19. Group work and essays:

1. Discuss the ways o make your University greener.

2. Making personal lifestyle changes will never stop global warming. Do you agree or disagree?

3. Discuss the impact of different means of transport on the environment. Should we use vehicles less, fly less? What are the environmentally-friendly means of transport?

4. What is your attitude to recycling? How can it be made more effective?

5. Give talks on different kinds of pollution.

UNIT 7

THE BRITISH LAW SYSTEM

1. Read and translate Text 1:

The police and the public

There was a time when a supposedly typical British policeman could be found in every tourist brochure for Britain. His strange-looking helmet and the fact that he did not carry a gun made him a unique symbol for tourists. The image of the friendly British 'bobby', with his fatherly manner, was also well-known within the country. This positive image was not a complete myth. The system of policing was based on each police officer having his own 'beat', a particular neighbourhood which it was his duty to patrol. He usually did this on foot or sometimes by bicycle. The local bobby was a familiar figure on the streets, a reassur­ing presence that people felt they could trust absolutely.

In the 1960s the situation began to change in two ways. First, in response to an increasingly motorized society, and therefore increas­ingly motorized crime, the police themselves started patrolling in cars. As a result, individual police officers became remote figures and stopped being the familiar faces that they once were. At the same time, the police found themselves having to deal increasingly with public demonstrations and with the activities of a generation who had no experience of war and therefore no obvious enemy-figure on which to focus their youthful feelings of rebellion. These young people started to see the police as the symbol of everything they disliked about society. Police officers were no longer known as 'bobbies' but became the 'fuzz' or the 'cops' or the 'pigs'.

Since the middle years of the twentieth century, the police in Britain have lost much of their positive image. A child who is lost is still advised to find a police officer, but the sight of one no longer creates a general feeling of reassurance. In the 1980s there were a large number of cases in which it was found that police officers had lied and cheated in order to get people convicted of crimes. As a result, trust in the honesty and incorruptibility of the police has declined.

Nevertheless, there is still a great deal of public sympathy for the police. It is felt that they are doing an increasingly difficult job under difficult circumstances. The assumption that their role is to serve the public rather than to be agents of the government persists. Police officers often still address members of the public as 'sir' or 'madam'. Senior officers think it is important for the police to establish a rela­tionship with local people, and the phrase 'community policing' is now fashionable. Some police have even started to patrol on foot again. Generally speaking, the relationship between police and public in Britain compares quite favourably with that in some other European countries. British police still do not carry guns in the course of normal duty (although all police stations have a store of weapons).