UNIT ONE
TEXT ONE      Tesco is preparing a legal battle to clear its name of involvement in the dairy price-fixing scandal that has cost consumers £270 million. Failure to prove that it had no part in collusion with other supermarkets and dairy processors may land it with a fine of at least £80 million. The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) said yesterday that Asda, Sainsbury’s and the former Safeway, plus the dairy companies Wiseman, Dairy Crest and Cheese Company, had admitted being in a cartel to fix prices for milk, butter and cheese. They were fined a total of just over £116 million as part of a leniency deal offered by the watchdog to companies that owned up quickly to anti-competitive behaviour.
Officials at the OFT admitted privately that they did not think they would ever discover which company or individual had initiated the pricing formula. But the watchdog recognises that at the time supermarkets were under pressure from politicians and farmers to raise the cost of milk to save dairy farming, though it is not certain that money found its way to farmers. The OFT claimed in September that it had found evidence that the retail chains had passed future milk prices to dairy companies, which then reached a fixed price among themselves.
The average cost to each household is thought to be £11.25 over 2002 and 2003. Prices went up an extr
a 3p on a pint of milk, 15p on a quarter of a pound of butter and 15p on a half pound of cheese. There is no direct recompense for consumers, however, and the money will go to the Treasury. The National Consumer Council gave warning that the admissions would dent consumer confidence in leading high street names and that people would become sceptical of their claims. Farmers For Action, the group of farmers that has led protests over low milk prices since 2000, is seeking legal advice on whether it can now bring a claim for compensation.
defending
The OFT investigation is continuing, however, in relation to Tesco, Morrisons and the dairy group Lactalis McLelland, and any legal action is expected to be delayed until that is completed.
Tesco was defiant and said that it was preparing a robust defence of its actions. Lucy Neville-Rolfe, its executive director, said: “As we have always said, we acted independently and we did not collude with anyone. Our position is different from our competitors and we are defending our own case vigorously. Our philosophy is to give a good deal to customers.”
Morrisons has supported the OFT in inquiries into the former Safeway
business that it took over, but in a statement said that it was still making “strong representations” in its defence. A spokeswoman for Lactalis McLelland said that the company was “co-operating” with the OF
T. Industry insiders suggested that the three companies were deliberately stalling the OFT investigation.
Sainsbury’s admitted yesterday that it had agreed to pay £26 million in fines, but denied that it had sought to profiteer. Justin King, the chief executive, said he was disappointed that the company had been penalised for actions meant to help farmers but recognised the benefit of a speedy settlement. Asda declined to say how much it would pay in fines and also said that its intention had been to help farmers under severe financial pressure.
参考译文：
Tesco为了摆脱限定奶制品价格风波，正在准备一场大官司。奶制品事件已经给消费者带来了两亿七千万的损失。如果不能证明自己并未和其他超市、奶制品加工商串通一气的话，它就得接受至少八千万的罚单。昨天，OFT声称Asda, Sainsbury’s 和前Safeway，还有奶制品公司Wiseman, Dairy Crest and Cheese Company都已承认它们联合设定了牛奶、黄油及奶酪的价格。他们总共的罚金只有差不多一亿一千六百万，这是监察部门对积极坦白反竞争行为公司的一种宽大处理。
OFT官员私下声称他们不一定想要出到底是具体哪家公司或哪个人发起这次价格行动的，但是监察部门承认这次超市受到政客和农民的双重压力，要求提高牛奶成本以拯救奶制品畜牧业，但是最终钱还不
一定能流到农民手中。OFT九月份称他们已经发现证据证明零售链已经将未来的牛奶价格告知奶制品公司，然后奶制品公司自己内部设定了固定价格。
