September 11th 2001 drew the transatlantic alliance together; but the mood did not last, and over the five years since it has pulled ever further apart. A recent poll for the German Marshall Fund shows that 57% of Europeans regard American leadership in world affairs as "undesirable". The Iraq war is mainly to blame. But there is another and more intractable reason for the growing division: God. Europeans worry that American foreign policy under George Bush is too influenced by religion. The "holy warriors" who hijacked the planes on September 11th reintroduced God into international affairs in the most dramatic of ways. It seems that George Bush is replying in kind, encouraging a clash of religions that could spell global catastrophe. Dominique Moisi, a special adviser at the French Institute for International Relations, argues that "the combination of religion and nationalism in America is frightening. We feel betrayed by God and by nationalism, which is why we are building the European Union as a barrier to religious warfare". Josef Braml, of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, complains that in America "religious attitudes have more of an influence on political choices than in any other western democracy". The notion that America is too influenced by religion is not confined to the elites. Three in five French people and nearly as many Dutch think that Americans are too religious—and that religion skews what should be secular decisions. Europeans who think that America is "too religious" are more inclined to anti-Americanism than their fellow countrymen. 38% of Britons have an unfavourable view of America, but that number rises to 50% among people who are wary of American religiosity. Is America engaged in a faith-based foreign policy? Religion certainly exerts a growing influence on its actions in the world, but in ways more subtle and complicated than Europeans imagine. It is true that America is undergoing a religious revival "Hot" religions such as evangelical Protestantism and hardline Catholicism are growing rapidly while "cool" mainline versions of Christianity are declining. It is also true that the Republican Party is being reshaped by this revival. Self-identified evangelicals provided almost 40% of Mr. Bush"s vote in 2004; if you add in other theological conservatives, such as Mormons and traditional Catholics, that number rises closer to 60%. All six top Republican leaders in the Senate have earned 100% ratings from the Christian Coalition. It is also true that Mr. Bush frequently uses religious rhetoric when talking of foreign affairs. On September 12th he was at it again, telling a group of conservative journalists that he sees the war on terror as "a confrontation between good and evil", and remarking, "It seems to me that there"s a Third Awakening" (in other words, an outbreak of Christian evangelical fervour, of the sort that has swept across America at least twice before). And Christian America overall is taking a bigger interest in foreign policy. New voices are being heard, Such as Sam Brownback, a conservative senator from Kansas who has led the fight against genocide in Darfur, and Rick Warren, the author of a bestseller called The Purpose-Driven Life, who is sending 2,000 missionaries to Rwanda. Finally, it is true that religious figures have done some pretty outrageous things. Pat Robertson called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela. Lieutenant-General William "Jerry" Boykin, deputy under-secretary of defense for intelligence, toured the country telling Christian groups that radical Muslims hate America "because we"re a Christian nation and the enemy is a guy named Satan". He often wore uniform.

The first disturbing factor was imperialism, the reawakening of a dominating spirit which had seemingly been put to sleep by the proclamation of an Imperial Federation. 【F1】 Its coming was heralded by the Boer War in South Africa, through which Britain blundered to what was hoped to be an era of peace and good will. Other nations promptly made such hope a vain whistling in the wind. Japanese War Lords began a career of conquest which aimed to make Japan master of Asia and East Indies. Pacific islands that had for ages slept peacefully were turned into frowning naval stations. 【F2】 Even the United States, aroused by an easy triumph in the Spanish War, started on an imperialistic adventure by taking control of the Philippines, thus making an implacable enemy of Japan. Only a nation that enters on a dangerous course with eyes wide open has any chance of a safe way out, and the imperialistic nations were all alike blind. 【F3】 An inevitable result was the First War and the great horror of a Second World War, the two disasters being different acts of the same tragedy of imperialism, separated only by a breathing spell. Another factor that influenced literature for the worse was a widespread demand for social reform of every kind; not slow and orderly reform, which is progress, but immediate and uncontrolled reform, which breeds a spirit of rebellion and despair. Before the Victorian age had come to an end, English literature appeared to have lost touch with healthy English life. Many writers echoed the sorrowful cry of James Thomson in his City of Dreadful Night, or babbled of "art for art's sake" with Oscar Wilde. 【F4】 Groom, in his survey of the period, notes that writers had mostly a critical attitude toward morals and religion, Church and State, as relics from "the dead hand of traditional beliefs." 【F5】 Small wonder that German and Japanese war-advocates regarded Englishmen as a decadent race when the same or a worse opinion was daily read in the novels of Samuel Butler and nightly heard in the plays of Bernard Shaw.

