How could anybody dislike the notion of fairness? Everything is better when it is fair: a share, a fight, a maiden, or a game. Even defeat sounds more attractive when it is fair and square. For the British fair play is especially important: without it, life isn"t cricket. Their country becomes quite pleasant when the weather is fair, though unfortunately it rarely is. And these days fair-trade goods crowd their supermarket shelves. Fairness is not only good, but also moderate, which is another characteristic that the British approve of. It does not claim too much for itself. Those who, on inquiry, admit that their health and fortunes are fair-to-middling navigate carefully between the twin dangers of boastfulness and ill-temperedness, while gesturing in a chin-up sort of way towards the possibility of future improvement. Fairness appeals to the British political class, for it has a common sense down-to-earthiness which avoids the grandiosity of American and continental European political discourse while aspiring to do its best for all men—and of course for maidens too, fair and otherwise, for one of its virtues is that it does not discriminate on grounds of either gender or skin colour. Not surprising, then, that Britain"s government should grab hold of the word and cling to it in the buffeting the coalition has had since the budget on June 22nd proposed higher taxes and even sharper spending cuts. "Tough but fair" is what George Osborne, the Conservative chancellor of the exchequer, called the cuts he announced. "It is going to be tough, but it is also very fair," said Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat business secretary. At last, something they could agree on. "Fairness" suits Britain"s coalition government so well not just because its meanings are all positive, but also because they are wide-ranging. To one lot of people, fairness means establishing the same rules for everybody, playing by them, and letting the best man win and the winner take all. To another, it means making sure that everybody gets equal shares. Those two meanings are not just different: they are opposite. They represent a choice that has to be made between freedom and equality. Yet so slippery— and thus convenient to politicians—is the English language that a single word encompasses both, and in doing so loses any claim to meaning.
单选题
The statement "without it, life isn"t cricket"(Line 4, Para. 1)reflects that
【正确答案】
B
【答案解析】解析：事实细节题。由该句的上一句：fair play is especially important可知，冒号后的内容是对其的进一步解析，因而not cricket应跳开字面意思来理解。在口语中，not cricket指“不公正的”，即“没有它(fair)，生活将没有公平(isn"t cricket)可言”，因而选B项。
单选题
What do we know about the British from the first two paragraphs?
【正确答案】
D
【答案解析】解析：推理判断题。文章第二段主要谈论英国人的性格。该段①句认为，英国人推崇的性格特征是moderate(中庸温和的)，③句后半部分又提到他们gesturing in a chin-up sort of way(摆出乐观的姿态)，D项的modest“适中的”和optimistic“乐观的”分别与之对应，故D项为答案。
单选题
George Osborne and Vince Cable regarded the spending cuts as fair because