World and Press January 1
January 1 2023 • No 1 • 75th Year of Publication • Original Pressetexte aus britischen und US-amerikanischen Medien € 3,00 [d] Sprachtraining • Landeskunde • Vokabelhilfen • Übungsmaterial B2–C2 Liebe Leserinnen und Leser, seit Jahrzehnten stellen in World and Press Lautschriftangaben einen festen Bestandteil der Vokabel übersetzung dar. Durch die neuen Medien hat sich das Erlernen der korrekten Aussprache von Wörtern jedoch gewandelt. Wir möchten uns diesem Wandel anpassen: Beginnend mit der ersten Januar-Ausgabe von World and Press werden wir künftig auf die phonetische Umschrift von Vokabeln verzichten. Selbstverständlich werden wir aber wie gewohnt spannende und informative Texte aus der internatio nalen Presse für Sie in World and Press zusammen stellen. Ob auf Papier oder in digitaler Form – wir wünschen Ihnen weiterhin viel Freude bei der Lektüre! Ein gesundes und erfolgreiches neues Jahr wünscht Ihnen Ihr World-and-Press-Team Investieren Sie im neuen Jahr ¤ 58,80 in Ihr Englisch. World and Press im Jahresabo – ein spannender Mix an aktuellen Themen! www.sprachzeitungen.de Foto: ktphotography/Pixabay | Photo: Wikimedia Commons Empress Elisabeth of Austria was ahead of her time. With a Netflix series and a new movie exploring her life, she is having a pop culture moment. Read more on pag e 3 Video games harm the environment. A climate researcher launched a business intended to aid smaller game developers on their journey to decarbonization. Read more on pag e 11 Logic of Brexit is turning Britain back to Europe COMMENT • BREXIT No great new trade deal has been achieved, and the American hope has faded, so expect a tiptoeing back towards the EU. Pro-EU protesters march near London’s Trafalgar Square in October 2022, advocating for the UK to rejoin the EU. | Photo: Getty Images/SOPA Images By Matthew Parris 1 WHAT COULDI say to them? In my diary since April has been a dinner last Wednesday, at which I would speak. My hosts were the Conservative Members of the European Parliament Alumni Association – a long title for what one of them self-deprecatingly told me was “a crowd of superannuated Tory former MEPs crying into our beer about what has happened”. And it is true that Brexit has shocked and depressed us all. But the Carlton Club was hospitable; there were old friends to see and good stories to exchange, and the occasion was fun. 2 But what about my speech? Were we to spend the evening crying over spilt milk? I enjoy attack and defence, but nostalgia doesn’t get me going. From the moment I’d promised a speech, I’d worried about its content. 3 Yet as the day approached, my worries fell away. There was, after all, good news to share. Britain’s place in Europe is looking more and more like unfinished business. Ours (I said) was not a lost cause. For years, we former Remainers had felt like Jacobites toasting a dispensation we should never see again – post- 1917 Russian émigrés gathering to lament the fate of Tsar Nicholas. But we were now, once more, and despite our advanced age, the future. 4 Brexit is over: all over, bar the | Photo: Unsplash shouting that’s likely to continue another year or two until the likes of Nigel Farage, Bill Cash, and Jacob Rees-Mogg finally shuffle from the political stage. There will be no big bang. Pack away the balloons and streamers, I advised. Britain is unlikely formally to rejoin the European Union within the lifetimes of most of us there at the Carlton Club. But the alternative – the alternative for which, with blood and tears, Theresa May and Boris Johnson wasted years that Britain will never get back and from which the Conservative Party may never really recover – has run out of road: a broken dream. The thing Johnson boasted he had “got done” turns out to be anything but final. Europe is back on our political and economic horizon. 5 Most people know this, however subliminally. The terminal sickness of Brexit has become one of those unmentionables that careful politicians must avoid confronting. Why stick heads above parapets? But they suspect – and, more important, their children know – that this is the direction of travel. 6 Water flows downhill, though we may not know what path it will take or how long before it gets there. A trading nation living cheek-by-jowl with an immense trading bloc that remains by far our biggest trading partner (four times the size of the second biggest, the United States) will feel economic pressure from only one direction: to converge, reducing the barriers our imports and exporters face. That was the whole purpose of Margaret Thatcher’s great Continued on page 12 €3,50 [a] CHF5,40 [ch] 0 – 3 TRADE DEALHandelsabkommen — to tiptoe schleichen — self-deprecatingly selbstironisch — superannuated pensioniert — MEP = Member of the European Parliament — hospitable gastfreundlich — to cry over spilt milk (fig) über etw. jammern, was s. nicht ändern lässt — Remainer Brexit-Gegner(in) — Jacobite Jakobit(in) — dispensation System; Zeitalter — émigré Emigrant(in) — to lament beklagen 4 – 5 bar abgesehen von — to shuffle schlurfen; h.: (fig) abtreten — streamer Banner — to run out of road (fig) kaum noch Unterstützung finden — to boast prahlen — subliminally unterschwellig — terminal sickness tödliche Krankheit — unmentionable unaussprechliches Thema — to stick one’s head above the parapet (fig) s. weit aus dem Fenster lehnen 6 – 8 cheek-by-jowl (fig) in unmittelbarer Nähe — to converge s. annähern; s.w.u. convergence Annäherung —