2002和2003年间平均每户损失为11.25英镑。每品脱牛奶价格上涨3便士，每0.25磅黄油上涨15便士，每半磅奶酪涨15便士。但是消费者却没有任何的补偿，利润全部到了国库。全国消费者委员会警告说长此以往会损害消费者的信心，人们也会逐渐怀疑委员会的声明。Farmers For Action2002年以来一直领导农民抗议牛奶价格过低，目前在就是否可以申请补偿寻求法律意见。
不过OFT还在继续对Tesco, Morrisons 和奶制品集团Lactalis McLelland进行调查，任何法律行为都将推迟到调查结束。
Tesco对此不屑一顾，声称在为自己的行为准备最坚决的辩护。执行理事Lucy Neville-Rolfe说：“正如我们一贯宣称的，我们行动完全独立，和谁都没有联合。我们的立场和我们的对手不一样，我们在尽力保
护我们的事业。我们的理念就是为消费者更好地服务。”
Morrisons协助OFT调查它所管理的前Safeway的交易，但是在一次声明中还称自己依然会在辩护中进行强烈的抗议。Lactalis McLelland的一个代言人说公司在和OFT“合作”，而企业内部人士暗示这三家公司在蓄意拖延OFT调查。
昨天Sainsbury’s承认已经同意支付两千六百万的罚金，但是却否认它在牟取暴利。执行董事Justin King说本来是要帮助农民却因此受到惩罚，感觉很失望，但他也承认尽快解决更为有利。Asda不愿意透露要赔付多少，并声称其初衷是要帮助那些有沉重经济压力的农民。
TEXT TWO
He emerged, all of a sudden, in 1957: the most explosive new poetic talent of the English post-war era. Poetry specialised, at that moment, in the wry chronicling of the everyday. The poetry of Yorkshire-born Ted Hughes, first published in a book called “The Hawk in the Rain” when he was 27, was unlike anything written by his immediate predecessor s. Driven by an almost Jacobean rhetoric, it had a visionary fervour. Its most eye-catching characteristic was Hughes's ability to get beneath the skins of animals: foxes, otters, pigs. These animals were the real thing all right, but they were also armorial devices—symbols of the countryside and lifeblood of the earth in which they were rooted. It gave his work a raw, primal stink.
It was not only England that thought so either. Hughes's book was also published in America, where it won the Galbraith prize, a major literary award. But then, in 1963, Sylvia Plath, a young American poet whom he had first met at Cambridge University in 1956, and who became his wife in the summer of th
at year, committed suicide. Hughes was vilified for long after that, especially by feminists in America. In 1998, the year he died, Hughes broke his own self-imposed public silence about their relationship in a book of loose-weave poems called “Birthday Letters”. In this new and exhilarating collection of real letters, Hughes returns to the issue of his first wife's death, which he calls his “big and unmanageable event”. He felt his talent muffled by the perpetual eavesdropping upon his every move. Not until he decided to publish his own account of their relationship did the burden begin to lighten.
The analysis is raw, pained and ruthlessly self-aware. For all the moral torment, the writing itself has the same rush and vigour that possessed Hughes's early poetry. Some books of letters serve as a personalised historical chronicle. Poets' letters are seldom like that, and Hughes's are no exception. His are about a life of literary engagement: almost all of them
include some musing on the state or the nature of writing, both Hughes's own or other people's. The trajectory of Hughes's literary career had him moving from obscurity to fame, and then, in the eyes of many, to life-long notoriety. These letters are filled with his wrestling with the consequences of being the part-private, part-public creature that he became, desperate to devote himself to his writing, and yet subject to endless invasions of his privacy. 
Hughes is an absorbing and intricate commentator upon his own poetry, even when he is standing back from it and good-humouredly condemning himself for “its fantasticalia, its pretticisms and its infinite verballifications”. He also believed, from first to last, that poetry had a special place in the education of children. “What kids need”, he wrote in a 1988 letter to the secretary of state for education in the Conservative government, “is a headfull [sic] of songs that are not songs but blocks of refined and achieved and exemplary language.” When that happens, children have “the guardian angel installed behind the tongue”. Lucky readers, big or small.
