英语听力精选进阶版 10040（在线收听）

The former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has died in London at the age of 87 after suffering a stroke. Lady Thatcher transformed British politics after becoming Britain’s first woman prime minister in 1979. Her current successor, David Cameron, said she took a country that was on its knees and made it stand tall again. And the London mayor, Boris Johnson, said she challenged many of the established orthodoxies of the time.

英国前首相玛格丽特·撒切尔(Margaret Thatcher)因中风在伦敦去世，享年87岁。1979年，撒切尔夫人成为英国首位女首相之后对英国政治进行了改革。英国现任首相卡梅伦(David Cameron)表示，她挽救了一个步履蹒跚的国家，让它重新站立起来。伦敦市长鲍里斯·约翰逊(Boris Johnson)表示，撒切尔夫人挑战了那个时代许多根深蒂固的正统说法。

"She was overwhelmingly right in her judgements. She was right about the unions. She was right about the threat of Soviet communism and I think she’d proved overwhelmingly right about the euro. She took on that cosy, clubby male-dominated consensus and she won.”

“她的许多判断都是非常正确的。她对待工会的态度是正确的。她对待苏联共产主义的威胁是正确的。我认为，事实证明，她在对待欧盟的问题上也是正确的。她挑战了男权社会的共识，而且取得了胜利。”

But Lady Thatcher’s radical policies divided Britain and more than 20 years later have polarised views of her legacy. She curbed the powers of trade unions, fought and won a bitter year-long strike with coal miners. Alan Cummings of the Durham Miners’ Association said some mining communities never recovered.

但是撒切尔夫人的激进政策导致英国民众的分裂，而且二十多年后人们对她的意见仍然呈现两极分化。她限制了工会权利，打击并赢得了煤矿工人长达一年时间的罢工。杜伦矿工协会(Durham Miners’Association)的Alan Cummings表示，一些矿工组织从来没有恢复过来。

"A lot of people hated the woman, hated what she stood for, hated what she did to us. She has a legacy: a legacy of destruction, a legacy of destroying lives, a legacy of destroying communities.”

“许多人憎恨这个女人，憎恨她的立场，憎恨她对我们采取的措施。她是留下了遗产：破坏的遗产，摧毁生命的遗产，摧毁社会的遗产。”

Margaret Thatcher, known as the Iron Lady, did much to reassert British influence on the international stage. She had a close relationship with the then American President Ronald Reagan over the ending of the Cold War and helped convince his successor George Bush Sr to attack Iraq. Lady Thatcher herself seized back the Falkland Islands invaded by Argentina in 1982. She opposed apartheid, but stood against the imposition of Commonwealth sanctions against South Africa and she fiercely defended Britain’s position in the European Union.

被誉为“铁娘子”的撒切尔夫人采取了许多措施来强调英国在国际舞台上的影响力。她与当时的美国总统里根保持着密切关系，结束了冷战，并帮助说服里根总统的继任者布什总统入侵伊拉克。撒切尔夫人本身也重新夺回了1982年被阿根廷入侵的福克兰群岛。她反对种族隔离，但是也反对联邦对南非实施的制裁，她还严格捍卫英国在欧盟的地位。

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, who in 2005 became the first female president of an African country, said that Lady Thatcher inspired women to enter politics.

2005年成为非洲国家首位女总统的利比里亚总统埃伦·约翰逊·瑟利夫(Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf)表示，撒切尔夫人激励女性入主政界。

"I think she was a role model because she came at a time when women participation and women leadership was in scarce supply. And so she had to, to take second decision. She had to act the role not so much as a woman, but she had to act as a leader. And because of her, many of us were inspired, inspired to be strong, inspired to follow her footsteps in leadership.”

“我认为她是我们的榜样，因为在她所处的年代，女性参与政治和女性担任领导人是非常罕见的。所以，她必须采取铁腕政策。她的行为不能仅仅作为一个女性，而是应该作为一个领导人。因为她，我们许多人受到鼓舞，要表现得非常强硬，要遵循她的足迹，成为杰出的领导人。”

In France, reaction to Lady Thatcher’s death has been more guarded than in many other countries. Hugh Schofield reports from Paris.