Write a letter to your friend Tom who posted you a Japanese dictionary from Japan on your birthday. Express your appreciation. You should include the details you think necessary. You should write about 100 words on the ANSWER SHEET. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address. (10 points)

Lookatthefollowingpictureandwriteanarticleonoverweightkidsinourcountry.Yourarticleshouldmeetthefollowingtworequirements:1)interpretthemessageconveyedbythepicture2)makeyourcommentsonthephenomenonYoushouldwriteabout160～200wordsneatly.

In order to "change lives for the better" and reduce "dependency", George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, introduced the "upfront work search" scheme. Only if the jobless arrive at the jobcentre with a CV, register for online job search, and start looking for work will they be eligible for benefit—and then they should report weekly rather than fortnightly. What could be more reasonable? More apparent reasonableness followed. There will now be a seven-day wait for the jobseeker's allowance. "Those first few days should be spent looking for work, not looking to sign on ," he claimed. "We're doing these things because we know they help people stay off benefits and help those on benefits get into work faster" Help? Really? On first hearing, this was the socially concerned chancellor, trying to change lives for the better, complete with "reforms" to an obviously indulgent system that demands too little effort from the newly unemployed to find work, and subsidises laziness. What motivated him, we were to understand, was his zeal for "fundamental fairness"—protecting the taxpayer, controlling spending and ensuring that only the most deserving claimants received their benefits. Losing a job is hurting: you don't skip down to the jobcentre with a song in your heart, delighted at the prospect of doubling your income from the generous state. It is financially terrifying, psychologically embarrassing and you know that support is minimal and extraordinarily hard to get. You are now not wanted; you are now excluded from the work environment that offers purpose and structure in your life. Worse, the crucial income to feed yourself and your family and pay the bills has disappeared. Ask anyone newly unemployed what they want and the answer is always: a job. But in Osborneland, your first instinct is to fall into dependency—permanent dependency if you can get it—supported by a state only too ready to indulge your falsehood. It is as though 20 years of ever-tougher reforms of the job search and benefit administration system never happened. The principle of British welfare is no longer that you can insure yourself against the risk of unem ployment and receive unconditional payments if the disaster happens. Even the very phrase "jobseeker's allowance" is about redefining the unemployed as a "jobseeker" who had no fundamental right to a benefit he or she has earned through making national insurance contributions. Instead, the claimant receives a time-limited "allowance," conditional on actively seeking a job; no entitlement and no insurance, at ￡71.70 a week, one of the least generous in the EU.

More boys than girls arc born all over the world, but a new study has found that the closer people live to the equator, the smaller the difference becomes. No one knows why. The skewed sex ratio at birth has been known for more than a hundred years, and researchers have found a large variety of social, economic and biological factors that correlate with it—war, economic stress, age, diet, selective abortion or infanticide and more. Teasing out the contribution of any single cultural or political variable has proved an almost infinitely complicated exercise. But latitude is a natural phenomenon, unaffected by cultural or economic factors. To look at its effect, Kristen J. Navara of the University of Georgia used the latitude of the capital city in 202 countries, as well as 10 years of data on sex ratio at birth and annual variations in day length and temperature. To estimate socioeconomic status for each country, she used statistics on unemployment and gross national product. She also calculated a political instability index using an analysis of stale failure and conflict published by the Fund for Peace, a research organization that combines 12 social, economic and political indicators to estimate the relative stability of the world"s nations. Then Dr. Navara performed a statistical analysis to figure out which variables affect sex ratio. The report appeared online April 1 in Biology Letters. The number of boys born was not related to socioeconomic and political factors, but there was a significant correlation between sex ratios skewed in favor of boys and latitude and the climate variables that go with it. African countries produced the lowest sex ratios—50. 7 percent boys and European and Asian countries had the highest with 51. 4 percent. The effect of latitude, Dr. Navara found, persisted across wide variations in lifestyle and socioeconomic status. There were large differences in sex ratio between tropical regions within 23 degrees of the equator and the temperate regions 23 to 50 degrees north or south, but no difference between the temperate regions and the subarctic north of 50 degrees. The population of people living south of 50 degrees was too small to be included in the analysis. The correlation with latitude was unchanged even after excluding data from Asian and African countries that might have been skewed by abortion or the killing of baby girls. So sex selection by parents before or at birth does not explain the correlation.

