Ink blots

Body art is growing more popular, though few employers are keen

1 / IN THE North Star tattoo parlour in downtown Manhattan, Brittany shows off her ink: a Banksy-inspired tableau covering both feet. Now a student at New York University, she hopes to be a lawyer one day. “That’s why I got the tattoo on my feet,” she says. “It’s easy to hide.”
2 / Once the preserve of prisoners, sailors and circus freaks, tattoos have become a benign rite of passage for many Americans. One in five adults has one, and two in five thirty-somethings. These days women with tattoos outnumber men. But what happens when these people look for work? Alas, not everyone is as savvy as Brittany.
3 / Though increasingly mainstream, tattoos still signal a certain rebelliousness that works against jobseekers, says Andrew Timming of the University of St Andrews in Scotland. In a forthcoming study, MrTimming and colleagues asked participants to assess job candidates based on their pictures, some of which were altered to add a neck tattoo. Inked candidates consistently ranked lower, despite being equally qualified. In a separate study MrTimming found that many service-sector managers were squeamish about conspicuous ink, particularly when filling jobs that involve dealing with customers.
4 / Designs of flowers or butterflies were deemed comparatively acceptable. And some workplaces are more open-minded: a prison-services manager explained that having tattoos made it easier to bond with inmates. Firms with a younger clientele are also more tattoo-friendly. But by and large the more visible the tattoo, the more “unsavoury” a candidate seemed—even if the boss had one.
5 / Such prejudice may seem anachronistic, but it is not unfounded. Empirical studies have long linked tattoos with deviant behaviour. People with inked skin are more likely to carry weapons, use illegal drugs and get arrested. The association is stronger for bigger tattoos, or when there are several, says Jerome Koch, a sociologist at Texas Tech University.
6 / This may help explain the army’s recent decision to reinstate old grooming standards. These restrict the size and number of tattoos, ban ink from the neck, head and hands, and bar body art that might be seen as racist, sexist or otherwise inappropriate. The change is intended to promote discipline and professionalism. But it is making it harder to recruit to the army, says Major Tyler Stewart, who handles recruitment in Arizona. His battalion is turning away 50 tattooed people a week.
7 / Some aspiring soldiers and other jobseekers are solving the problem by getting their ink removed. Tattoo-removal has surged 440% in the past decade, according to IBISWorld, a market-research firm. At the North Star, where Brittany’s friend is getting a question-mark inked on her wrist, the prospect of such buyer’s remorse seems remote. “I don’t think it will help her job prospects,” observes Brittany, “but hopefully it won’t hurt, either.”
  1. What is the purpose of this article?Why do you think this?
  2. Who is its intended audience?Why do you think this?
  3. What does the list of people with tattoos in par 2 suggest about the people who used to get them?
  4. What does the word ‘benign’ in par 2 means?How did the context help you gain this meaning?
  5. Why is ‘squemish’ used to describe how employers felt about tattooed candidates?
  6. What does the word ‘anachronistic’ in par 5 means?How did the context help you gain this meaning?
  7. How does the final sentence have a double meaning?

#TheTriggering: Safe-Space Cry-Babies Bombarded With Politically Incorrect Truths

Backlash against the new face of authoritarianism

1 / Cry-baby social justice warriors had no ‘safe space’ to retreat to after #TheTriggering began trending on Twitter and millions of leftists were exposed to some politically incorrect home truths.
2 / The echo chamber of social media and the use of mass block lists normally ensures that precious snowflake SJWs rarely have their stupid ideas challenged – which is probably a good thing for them since they have now started demanding counseling whenever someone disagrees with their opinion.
3 / However, a growing army of libertarians, conservatives and actual liberals who believe in free speech are becoming increasingly strident in their opposition to how a growing culture of censorship is beginning to pollute academia and public discourse.
4 / From trigger warnings, to safe spaces, to the effort to re-define criticism, satire and merely disagreeing with someone’s opinion as “harassment” and “abuse,” the cultural backlash against the new face of authoritarianism is accelerating.
5 / #TheTriggering – first devised by libertarian activist Lauren Southern – is the latest manifestation of that backlash.
6 / Only one news outlet covered #TheTriggering in advance of its Twitter debut, a website called ‘We Hunted the Mammoth’
7 / The story claims that the entire thing is merely an excuse for “Internet jerks” to be “extra jerky,” a description that suggests the person who wrote it was triggered by #TheTriggering before it even began
8 / In reality, #TheTriggering is a hilarious way to re-assert the right to broadcast controversial truths in the face of perpetually offended mobs who up until this point have exploited Twitter as a means of publicly shaming and ruining people’s lives simply to make themselves look good in front of their virtue-signaling peers.
9 / Twitter itself has responded in kind, shadow-banning and outright censoring conservatives for having the wrong political opinions.
10 / No surprise then that Twitter is already trying to censor the hashtag itself.
  1. What is the purpose of this article?Why do you think this?
  2. Who is its intended audience?Why do you think this?
  3. How is the writer’s use of ‘cry-baby’ effective in par 1?
  4. Explain how ‘echo chamber’ is an effective metaphor in par 2?
  5. How is the writer’s use of precious snowflake effective in par 2?
  6. What is the purpose of the dash in par 2?
  7. Why is the word ‘merely’ used in par 7?
  8. What is the author’s stance to #TheTrriggering. Support your answer with two pieces of evidence from the text.

