单项选择题

In the front room of a shabby terraced house in Maryport, Cumbria, a woman lay on the sofa covered by a blanket, her body emaciated by years of illness. 66. ( ) His father, also a Maryport man, had been often out of work; his son, now 15, aspires no higher than a factory job because he knows that he will be lucky to get even this when he leaves school. The family is beset by poverty, illness and despair. The man is dependent on tranquilizers; his wife has been in and out of psychiatrichospital. She said: " I got run down because we had so much debt and things just got on top of me. " Unemployment, said the man, sapped all his vitality. " It’’s the same thing every day. You get off bed in the morning, eat and then back to bed, and that’’s it," he said. The three children would have no heavy clothes this winter. They all lived on canned food and could not remember when they last ate fresh meat. When the fuel bills came in the rent could not be paid. Unemployment in Maryport is running at about 12% , twice the national average. It has remained high since the 1930s and the town has been in decline for generations as the old industries of fishing, steel and coal disappeared. With cuts in regional aid the outlook is now even bleaker. 67. ( ) This perverse attitude is the distinguishing characteristic of this small, depressed port. For although the social problems arising from high unemployment are grave, a corresponding insularity and fear of the unfamiliar pervades the 11,000 or so inhabitants to the town. Many families depend on welfare benefits, as did their parents, and as, undoubtedly, their children will when they leave school. In parts of the town the social problems are as grave as they would be in any inner city slum. Two large housing estates, nicknamed " Bangladesh" and " Colditz" by everyone from the inhabitants to the civic dignitaries, contain a large proportion of problem families. 68. ( ) Social workers say that most of their cases involve inadequate families who have never been shown how to be good parents. There are two nursery schools in the town, but no day nurseries or preschool playgroups. The voluntary, community activity that characterizes most inner-city deprived areas is absent in Maryport. But the social workers are too busy running a crisis service to do any preventative work. Maryport people, they say, will not even travel to Workington, six miles down the coast, to get a job. A trip to Carlise, some 30 miles away, is a major event and happens infrequently. Many of the children have never seen a lake, although the Lake District is a few minutes’’bus ride away. 69. ( ) Mr. Trevor Davies Hibbard, headmaster of Netherhall, the town’’s comprehensive school, ascribed this insularity to chronic lack of self-confidence, generated by decades of unemployment and the ingrained belief that Maryport people were second best. The most pressing problem facing families on the council estates this winter is the fuel bills. These families have been moved from houses with coal fires to modern houses on the new estates which ate heated by air-duct central heating — one of the most expensive ways of heating a house — and they cannot cope. 70. ( ) Social workers are angry at being understaffed, and exasperated by city colleagues who say that rural social work is a cushy option. One social worker said, "You get a bit deadened to it all. You start off quite political, thinking the system must be changed, but after a while you just live from day to day and realize there are things you can’’t realistically hope to change unless the whole emphasis of society changes and becomes more caring. " A. Despite the magnificent surrounding scenery the children of "Bangladesh" or "Colditz" are as deprived as if they lived in an inner city slum. Some of them will never have seen a traffic light, since Maryport does not possess one. B. Her husband, a labourer, had been out of work for 12 months; before his last job, he had been on the dole for five years. C. If money was put into Maryport, if people were working, they would gain some self-respect. D. So why didn’’t this man move else where to look for work "Oh, I’’d never leave Maryport," he said, shocked. E. They quickly build up big debts. One social worker said, "I’’ve seen people go onto that estate and slip down the social scale. " F. More than 37 per cent of the households living there depend on supplementary benefit, and large numbers of these are one-parent families.