Women account for almost half the workforce in western countries, and the lower ranks of many big companies reflect that ratio. But at the top of the corporate ladder it is a different story. For every ten men in the executive suite there is one woman, a ratio that has changed little since the term "the glass ceiling" was coined two decades ago to de scribe the barrier that allows women to see the top of the corporate ladder, but seems to stop them from reaching it. Despite much discussion, and efforts by both women"s and business groups to break that barrier down, the world"s biggest companies are still almost exclusively run by men. Yet, at the same time, a growing number of those companies have become convinced that it makes good business sense to have more women in their executive suite. Hardnosed male bastions such as ABB, BP and General Electric have renewed their efforts to help women reach the higher levels, not out of any sense of corporate social responsibility but because they genuinely believe that it is good for their profits. Research from America, Britain and Scandinavia supports their view, showing a strong correlation between share holder returns and the proportion of women in the higher executive echelons. While this does not establish a causal relationship, it does suggest that a corporate culture which fosters women"s careers can also foster profitability. Many firms are worried about the coming demographic squeeze that threatens to re duce the supply of qualified men. A few think that women have a unique contribution to make in running modern firms. They are often better at team-building and communications, for example, an advantage in a corporate world that is today increasingly characterized more by informal networks than by ordered cohorts. IBM is convinced that it ran into trouble in the early 1990s partly because its blue suited, like-minded top male executives failed to see the implications of changes in the computer industry. It has sought to diversify its workforce at all levels ever since, and promoting women has been a big part of this effort. Diverse groups are acknowledged to be better at spotting threats coming from unlikely direction. Some of the most enthusiastic promoters of women—Hewlett-Packard and Alcan, as well as IBM—have had considerable success in achieving this in a relatively short period of time. But the vast majority of firms have not. What can they do?

When older people can no longer remember names at a cocktail party, they tend to think that their brainpower is declining. But a growing number of studies suggest that this assumption is often wrong. Instead, the research finds, the aging brain is simply taking in more data and trying to sift through a clutter of information, often to its long-term benefit. The studies are analyzed in a new edition of a neurology book, "Progress in Brain Research. " Some brains do deteriorate with age. Alzheimer"s disease, for example, strikes 13 percent of Americans 65 and older. But for most aging adults, the authors say, much of what occurs is a gradually widening focus of attention that makes it more difficult to latch onto just one fact, like a name or a telephone number. Although that can be frustrating, it is often useful. "It may be that distractibility is not, in fact, a bad thing," said Shelley H. Carson, a psychology researcher at Harvard whose work was cited in the book. "It may increase the amount of information available to the conscious mind. " For example, in studies where subjects are asked to read passages that are interrupted with unexpected words or phrases, adults 60 and older work much more slowly than college students. Although the students plow through the texts at a consistent speed regardless of what the out-of-place words mean, older people slow down even more when the words are related to the topic at hand. That indicates that they are not just stumbling over the extra information, but are taking it in and processing it. When both groups were later asked questions for which the out-of-place words might be answers, the older adults responded much better than the students. "For the young people, it"s as if the distraction never happened," said an author of the review, Lynn Hasher, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and a senior scientist at the Rotman Research Institute. "But for older adults, because they"ve retained all this extra data, they" re now suddenly the better problem solvers. They can transfer the information they"ve soaked up from one situation to another. " Such tendencies can yield big advantages in the real world, where it is not always clear what information is important, or will become important. A seemingly irrelevant point or suggestion in a memo can take on new meaning if the original plan changes. Or extra details that stole your attention, like others"yawning and fidgeting, may help you assess the speaker"s real impact.

You forgot your dictionary on the table when you had breakfast in the dining hall this morning. Write a notice of loss to clearly state: 1) the time and place of your loss, 2) the detailed description of the lost item, 3) your contact information. You should write about 100 words. Do not sign your own name at the end of the notice. Use "Li Ming" instead. You do not need to write your address.

CherishFoodWriteanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthedrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)explainitsintendedmeaning,and3)giveyourcomments.

