Word: britishisms
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...been James Tobin's turn. Close to four decades since the Yale economist proposed a levy on foreign-exchange transactions - or a "Tobin tax," as the suggestion became known - the idea is enjoying a new lease of life. At a meeting of G-20 finance ministers last weekend, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown suggested the group of leading countries consider the tax to establish "a better economic and social contract between financial institutions and the public based on trust and a just distribution of risks and rewards...
...which leaves the tax as a basic means of raising funds. And in that respect, there may be simpler methods. Because of the lukewarm response from other countries to Brown's suggestion, the British government was quick to reduce the levy to one of several ideas the Prime Minister had for recouping taxpayers' billions. Another idea - that banks themselves pay into a central rescue fund, with contributions determined by a lender's size or risk exposure - could yet prove more popular...
Archie Jones is the English everyman: a bit dithering, culturally ignorant, but fiercely loyal in a pinch. Jones lives in an England haunted by the Second World War and the disintegration of the British Empire, one reeling from the influx of brown-skinned people with gleaming white teeth. He takes it all in his distinctly English way, his big eyes and open countenance accepting without understanding: “He liked people to get on with things, Archie. He kind of felt people should just live together, you know, in peace or harmony or something...
...White Teeth” is funny. It is a charming and thought-provoking look into British society, the immigrant experience not seen by the outside world. It reveals the society’s flaws, poking fun at everybody but condemning nobody. Zadie Smith shows the confusion of trying to understand the present in the context of a past that never existed; “The funny thing about getting old in a country is people always want to hear that from you,” Archie muses. “They want to hear it really was once a green...
...year is 1966, and despite England’s successful production of some of the most famous rock ’n’ roll bands in the world, the national British radio only plays two hours of the music per week. To combat this, a group of DJs have established a radio station on a small freighter in the middle of the North Sea. Here they cohabitate while playing rock ’n’ roll 24/7 with a listener rate—according to the film—constituting half of the country’s population...