Составители:
Рубрика:
92
TEXT 4
Exercise 1. Be ready to answer and discuss these questions:
1. Do you have any experience with online payment?
2. How safe is to bank online?
transcription in the dictionary and read the words listed
below.
Forgery, to misuse, fraud, query, queue, cost-effective, considerably, im
-
mense, to avail, to satisfy, to cater, conventional, reliable.
Exercise 3. Match the synonyms.
1. trust
2. solve
3. avoid
4. access
5. compare
6. obtain
q) nd
r) determine
s) suspect
t) confuse
u) oppose
v) distribute
w) encounter
x) deny
Disadvantages and Advantages of Online Banking Services
Disadvantages of Internet Banking
In today’s busy world, when people do not have much time even for
personal work, Internet banking appears as a boon*. People who use on-
line banking services believe that as their accounts can be accessed by
user name and password that only they know, their money is in safe hands.
Whatever information they need about their bank account is only a click
away. However, like all good things, even Internet banking has certain
disadvantages.
The reason that not many people have started using Internet banking
is because they do not trust the services of the bank through the net. Some
human beings prefer to trust others like them and may have some difculty
in trusting a machine, especially in the matters of money. They may al-
121
Indeed, on some issues I would argue that the private sector is already
running miles ahead of the UK government. On climate change, many lead-
ing companies have been investing in energy efciency and reducing CO2
emissions for many years.
It is good that the government has now set a target for total carbon neu-
trality in central government buildings by 2012, but I am not sure the same
combination of sticks and carrots exists in the public sector as is already
being displayed in the private sector.
This is one small reection on the substantial gap here in the UK be-
tween the impressive international leadership the UK government has been
engaged in, and the less than impressive – indeed, downright mediocre – de-
livery here in our own backyard.
climate shadows
The publication of the Stern Review must surely change all that. This
blockbuster piece of work – commissioned by the Treasury, and launched by
Gordon Brown, as well as Tony Blair – removes any residual vestiges of the
kind of Nimto (Not In My Term of Ofce) thinking that we have seen too
much of over the last few years.
The review put the costs of not dealing with climate change at anywhere
between ve to 20 times as much as the costs of getting serious about it; the
economic case has now been made out as robustly as the scientic case.
Beyond all this, there is of course a danger that the much broader sustain-
able development agenda – in all its complexity – may be overshadowed by
climate change.
That would be unfortunate. After all, climate change is just one symptom
(albeit a very big one) of what happens when the pursuit of economic growth
as we know it today leads to the inexorable liquidation of the natural capital
of which we are all still totally dependent.
Sir Nicholas Stern was right to describe climate change as «the greatest
market failure the world has ever seen», but the whole global economy rep-
resents a massive market failure in those terms.
Until we learn to pay a realistic price for all the benets and services
we derive from nature, we will never get ourselves on to a truly sustainable
path. But there is no need to get too gloomy about this. Things are changing;
our politicians are competing to see who is the greenest of them all; leading
companies are already repositioning themselves to compete in a carbon-
constrained world. We just need to push it all along about 10 times faster!
Страницы
- « первая
- ‹ предыдущая
- …
- 90
- 91
- 92
- 93
- 94
- …
- следующая ›
- последняя »