When two of the world"s richest and mightiest men pledge to destroy an enemy, it is time to pay attention. Bill Gates, the former boss of Microsoft who now devotes all his time to his charitable foundation, travelled this week to New York, the city run by Michael Bloomberg, to join his fellow billionaire"s campaign to stamp out smoking. Have the two potentates met their match? Despite decades of work by health campaigners, more than one billion people still smoke today. Smoking kills up to half of those who fail to quit puffing, reducing their lives by an average of 10 to 15 years. The World Health Organisation (WHO) says more than 5 million people a year die early from the effects (direct or indirect) of tobacco. That exceeds the combined toll of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. Despite that dismal situation, there are three reasons to give the latest pair of campaigners a slim chance of success: money, methods and motivation. Messrs Gates and Bloomberg vowed to spend a combined total of $ 500 million on discouraging the weed. Since Mr. Bloomberg"s charity had already announced an award of $125 million earlier, the new money pledged this week totalled a "mere" $ 375 million: $ 250 million from the mayor, and a fresh $ 125 million from the software magnate"s philanthropic outfit. How will this cash be spent? In quite innovative ways, and that is a second reason for optimism. Hitherto, most anti-smoking funds have been channelled through a few large bureaucracies. But Mr. Bloomberg"s charity wants to let a thousand flowers bloom: in other words, to lend a hand to many initiatives, both public and private, to see what works. There will be a competitive grant scheme for poor countries where the tobacco habit is spreading. The very fact that two giants are teaming up is a landmark in American philanthropy- comparable to Warren Buffett"s decision, two years ago, to put his fortune at the disposal of Mr. Gates" foundation. As part of their joint commitment, Mr. Gates is giving some of his $ 125 million directly to Mr. Bloomberg"s charity; the rest will go to carefully monitored projects in India, China and other places where the number of smokers is rising relentlessly. Then there is motivation. There are other big players in this cause, and that should induce every new entrant to try bringing something fresh to the party. Earlier this year the WHO started a campaign against tobacco known as MPower. One of its selling points was that in contrast with many other projects, it had a fairly clear idea about what was needed. WHO experts have listed a series of tactics, ranging from aggressive public education to a rise in tobacco taxes, that deliver results. (Even if high taxes lead to some smuggling and diversion, studies done in Brazil, for example, show that fiscal measures do curb consumption. ) The World Bank, which funded that research, is also thought to be ready to join the anti-smoking scrum after years of paying little attention. A crowded field, indeed. But having an extra $ 500 million from two hard-driven billionaires surely won"t hurt.

You have several experiences of buying books from Delta, an online bookstore, but the books were either delayed or damaged or something. Write a letter to the Customer Service of Delta to 1)file a complaint, and 2)make two or three suggestions. You should write about 100 words on ANSWER SHEET 2. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address.

Americans today don' t place a very high value on intellect. Our heroes are athletes, entertainers, and entrepreneurs, not scholars. Even our schools are where we send our children to get a practical education— not to pursue knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Symptoms of pervasive anti-intellectualism in our schools aren' t difficult to find. "Schools have always been in a society where practical is more important than intellectual," says education writer Diane Ravitch. "Schools could be a counterbalance." Ravitch's latest book, Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms, traces the roots of anti-intellectualism in our schools, concluding they are anything but a counterbalance to the American distaste for intellectual pursuits. But they could and should be. Encouraging kids to reject the life of the mind leaves them vulnerable to exploitation and control. Without the ability to think critically, to defend their ideas and understand the ideas of others, they cannot fully participate in our democracy. Continuing along this path, says writer Earl Shorris, "We will become a second-rate country. We will have a less civil society." "Intellect is resented as a form of power or privilege," writes historian and professor Richard Hofstadter in Anti-intellectualism in American Life, a Pulitzer-Prize winning book on the roots of anti-intellectualism in US politics, religion, and education. From the beginning of our history, says Hofstadter, our democratic and populist urges have driven us to reject anything that smells of elitism. Practicality, common sense, and native intelligence have been considered more noble qualities than anything you could learn from a book. Ralph Waldo Emerson and other Transcendentalist philosophers thought schooling and rigorous book learning put unnatural restraints on children: "We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for 10 or 15 years and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing." Mark Twain' s Huckleberry Finn exemplified American anti-intellectualism. Its hero avoids being civilized—going to school and learning to read—so he can preserve his innate goodness. Intellect, according to Hofstadter, is different from native intelligence, a quality we reluctantly admire. Intellect is the critical, creative, and contemplative side of the mind. Intelligence seeks to grasp, manipulate, re-order, and adjust, while intellect examines, ponders, wonders, theorizes, criticizes and imagines. School remains a place where intellect is mistrusted. Hofstadter says our country's educational system is in the grips of people who "joyfully and militantly proclaim their hostility to intellect and their eagerness to identify with children who show the least intellectual promise."

