单选题 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 chinup 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 3, Par

单选题 What do we know about the British from the first two paragraphs?

【正确答案】 D

【答案解析】推理判断题。根据题干定位到第1、2段。第2段首句“公平有适中的意思，也是英国人推崇的另一特点，奉行的中庸之道，凡事恰到好处”可判断英国人是中庸温和的；末句“摆出乐观的姿态(gesturing in a chin-up sortof way)”又表明他们同时也是乐观的，故D项为答案。A项“他们难以取悦”是对文中英国人“中庸”姿态的过度推理；B项“友善”这点文中没有提及；C项“爱自吹自擂(prone to boastfulness)”与文中moderate矛盾。

单选题 George Osborne and Vince Cable regarded the spending cuts as fair because

【正确答案】 C

【答案解析】推理判断题。根据George Osborne和Vince Cable定位到第4段。由本段首句可判断，首先出现“斗争”时，政客紧紧抓住“公平”这个词，其次政客们紧抓“公平”的现象“不足为奇”，说明英政客们喜欢运用“公平”这个词，故C为答案。A项文中并未讨论该举措究竟是否公正；B项两人的观点仅仅是在“公平”这一点上有共同点，并非真正意义上的“意见相同”；D项文中并无此意思。

单选题 The author holds in the last paragraph that "fairness"

【正确答案】 D

【答案解析】推理判断题。根据题干定位到最后一段。本段提到因为“公平”宽泛的含义，特别是它包含了“自由”、“平等”这一对矛盾的概念，便于政客们利用其含糊不清的词义做文章，故不难判断D项“公平成了英政客惯用的陈词”为答案。A项“它是英国联合政府的基石”属过度推理，该词用得多不等于它是基础；B项文中谈到该词本身包含很多意思，并非对不同的人来说意思不同，应是在不同的情况下意思不同；C项inclusiveness(包容性)是fairness这个词的特征，并非英语这门语言的特征。

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

【正确答案】 C

【答案解析】是非细节题。考查全文。第3段明确提到公平也使女人受益(it does not discriminate on grounds of either gender or skin colour)，故C项为答案。A项本文并未特别提到在体育赛事中需要公平；B项属过度推理，文中第3段提到欧洲的政治措辞较铺张，并不是说其政客就不推崇公平的概念了；D项“公平是英联合政府的指导方针”也属于过度推理，本文仅提到“公平”是个受欢迎的概念。