LIVING WITHOUT ENERGY

Everyone says that we must use less energy! But how? that is the big question.
In this article, you can read about the house of the future, which uses hardly any energy at all.....

Most houses use energy - lots of it. We use energy for heating, lighting,
for running our household appliances - TV's, washing machines, fridges, and so on. In winter time,
most houses use dozens of kilowatts of electricity every day, or the equivalent in gas.
The house in the photo, on the other hand, uses virtually nothing: most of the energy that it uses
comes straight from the sun, the wind or the ground. This is an experimental house at the University
of Nottingham, and it could be the kind of house that most people are living in fifty years from now.
During the daytime, it is rarely necessary to turn on an electric light, even in rooms without windows.
Sunlight, or daylight, is "piped" through the house, into each room, through special high-reflection
aluminium tubes. You can see how well they reflect light, by looking at the reflections of the faces in
the picture!
At night, of course, energy is necessary - but most of this comes from the sun or the wind. The house
is fitted with photovoltaic solar panels that generate electricity during the daytime, and a wind turbine
power generator too; electricity from these can be used directly, or else stored in batteries, and used
when it is needed.
For heating, the house uses direct solar energy (sunshine heating water that circulates through a
radiator system), or geothermal energy. This takes low-level heat out of the ground, and uses a heatpump to convert it into high-level heat for use in radiators - the same principle as a refrigerator, but in
reverse.
As for water, most daily needs are provided for by the house's own supply; rainwater is collected on
the roof, filtered, and used for all toilets, baths and showers.
If, one day, most people in developed countries live in houses like this one, most of today's pollution
will have disappeared, and global warming may be a problem of the past.
WORDS:
fitted: equipped - generate: make, create - store: conserve, keep - geothermal: from under the
ground, from the earth - in reverse: backwards - supply: provision

BLACK AND BRITISH

TODAY IN BRITAIN.....

In most parts of today's Britain, racism is not part of ordinary life. Most people
do not judge other people by the colour of their skin. Groups like the British National Party are very
marginal, and do not usually win any elections. The most ugly forms of racism, at least, have been
rejected; and while Britain's Blacks still have many forms of prejudice to fight against, vicious racism
is not usually one of them.
Nonetheless, although Black and White communities live side by side in most British cities, and
there are not usually visible tensions between ordinary people, from time to time serious racist
incidents take place.
The most notorious of these concerned a black teenager called Stephen Lawrence, gratuitously
murdered in 1993 by a gang of white youths as he waited at a bus stop. Almost every week, racist
incidents are reported in the media, somewhere in Britain. Perhaps, in a population of almost 60
million people, that is inevitable, even in a country where the vast majority of people claim that they
are not racially prejudiced.
Yet there are two sorts of racism: visible racism, and invisible racism.
Many black people in Britain feel that they are regularly discriminated against in invisible ways.
Unemployment is higher among Blacks than among Whites, and Blacks do not do as well at school
as Whites - often because the schools that they go to do not have high academic reputations.
(Asians , on the other hand, people from India, Pakistan or China, tend to do better than White
pupils).
Black community leaders frequently complain about racism in the police, and unfortunately, some
of their complaints are justified. In 1999, an official report into the (London) Metropolitan Police (the
"Met"), following the murder of Stephen Lawrence, stated that "institutional racism" was
widespread throughout the police service.
Since then, the Met and other police forces in Britain have introduced tough programmes to try to
stop this form of invisible - though sometimes visible - racism. Though there has been no serious
violence in Black districts of British cities for over twenty years, people have not forgotten the violence
that occurred in several British cities in the 80's. Even today, there is often tension just under the
surface in places like Brixton, London, where poverty, unemployment and other social problems are
high, and confidence in the police is very low.
Plenty of projects have been started, to provide jobs and training to young Blacks in the poorest
parts of the cities. Some have been very successful, and lots of Black teenagers do well at school,
then go to university or do something else interesting, and become successful. They
are, nevertheless , in a minority. Most Blacks in Britain today still live in the cities, or in the poorer
districts of small towns. Sixty years after the first Afro-Caribbeans were first invited to come and work
Britain, only a small minority of Britain's Black community have really integrated into
the mainstream of society.

TODAY IN BRITAIN
Quantifiers:
Section 2 contains a lot of "quantifiers"; such as most, many, few, several, a small minority, etc.
There are three main groups of quantifiers:
a) those which are not followed by of unless followed by a second determiner,
for example: most people, but most of the people, some complaints but some of their complaints,
b) those which are always followed by of, such as plenty, none, the majority,
and c) those that are never followed by of, such as no, every.
Add in the word OF in the following sentences, whenever (and only when) necessary:
1. Some _____ the people were very poor.
2. Some _____ men brought their families with them.
3. Few _____ the men who came had been to Britain before.
4. There were few _____ cases of racial tension in the 1950's.
5. At the time there were plenty _____ jobs for everyone.
6. Not many _____ black workers found well paid jobs.
7. Several _____ the worst racist incidents took place in London.
8. Anti-racism programmes have been introduced in several _____ police forces.
9. There are many _____ different forms of racism.
10. Most _____ the black people in Britain still live in cities.