BPart ADirections: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D./B

BPart ADirections: Write a composition/letter of no less than 100 words on the following information./B

The field of animal emotions, an area of focus in the scientific discipline concerned with the study of animal minds called cognitive ethology, has changed a great deal in the last 30 years. When 1 first began my studies centering on the question, "What does it feel like to be a dog or a wolf?" researchers were almost all skeptics who spent their time wondering if dogs, cats, chimpanzees and other animals felt anything. Since feelings don"t fit under a microscope, these scientists usually didn"t find any and as I like to say, I"m glad 1 wasn"t their dog! But today the question of real importance is not whether animals have emotions, hut why animal emotions have evolved the way they have. In fact, the paradigm has shifted to such an extent that the burden of "proof" now falls to those who still argue that animals don"t experience emotions. My colleagues and I no longer have to put tentative quotes around such words as "happy" or "sad" when we write about an animal"s inner life. Many researchers also recognize that we must be anthropomorphic(attribute human trails to animals)when we discuss animal emotions hut that if we do it carefully and biocentrically(from the animals" point of view), we can still give due consideration to the animals" position. " As Professor Robert Sapolsky, a world renowned ethologist and neuroscientist and author of A Primate"s Memoirs notes about his anthropomorphic tendencies when he describes baboon behavior: "One hopes that the parts that are blatantly ridiculous will be perceived as such. I"ve nonetheless been stunned by some of my more humorless colleagues—to see that they were not capable of recognizing that. The broader answer, though, is I"m not anthropomorphizing. Part of the challenge in understanding the behavior of a species is that they look like us for a reason. That" s not projecting human value"s. That " s primatizing the generalities that we share with them. " No matter what we call it, researchers agree that animals and humans share many traits, including emotions. Thus, we"re not inserting something human into animals, but we"re identifying commonalities and then using human language to communicate what we observe. Being anthropomorphic is doing what"s natural and necessary to understand animal emotions. Over the years, I"ve noticed a curious phenomenon that I call anthropomorphic double-talk. If someone says that an animal is happy, no one questions it, but if someone says that an animal is unhappy, then charges of anthropomorphism are immediately raised and sceptics ask, "How do you know this?" This is especially true of people who try to justify keeping animals in zoos or using them for invasive research. Of course, seeing positive emotions is as anthropomorphic as seeing negative emotions, but some people just don"t get it.

Eating better and more adventurously is becoming an obsession, especially among people with money to spend. Healthier eating-and not-so-healthy eating-as well as the number and variety of food choices and venues continue to increase at an ever quickening pace. Globalization is the master trend that will drive the world of food in the years ahead. Consumers traveling the globe, both virtually and in reality, will be able to sweep up ingredients, packaged foods, recipes, and cooking techniques from every comer of the earth at an ever-intensifying and accelerating pace. Formerly remote ingredients and cooking styles are creating a whole new culinary mosaic as they are transplanted and reinterpreted all over the world. Many factors are behind this, but none more so than the influence of the great international hotel chains. Virtually every chef who has worked for Hilton, Westin, Peninsula, or any other major chain gathers global experience in locales as diverse as Singapore, New Orleans, Toronto, and Dubai. At each stop, they carry away cooking ideas and techniques they can and do use elsewhere. This trend will gain even greater momentum as ambitious young adults stake their own futures on internationalization, treating broader food away as an important aspect of their own advancement. Young people will need knowledge of food and ingredients from different continents and cultures as one aspect of socialization, enculturation, cultural exchange, and success. In country after country, there seems little doubt that global cuisine will make its biggest inroads among the younger set. Many in the generations now coming of age will treat world-ranging food knowledge and experience as key elements in furthering their personal plans, business acumen, and individual growth. The Internet has made global contacts a matter of routine. Computer networking will permit chefs and others in the food industry, including consumers, to link directly with the best available authorities in faraway nations, supplementing or bypassing secondhand sources of information altogether. Time, with all its implications, will also be a factor in emerging world food trends. More and more of us are destined to operate on global time-that is, at full tilt 24 hours a day. This will become the norm for companies with resources scattered all over the planet. Beyond the 24-hour supermarkets many of us already take for granted, there will also be three-shift shopping centers open at any hour. Restaurants in the great business capitals intent on cultivating an international clientele will serve midnight breakfasts or break-of-dawn dinners (with the appropriate wines) without raising a single eyebrow.

