English Recordings

a secretary

Sorry,Detective, but I'm not the one you're looking for. Yesterday, at 8, I was hanging out with some of my friends downtown . We went shopping, had lunch together , the kind of things friends do, you know. I bought a few things for my husband: a scarf and a new pair of sunglasses. Check the receipt. You'll see I'm not lying. And you can also call my friends, I gave the number to his officer over there. They'll tell you the exact same story. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some business to attend to . You know where to find me.

Erin Gruwell a new, excited first-time teacher is going to work at a gang-infested High School in California
She’s eager to start teaching but she soon realizes that her class are “at-risk” high school students, also known as “the unteachables”. Some of them have served time in prison; others live on the streets and use drugs.
They’re not really the eager-for-college students she was expecting. Her first days at school are going to be chaotic as they’re not interested in learning.
When they first arrive in the classroom they split in racial groups. Gang fights break out and some students bring guns to school.
Miss Gruwell is determined to get her students to learn and she makes them write about their experiences. She wants to teach them tolerance using Ann Frank’s Diary.
Slowly they‘re going to change and she’s going to prepare them to graduate high school and attend college.

a lumberjack
I would like to be a shop assistant
I'd like to be a shop assistant

Financial gains and losses

There were two incontrovertible economic benefits provided by India. It was a captive market for British goods and services, and served defence needs by maintaining a large standing army at no cost to the British taxpayer.

However, the economic balance sheet of the empire remains a controversial topic and the debate has revolved around whether the British developed or retarded the Indian economy.

Controversy remains over whether Britain developed or retarded India's economy.

Among the benefits bequeathed by the British connection were the large scale capital investments in infrastructure, in railways, canals and irrigation works, shipping and mining; the commercialisation of agriculture with the development of a cash nexus; the establishment of an education system in English and of law and order creating suitable conditions for the growth of industry and enterprise; and the integration of India into the world economy.

Conversely, the British are criticised for leaving Indians poorer and more prone to devastating famines; exhorting high taxation in cash from an inpecunious people; destabilising cropping patterns by forced commercial cropping; draining Indian revenues to pay for an expensive bureaucracy (including in London) and an army beyond India's own defence needs; servicing a huge sterling debt, not ensuring that the returns from capital investment were reinvested to develop the Indian economy rather than reimbursed to London; and retaining the levers of economic power in British hands.

Government in India

While there was a consensus that Indian policy was above party politics, in practice it became embroiled in the vicissitudes of Westminster.

Successive viceroys in India and secretaries of state in London were appointed on a party basis, having little or no direct experience of Indian conditions and they strove to serve two masters. Edwin Montagu was the first serving secretary of state to visit India on a fact-finding mission in 1917-1918.

1,200 civil servants could not rule 300 to 350 million Indians without indigenous 'collaborators'.

Broadly speaking, the Government of India combined a policy of co-operation and conciliation of different strata of Indian society with a policy of coercion and force.

The empire was nothing if not an engine of economic gain. Pragmatism dictated that to govern efficiently and remuneratively, 1,200 Indian civil servants could not rule 300 to 350 million Indians without the assistance of indigenous 'collaborators'.

However, in true British tradition, they also chose to elaborate sophisticated and intellectual arguments to justify and explain their rule.

On the one hand, Whigs and Liberals expounded sentiments most iconically expressed by TB Macaulay in 1833: 'that... by good government we may educate our subjects into a capacity for better government, that, having become instructed in European knowledge, they may, in some future age, demand European institutions. Whether such a day will ever come I know not. ... Whenever it comes, it will be the proudest day in English history.'

On the other hand, James Fitzjames Stephen, writing in the 1880s, contended that empire had to be absolute because 'its great and characteristic task is that of imposing on Indian ways of life and modes of thought which the population regards without sympathy, though they are essential to its personal well-being and to the credit of its rulers.'

What was less ambiguous was that it was the economic interests of Britain that were paramount, though as the 20th century progressed, the government in India was successful in imposing safeguards. For instance, tariff walls were raised to protect the Indian cotton industry against cheap British imports.

1858: Beginning of the Raj

In 1858, British Crown rule was established in India, ending a century of control by the East India Company. The life and death struggle that preceded this formalisation of British control lasted nearly two years, cost £36 million, and is variously referred to as the 'Great Rebellion', the 'Indian Mutiny' or the 'First War of Indian Independence'.

Inevitably, the consequences of this bloody rupture marked the nature of political, social and economic rule that the British established in its wake.

It is important to note that the Raj (in Hindi meaning 'to rule' or 'kingdom') never encompassed the entire land mass of the sub-continent.

Two-fifths of the sub-continent continued to be independently governed by over 560 large and small principalities, some of whose rulers had fought the British during the 'Great Rebellion', but with whom the Raj now entered into treaties of mutual cooperation.

The 'Great Rebellion' helped create a racial chasm between ordinary Indians and Britons.

Indeed the conservative elites of princely India and big landholders were to prove increasingly useful allies, who would lend critical monetary and military support during the two World Wars.

Hyderabad for example was the size of England and Wales combined, and its ruler, the Nizam, was the richest man in the world.

They would also serve as political bulwarks in the nationalist storms that gathered momentum from the late 19th century and broke with insistent ferocity over the first half of the 20th century.

But the 'Great Rebellion' did more to create a racial chasm between ordinary Indians and Britons. This was a social segregation which would endure until the end of the Raj, graphically captured in EM Forster's 'A Passage to India'.

While the British criticised the divisions of the Hindu caste system, they themselves lived a life ruled by precedence and class, deeply divided within itself. Rudyard Kipling reflected this position in his novels. His books also exposed the gulf between the 'white' community and the 'Anglo-Indians', whose mixed race caused them to be considered racially 'impure'.

1. What job would you like to do when you leave school?
2. Why do you want this job?
3. Why do you think you would be good at this job?
4. What is more important to you, a good salary or good working atmosphere?
5. What else is important to you at work?
6. What sort of company would you like to work in?

I am really interested in working on your island.
I have a great deal of experience living on an Island as I grew up on Belle-Isle-en-Mer.
I have always done water sports like skiing, sailing, surfing and swimming.
I am a qualified skipper and instructor. I learnt
to dive in the Maldives and I am also a qualified diving instructor.
I love the solitude of living on an Island but I also enjoy being with people and I am an excellent communicator.
At school I worked on the school paper and I was in charge of advertising.
I am passionate about photography and you can see my photos on my blog. You can also listen to my podcast on my blog which I update regularly.
So you see, I will have no problems communicating life on the Barrier Reef through weekly blog and video and photo updates.
I am the person you are looking for.

To improve tourism, the government of Queensland, Australia, offers a job entitled “the best job in the world,” to candidates from all over the world.

It is a $150,000, six-month contract based on a Great Barrier Reef island.

The successful candidate will have to advertise tourism on the island through all technological means, blogs, mails, videos.

The Queensland government hopes that this job will bring a lot of money to the island.