Integration panic

An incoherent batch of proposals to soothe anxiety about terrorism

1 / EVEN by their own exacting standards, Germans are experiencing a lot of Angst this summer. They are still jittery after a series of terrorist attacks in July, including two by Muslim refugees. They are also newly nervous about the 3m German citizens and residents of Turkish descent, many of whom have staged demonstrations since last month’s coup attempt in Turkey in support of its president, RecepTayyip Erdogan. Most Germans are wary of Mr Erdogan, who has been cracking down on opponents real and imagined at home and has requested the extradition of several suspects from Germany. Between the attacks and the demonstrations, many Germans feel civilisations are clashing on their own streets.
2 / In response to the anxiety, politicians have come out with a burst of proposals claiming to get tough on terrorists, tough on security, tough on integrating refugees—in short, tough on the whole confused range of identity-politics issues that are making Germans nervous. On August 18th the eight interior ministers of German federal states who belong to the Christian Democratic Union, the centre-right party of Chancellor Angela Merkel, met in Berlin to issue a declaration summing up the proposals. Some of these, such as adding more police, are uncontroversial. Others that are politically explosive include restricting dual citizenship and banning the public wearing of burqas (veils covering both body and face).
3 / Germany has already tightened asylum rules in the past year—making it easier, for example, to deport refugees who commit crimes. On August 11th Thomas de Maizière, the federal interior minister, offered his own ideas to get even tougher. These range from increasing video surveillance to easing confidentiality requirements between doctors and patients, so that psychiatrists, say, can tell on people they deem dangerous (though doctors are already obliged to report such cases).
4 / A few worry that the new measures represent panic, not sound policy. Even Mr de Maizière, a Christian Democrat himself, rejects some of his party colleagues’ more extreme ideas. He sees the burqa as a symbol of failed integration and the subordination of women, he says, but “you can’t prohibit everything you reject”.
5 / Centre-left politicians, meanwhile, worry that the debate is veering off course. It was a government of Social Democrats and Greens that in 2000 liberalised citizenship laws, mainly so that the children of Turkish guest-workers no longer had to choose between their native and inherited nationalities. The premise was that they could then integrate better into society. (At the latest count, in 2011, 4.3m Germans had another citizenship, 530,000 of them Turkish.) If Germany now forces its Turkish citizens to choose one loyalty, says Sigmar Gabriel, the Social Democrats’ boss, that “would only help Mr Erdogan. He’s happy when we split people again, into Turks and Germans”.
6 / Nonetheless, the debate will stay hot for the coming year, ahead of the federal election in the autumn of 2017. The campaign has, in effect, started already: two of Germany’s 16 regions, Mecklenburg-West Pomerania and Berlin, will elect new assemblies next month. In both contests a populist anti-immigrant party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), is likely to enter state parliaments. In north-eastern Mecklenburg—the only state legislature where the NPD, a party considered to be neo-Nazi, is currently represented—the AfD is even polling at 19%, not far behind the Social Democrats and Christian Democrats, who govern the state jointly. But the AfD puts most pressure on the Christian Democrats, who view security as part of their brand. This is why the interior ministers of Mecklenburg and Berlin, Lorenz Caffier and Frank Henkel, are the driving force behind the “Berlin declaration”.
7 / Fears that migrants may commit terror are justified. The domestic intelligence service knows of 340 cases in which Islamic extremists have entered refugee centres in search of recruits. But banning burqas and dual citizenship will not assist security or integration. It would be disastrous, warns Wolfgang Kubicki of the Free Democrats, a liberal party, if politicians eager to translate Angst into votes jeopardised “all that makes us different from Turkey under Erdogan and Russia under Putin”.
  1. What is the purpose of this article? Why do you think this?
  2. Who is its intended audience?Why do you think this?
  3. How is the writer’s use of ‘cry-baby’ effective in par 1?
  4. Explain how ‘echo chamber’ is an effective metaphor in par 2?
  5. How is the writer’s use of ‘precious snowflake’ effective in par 2?
  6. Why is the word ‘merely’ used in par 7?
  7. What is the author’s stance to #TheTRriggering? Support answer with two pieces of evidence.