Their defenders say they are motivated, versatile workers who are just what companies need in these difficult times. To others, however, the members of "Generation Y"—those born in the 1980s and 1990s, otherwise known as the Net Generation—are spoiled, narcissistic idlers who cannot spell and waste too much time on instant messaging and Facebook. Ah, reply the Net Geners, but all thatmessing around online proves that we are computer-literate multi-taskers who are adept users of online collaborative tools, and natural team players. And, while you are on the subject of me, I need a month"s vacation to reconsider my personal goals. This culture clash has been going on in many organizations and has lately seeped into management books. The Net Geners have grown up with computers; they are brimming with self-confidence; and they have been encouraged to challenge received wisdom, to find their own solutions to problems and to treat work as a route to personal fulfillment rather than merely a way of putting food on the table. Not all of this makes them easy to manage. Bosses complain that after a childhood of being spoiled and praised, Net Geners demand far more frequent feedback and an over-precise set of objectives on the path to promotion.In a new report from PricewaterhouseCoopers, a consultancy, 61% of chief executives say they have trouble recruiting and integrating younger employees. For those hard-to-please older managers, the current recession is the joyful equivalent of hiding an alarm clock in a sleeping teenager"s bedroom. Once again, the touchy-feely management fads that always spring up in years of plenty are being ditched in favor of more brutal command-and-control methods. Having grown up in good times, Net Geners have labored under the illusion that the world owed them a living. But hopping between jobs to find one that meets your inner spiritual needs is not so easy when there are no jobs to hop to. And as for that vacation: here"s a permanent one, sunshine. In fact, compromise will be necessary on both sides. Net Geners will certainly have to lower some of their expectations and take the world as it is, not as they would like it to be. But their older bosses should also be prepared to make concessions. The economy will eventually recover, and demographic trends in most rich countries will make clever young workers even more valuable. Besides, many of the things that keep Net Geners happy are worth doing anyway. But for the moment at least, the Facebook-ers are under heavy criticism.

My room is three times as large as yours.

(46) Speaking of the loving warmth of the extended family, the popular image is of granny by the TV, baby playing in the crib and the rest cheerfully interacting between the two generational poles. Tradition and education are effortlessly passed on in a clearly marked comfort zone. Perfect for security, not to mention free babysitting. But wait. Study the mother"s face: exhausted, tense, unhappy. She is the pivot upon whom this cozy world turns. (47) She is the "supercarer" who spoonfeeds baby and granny both, makes sure they are entertained and out of danger, looks after the rest of the household and, chances are, holds down a paying job. Stuck between demanding or weak grandparents and always demanding and vulnerable little ones, this woman is not so much sandwiched as crushed between generations. It is not surprising, then, that a report last week claimed that 65 percent of supercarers were dissatisfied with their lives. I had a taste of their existence when, at the beginning of the year, my 73-year-old father came to stay. (48) He was so ill that he couldn"t walk or even roll over in his bed and was a sad, helpless presence, as in need of my attention as my kids. She, meanwhile, didn"t enjoy sharing her space and my time with someone who complained loudly about the noise she made. Running between them, conscious that all this "caring" was taking its toll, I remember thinking this was hell as many people (80 percent of them women) daily lived it. If you are well off like Cherie Booth, say, the fact that you are a supercarer (Booth, a QC with three children in their teens and twenties, also looks after her mother and her young son, Leo) presents a challenge but is at least achievable. What of the others, though, the ones who earn ￡8 an hour cleaning someone else"s home or sweeping a hospital ward? They find no let-up at home, but cramped living space invaded by crying babies and coughing old folk. (49) For them, being a supercarer means being a superloser, with far less of what everyone considers important: money, privacy, quality time for your partner and children. Demographic trends mean that more of us are destined to be supercarers; there are now about 2.5 million and this is expected to rise to 3.9 million by 2020, That"s a lobby with considerable bar gaining potential. So far, supercarers have not flexed their muscles. (50) The government would be wise to offer them tax breaks, the allowance available to those assisting the disabled and flexible work schedules. Otherwise, supercarers will rebel. Once they decide that the very old, as the very young, are not their responsibility, who will then take up the burden?