Farming as a science-based industry

 

Although agriculture will be hard-pressed to feed the many people in the world in 1984, even at the present low levels, in Britain and other European countries the increased need will not be bearly so great as for the world as a whole; the anticipated rise in population is less and the initial standard of living already high. Unlike many parts of the world, however, Britain has little or no waste land to bring into cultivation. Instead, the farms must lose land needed for housing, factories, schools, offices and roads. Another loss from the farms will be labour.

The British farmer will have to produce more or less land and with fewer men. To do so he will have to use every tool placed at his disposal by the scientist and technologist – or condemn himself to a life of slavery on an income providing a bare subsistence. There will always be some men prepared to follow this life from their love of the traditional ways on the land, but they will be in continuous danger of extinction and their numbers will undoubtedly have fallen by 1984. These farms will be family farms as the traditional methods will not allow hired labour; at the wage levels agriculture must pay to keep abreast with a general rise in productivity.

For the rest of the land the management must, by 1984, have passed into the hands of men capable of applying every branch of science and technology, including modern techniques of management. Their farms must necessarily be a size which will justify their ability, skill and energy and bring them reward sufficient to attract them from other industries anxious to buy their services. These farms will be also big enough to employ men with special skills rather than the all-round farm craftsman.

On the arable land the cultivations will be increasingly mechanized, the management and operation of the machines being the responsibility of one group of workers. Field will have to be reshaped and enlarged to make cultivations easier, with the elimination of many hedgerows. Weeds will be almost entirely controlled by means of herbicides. The use of fertilizers will be heavy but controlled. The crops will be protected against pests and diseases from seed to harvest, largely by insecticides and fungicides.

(From The World in 1984 by Sir William Slater, F.R.S. Formerly Secretary, Agricultural Research Council,

London)

A life-long passion for the sea:

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1774-1851)

 

Turner did not begin oils until he was about twenty-one, his first exhibited oil-painting apparently being The Fishermen at Sea, off the Needles of 1796. It is typical of Turner to have begun the medium by attacking the difficult problem of moonlight.

Profound as Turner's love of the mountains was, it was scarcely so fundamental as his love of the sea. He had been feeding his eyes on waves and storms, upon clouds and vapour. Here the value of his splendid visual memory is evident. A wave cannot be drawn slowly and stolidly; it will not sit still to have its portrait painted. For this reason most painters reduce their waves as a whole to a formula. Turner alone by constant observation and by a consequent thorough knowledge of wave forms and of the rules that they obey, has given to his seas mass and weight as well as movement. The sea in itself absorbed him, but especially the sea as it affected ships. To a sailor, and Turner was at heart a sailor, a ship is a living creature, courageous and loyal, resourceful, yet pathetically in need of help. Her curves, like those of a human figure, are beautiful because they are of use. In drawing ships Turner shows a knowledge that springs from love; his actual manual dexterity, which is always remarkable, being never more astonishing than when he is firmly yet delicately delineating masts and rigging. If Turner sympathised with ships, he sympathised equally with the men within them and loved to depict fishermen pulling at oars or sailors grappling with ropes. He only cared in fact to portray the mood of the sea as it affected the experiences of man.

After his continental tour in 1802, his eyes seemed to have been opened to the beauty of a type of English scenery that he had hitherto neglected. Up till now he had painted mainly ruins, stormy seas, and frowning mountains, now he began to choose subjects from agricultural or pastoral country and often from scenes with trees and water. If the spirit of his earlier works was akin to Byron's, this new mood might be called Wordsworthian, though Turner had probably not read Wordsworth's poetry, but ratherwas inspired, like the poet, by the spirit belonging to the age. His greatest masterpieces of the period are Windsor and Sun Rising through Vapour.

After over forty years of severe discipline as a draughtsman, his hold upon structure has began to relax; and he is now absorbed exclusively in rendering colour, light and atmosphere.

The vast total quantity of Turner's work is one of the marks of his genius.

 

(From English Painting from the 17th Century to the Present Day by Ch.Johnson)

Admission procedures

 

Students are admitted to British universities largely on the basis of their performance in the examinations for the General Certificate of Education at ordinary and advanced level. The selection procedure is rather complicated. It has been designed to combine as much freedom as possible tor the universities to choose the students they want with as much freedom as possible for students to choose the university they want. This was done by setting up in 1954 the Universities Central Council on Admissions (UCCA).

A student who wants to go to university usually applies tor admission before he takes his Advanced level examinations. First of all he must write to the Universities Central Council on Admissions and they send him a form which he has to complete. On this form he has to write down the names of six universities in order of preference. He may put down only two orthree names, stating that if not accepted by these universities he would be willing to go to any other. This form, together with an account of his out-of-school activities and references, one of which must be from the headteacher of his school, is then sent back to the UCCA.

The UCCA sends photocopies of the form and enclosures to the universities concerned. Each applicant is first considered by the university admission board. In some cases the board sends the applicant a refusal. This may happen, for example, if the board receives a form in which their university already has many candidates. If there are no reasons for immediate refusal, the university admission officer passes the candidate's papers on to the academic department concerned. One or two members of this departmentwill then look at the candidate's application: see what he says about himself, look at his marks at the ordinary level examinations, see what his headteacher and other referee say about him. On the basis of this, the department may make the candidate an offer (either a definite offer or a conditional one) or send him a definite rejection. A definite offer is usually made if the candidate has already two passes atAdvanced level.

The minimum requirement for admission is a pass in four subjects at Ordinary level and in two subjects at Advanced level, but most universities demand three passes at Advanced level.

When the Advanced level examination results come out in August, the university admissions sends him a definite offer. The candidate must accept or refuse within 72 hours.

 

(From Essential English for Foreign students by C.S. Eckersley)

* * *

Edward was not only king of England. He was duke of Aquitaine and as such ruled a French province that stretched from the Charente to the Pyrenees and at one time had constituted nearly half the area of France. Inherited from his great-grandmother, Henry ll's queen, much of it had been ceded in the past half century to the kings of France, as a result partly of war and partly of legal processes brought by their lawyers. But with its famous vineyards and export of wine and corn, what remained – known as the duchy of Gascony – was still one of the richest fiefs in Europe. Though nominally subject to the French king, for nearly all practical purposes it was an independent domain and Edward's rule so long as he could command the allegiance of its turbulent nobility and prosperous burghers. He had governed it as his father's viceroy in his youth and on his way home from the crusade had spent a winter in its capital, Bordeaux, settling its troubled affairs and internecine wars. But it was now twelve years since he had visited it. Having conquered Wales and restored order in London, he sailed from Dover for Calais in May 1286 with his queen, chancellor and a splendid train.

At Paris, on his way south, Edward did homage to the new seventeen-year-old king, his cousin Philip the Fair, receiving back his fief from his hands according to the rules of feudal tenure. He safeguarded his rights and the limitation of his allegiance by the non-committal phrase he had used while doing homage to the young king's father, Philip the Bold, after his own accession twelve years before: «My lord king, I become your man for all the lands I ought to hold of you according to the form of the peace made between our ancestors». For now, as then, he was resolved to offer no loophole to the cunning jurists of the parliament of Paris who were always trying to enlarge their master's rights by whittling down those of his feudatories. He even succeeded in extracting from his royal cousin a promise that no more encroachments on his territories should be made by the French courtsduring his life-time, even when their verdictwas against him.

(From The Age of Chivalry by Arthur Bryant)