against proposals from the home secretary, David Blunkett, to reform their working practices. This is a fight the government has to win. If the police get away with it, other public service workers will reckon they can too. And, if they all get away it, Mr. Blair"s domestic policy——which is what voters are most likely to judge him on a the next election——will be a failure.

单选题 What may be the attitude of many public-service workers towards the strategy of Blair"s government?

单选题 Which of the following is TRUE according to the text?

单选题 When mentioning "the something-for-nothing days"(Paragraph l), the writer is talking about

单选题 The conclusion can be drawn from the text that Britain"s public services may be

单选题 The views of Gordon Brown and John Hutton on public services reforms are