A policeman has shopped his 13 year old son for fraud after he ran up £3700 bill playing iPad games.

1 / PC Doug Crossan, 48, was horrified when his credit card company informed him that son Cameron had blown a small fortune in the App Store. He claims the teenager, who now faces the possibility of being arrested and questioned by his father’s colleagues, was unaware he was being charged for the in-game purchase and wants Apple to scrap the charge.
2 / But the technology company has refused and his only way of recouping the money is to report the purchases as being fraudulent. So Mr Crossan, of Clevedon, North Somerset, has reported Cameron to the Action Fraud helpline – meaning it is now up to the police to decide if a crime has been committed.
3 / He said: ‘I am sure Cameron had no intention to do it, but I had to have a crime reference number if there was any chance of getting any credit card payments refunded. In theory the local police station could contact me and ask for Cameron to come in to be interviewed. I could make it difficult of course and refuse to bring him in and they would have to come and arrest him
4 / ‘Really I just want to embarrass Apple as much as possible. Morally, I just don’t understand how Apple get off with charging for a child’s game.’
5 / Cameron has only owned the Apple tablet computer since December after he and other students at Clevedon School were bought them as study aids.
6 / Mr Crossan logged the details of his MBNA Virgin credit card with Apple when he used the device to download a music album.
7 / Cameron then racked up more than 300 purchases on games such as Plants vs Zombies, Hungry Shark, Gun Builder and Nova 3. Many of them are free to download but users can buy in-game-extras – in one game Cameron had purchased a virtual chest of gold coins costing £77.98.
8 / When his father confronted him Cameron quickly confessed, claiming he did not know he was incurring charges as the games were initially free.
9 / Mr Crossan said he had recently seen similar stories where the families had been refunded under similar circumstances and given this he thought he had a reasonable chance of receiving a refund.
He said: ‘ we have asked Apple to consider our case in the same light, as the case is mirrored by him playing exactly the same free games, but Apple have refused.
10 / Apple iTunes is now refusing to speak to me or give me an idea of why it will not refund. It sent me a copy of the terms and conditions stating that all purchases are final and further contact should be by way of a solicitor.’
11 / Apple has refused to cancel the charges, citing parental responsibility and pointing out that iPads contain passwords locks to prevent accidental or unwanted purchases.
12 / Apple declined to comment on the case.

1. Who would be likely to read this article? Explain why you think this, referring to the text.

2. What is the purpose of the article? Explain why you think this, refering to the text.

3. What has Cameron done?What has been his father’s reaction?What’s Apple’s reaction?

4. Identify one example of informal language in par 1 & 2. Why has it been used this here?

5. Identify one example of formal language in par 3 & 4. Why has the writer used this here?

6. Read par 6-9. Explain, with reference to the text, two ways Cameron seems innocent.

7. What impression of Apple is created by the final paragraph? How is this created?

1. Britain’s most haunted houses (sample 1 from Frith and Ralston)

Nigel Jones describes some of the properties visited by presenter Michaela Strachan while researching a television series about Britain’s most haunted houses.