与其他国家相比，在法国，对撒切尔夫人逝世这一消息的反应则比较保守。Hugh Schofield在巴黎报道。

In France, in most circles, Thatcherism remains a bad word, the same as ultra-liberalism. So the country’s leaders have had to pick their way carefully through the tributes. President Hollande said that she’d been a great patriot, and that her relation to France had always been frank and loyal. But the Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault spoke for many when he said that the Thatcher years had caused much economic and social damage with liberalisation carried to excess and the undermining of public services whose consequences we see today.

在法国许多领域，撒切尔主义仍然是一个不好的词语，就像极端自由主义一样。所以，法国领导人在表达敬意的方法上必须非常谨慎。总统奥朗德表示，她是一位伟大的爱国者，她与法国的联系一直非常坦诚，非常忠诚。但是总理埃劳(Jean Marc Ayrault)对许多人说，撒切尔时代造成了许多经济和社会灾难，过度宣扬自由主义，危害了许多社会服务，其影响现在仍然存在。

In other news, the Syrian government says it will not allow a United Nations team of chemical weapons experts into the country. Last month Damascus asked the UN to investigate one alleged chemical weapons attack which it claimed was carried out by rebels. Today the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon suggested all reports about the use of such weapons should be examined and that a team of specialists was awaiting deployment.

其他方面的新闻，叙利亚政府表示，他们不会允许联合国化学武器专家小组进入他们境内。上月，大马士革要求联合国调查一宗化学武器袭击案件，他们宣称是反叛分子所为。今天，联合国秘书长潘基文表示，关于使用这种武器的所有报告都应该接受检查，一个专家小组正在待命。

Military officials in Pakistan say at least 30 soldiers and almost 100 militants have been killed in several days of fierce fighting in the Tirah Valley in north-western Pakistan. The officials said the army had taken control of large parts of the region from the Pakistani Taliban and their allies since it began a ground offensive last Friday.

巴基斯坦军事官员表示，在巴基斯坦西北部Tirah Valley连续几天的激烈战斗中，至少30名士兵和接近100名好战分子被击毙。这些官员表示，自上周五开始发动地面攻击以来，军队已经从巴基斯坦塔利班及其盟军手中夺取了该地区大部分地方。

For more now on our main news-- the death of Margaret Thatcher. With a look at the economic aspects of her legacy, here’s Andrew Walker.

现在来报道主要新闻的更多内容——关于撒切尔夫人的逝世。我们来看一下她的遗产的经济方面，Andrew Walker报道。

Baroness Thatcher’s time as prime minister marked a dramatic change in strategy. She wanted a central role for the private sector in the market economy and wanted to reduce the role of the state by cutting public spending. Her government began a programme of privatising state-owned businesses, selling them off sometimes to the stock market in an effort to promote wider share-ownership. There was legislation to reduce the power of trade unions and controlling inflation was given a central role. Under her leadership, restrictions on the financial sector were swept away, a reform known as Big Bang. In some respects, the economic legacy is controversial. The reduction in inflation arguably came at the cost of a period of high unemployment and critics say the liberalisation of finance sowed the seeds for the recent crisis. But there are aspects of Baroness Thatcher’s reforms that endure, notably the privatisations and the importance attached to keeping inflation under control. Several elements of the approach have subsequently been followed in many developed and emerging economies.

撒切尔女爵担任首相的时代标志着战略的巨大转变。她希望私营部门在市场经济中占据主导地位，通过削减公共支出来减弱国家的作用。她执政的政府开展了国有企业私有化的项目，为了促进更多人拥有股权，曾经将企业在股市出售。撒切尔政府还出台了法律来削减工会的权利，并且控制通货膨胀。在她的领导下，对金融部门的限制被解除，这次改革就是众所周知的“大爆炸”。在某种程度上讲，撒切尔夫人的经济策略是充满争议的。抑制通货膨胀是以高失业率为代价的，批评家称，金融自由化为近期的危机播下了种子。但是另一方面，撒切尔女爵的改革措施经受了考验，尤其是私有化，以及控制住了通货膨胀。许多发达国家和新兴经济体相继效仿了她的一些措施。