参考译文：
  1957年，他横空出世，成为英国战后最具爆炸性的诗坛天才。当时，诗歌主要题材是日常生活的扭曲纪录。但出生在约克郡的特德·休斯的作品却与其前辈大相径庭，他27岁时在名为《雨中的鹰》一书中发表了第一首诗。受詹姆士一世风格的影响，其诗歌呈现出幻觉式的激情，其最显著的特点是休斯可以描述动物外表下面的东西，无论是狐狸、水獭还是猪。这些动物的确是真实的，但同时又是标志性的，代表着乡村，代表着它们植根的地球的生命之源。正是这一点赋予了其作品一种野性、原始的气息。
这一点不仅仅在英国得以认同。休斯的书也在美国出版，并且赢得了一项重要的文学奖——加尔布雷思奖。但是在1963年，西尔维亚·普拉斯自杀了，这个美国年轻诗人与他第一次见面是在1956年的剑桥大
学，而当年夏天又成为了他妻子。这之后很长时间里休斯都受到人们的谴责，尤其是美国的女权主义者。1998年，也就是休斯去世的那一年，他在自己一本名为《生日信札》的结构松散的诗集中公开了他俩的关系，打破了他自己一直以来的缄默。在这本令人兴奋的新书信集中，休斯回忆了他第一个妻子的死，“难以处理的大事情”——他这样形容。他感觉自己的一举一动都受到监视，他的天赋因而受到了制约。直到他出版了自己的这本有关他们关系的书时，他身上的负担才得以减轻。
他的剖析自然、饱含痛苦，具有强烈的自我意识。尽管书中极尽表
达了其精神的苦痛，但文字本身却具有休斯早期诗歌的激情和活力。一些书信集只是个人的经历记录而已，但是诗人的书信集却不同，休斯的也不例外。他的书信集描写了其文学生涯：几乎所有的书信都有关于写作状态或写作性质的思考，有他自己，也有别人的。休斯的文学生命轨迹是从无名到闻名，而后，在众人看来又经历了漫长的名誉扫地的阶段。这些信中处处都显现出休斯和自己成为半私人、半公开人物这样一个结果反复挣扎的心理，他渴望将自己奉献给文字，但又时时受到私人空间被侵袭的威胁。
有意思而且令人费解的是，休斯还对自己的诗歌进行评论，他甚至还以局外人的身份来看待自己的作品，很幽默地批评自己的诗歌“有空想彩、唯美化且一直咬文嚼字”。他还从始至终坚信诗歌在教育孩子方面有特殊的作用。1988年他在给保守党政府国家教育部长的一封信中这样写道：“孩子们需要的是
满脑子的歌曲，其实不是歌曲，而是精致、优秀、具有代表性的语言。”如果真能这样，那么孩子们“舌头后面就会有守卫天使了”。幸运的读者，不管是大人还是孩子
TEXT THREE
Controled bleeding or cauterisation? That was the unappealing choice facing UBS, a Swiss bank which has been badly hurt by the carnage in America’s mortgage market. The bank opted for the latter. First it opened the wound, by announcing a hefty $10 billion write-down on its exposure to subprime-infected debt. UBS now expects a loss for the fourth quarter, which ends this month. Then came the hot iron: news of a series of measures to shore up the bank’s capital base, among them investments from sovereign-wealth funds in Singapore and the Middle East.
Bad news had been expected. UBS’s third-quarter write-down of over SFr4 billionin October looked overly optimistic compared with more aggressive markdowns at other banks such as Citigroup and Merrill Lynch. Steep falls in the market value of subprime debt since the end of the third quarter made it certain that UBS would take more pain, given its sizeable exposure to toxic collateralised-debt obligations (CDOs). Analysts at Citigroup were predicting in November that write-downs of up to SFr14 billion were possible.
Why then did this new batch of red ink still come as a shock? The answer lies not in the scale of the overall loss, more in UBS’s decision to take the hit in one go. The bank’s mark-to-model approach to valuing its subprime-related holdings had been based on payments data from the underlying mortgage loans. Although these data show a worsening in credit

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