Word: britishisms
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...Greeks' prescription for soul-crushing drudgery: inmates would be forced to trek endlessly on treadmills, pass their days turning purposeless cranks for thousands of revolutions at a time, or shuttle cannonballs back and forth in an activity known as the "shot drill." Among those subjected to forced labor in British prisons was scribe Oscar Wilde, who toiled for two years on charges of public indecency...
...million and 30 million people are estimated to have died from exhaustion, illness and malnutrition after toiling in the notorious Soviet gulag in 14-hour days felling trees, digging in the frigid Siberian tundra or mining coal. Often the labor was as fruitless as the punishments devised by the British. In the early 1930s, more than 100,000 prisoners toiled to construct a canal between the White and Baltic seas - which turned out to be too narrow and shallow to service most vessels...
...Becoming British just got trickier. Under a new government proposal announced on Aug. 3, would-be Brits may have to work a little bit harder to get their citizenship when a second test is added to the country's points-based immigration system. If the plan goes through, applicants would serve a term as "probationary citizens," winning or losing points on the path to the passport depending on how well they fit into British society...
...Immigration is a hot-button issue for British voters, with the recession fueling fears that Brits are losing already scarce jobs to foreigners. In a Home Office poll released in February, 64% of respondents said they were dissatisfied with the government's immigration policies. That same month, the government responded to the economic downturn by toughening the points system for getting a visa into the country. Now it argues that a second, more difficult test to decide who can stay would give it an additional mechanism to respond to the needs of the U.K.'s workforce. (Read "Immigration...
...concerned with both legal and illegal immigration to the U.K., welcomes the new plan. "This is a small, crowded island," says chairman Sir Andrew Green. "In a normally functioning economy there is not a fixed number of jobs, so it's not the case that one immigrant takes one British job. However, there is some effect of the kind as the rate of employment is falling very fast...