1 / They came for the women at dawn. Knowing they would die on the scaffold, the innocents condemned as witches spent a miserable last night in the tiny cottage lock-up called The Cage, chained or strapped to the wall of their cell in utter darkness. But do their restless spirits still horrify those who come to The Cage today?
2 / For her new television series, Michaela Strachan visited the property and others like it to find Britain’s most haunted house. It was an experience she approached with a healthy dose of scepticism: ‘We weren’t doing an actual ghost hunt ourselves, but finding out about the ghosts and the history of the places we visited.’
3 / The Cage’s current owner, Vanessa Mitchell, has no doubt that her property is shared with unseen guests. ‘It’s the most frightening house in Britain,’ she says. ‘It’s extremely haunted and I can’t live there any more – nor can anyone else.’ Vanessa and her four-month-old son Jesse were forced out of The Cage by a campaign of spooky phenomena: footsteps, the sound of women and children weeping, cushions thrown through the air and mysterious bloodstains appearing on the floor. ‘there have been deaths, suicides, depression and divorce,’ she says of those who have tried – and failed – to live in the tiny 16th century former jail house in the village of St Osyth near Clacton in Essex. ‘No one can live there for any length of time, and it regularly goes on sale.’
4 / John Chapman, a former tenant, agrees. ‘I don’t believe in ghosts, but one night I was alone in the house and I heard footsteps climbing the stairs to my bedroom,’ he admits. ‘Then I saw the door handle actually turning – yet I know there was no one there. After that, I left.’
5 / Chris Palmer, a psychic investigator, suffered a more physical ghostly experience – he was pushed down The Cage’s stairs by a spook. Chris say, ‘We were setting up cameras to take photographs when I felt a violent shove in my back – but there was no one there. Luckily I landed on a colleague and didn’t hurt myself.’ Now Vanessa only rent The Cage to psychic investigators and short-stay guests. She says ‘They say the dead can’t hurt you, but I know they can.’
6 / Another Essex place of judgement and punishment is the Old Courthouse Inn in Great Bromley. As its name implies, the former courthouse, which is now a B&B and pub, was where criminals were tried – and often taken straight to the gallows. It is haunted by a woman in a maid’s uniform, and guests have complained of a feeling of being watched. The pub’s ghosts have been caught on camera by spirit snapper Ron Bowers he’s taken scores of photographs there, which have shown shapes witnesses claim were not visible to them.
7 / Justice meted out at the Old Courthouse may have been rough but at least it was swift. However, debtors banged up in Derby Gaol languished there for months or years, sometimes driven to suicide by despair, the prison, now a museum run by local historian Richard Felix, also claims to be Britain’s most haunted building. Richard says the ‘torment and terror of its past lingers in the very fabric’ of the building. Visitors to the museum have seen the oak cell doors close on their own, have smelt the scent of roses, felt sick and been pushed and shoved by unseen hands. At a séance held in the gaol, a heavy table pushed a visitor close to a burning fire, and Richard has seen a host gliding along the corridor. Richard believes the man in black 19th century clothes was the unquiet spirit of George Batty, a rapist hanged in 1825 when the jail closed down, or perhaps the spirit of the jail’s last warden, Blyth Simpson, who objects to his successor’s presence. Richard says, ‘He still thinks he runs the place – he resents me terribly.’
8 / A genuine victim of injustice – burned alive in 1555 under the Catholic Queen ‘Bloody’ Mary for preaching his Protestant faith – was George Marsh. The scene of Marsh’s trial, 15th century Smithills Hall in Bolton, Greater Manchester, is haunted by his ghost. Joan Shepherd, a museum tour guide, thinks she’s seen him – and felt his rage. Joan says, ‘I was in the Green Room where Marsh was questioned, the hall’s most haunted chamber, when I saw a man in the mirror. He had white hair and was looking at me. Then something grabbed my wrist and held it so tightly it bruised.’ Since then, Joan has been too scared to enter the room alone.
9 / Not all haunted houses are the sites of sin and suffering, however. Another Bolton museum, the half-timbered Tudor house curiously name ‘Hall I’ th’ Wood’, seems to be inhabited by its former owners, the wealthy Brownlow family. But, she says ghost hunter Jason Karl, they are fading away with time. ‘where once you could see a whole human form, nowadays all we see is a pair of disembodied legs climbing the stairs or sitting on a bed, accompanied by a sense of oppression of dread.
10 / And did Michaela encounter anything that made her a believer? Well, while filming in the Hall her camera crew heard the sound of children playing outside. They went to the window…but there was no one and nothing to be seen. Spooky, eh?

Questions (TOTAL: 20 marks)