BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
Good for current EU members economically. As new EU members become more prosperous their citizens w...

Good for current EU members economically. As new EU members become more prosperous their citizens will consume more and more of the high-technology, luxury, and creative products and services produced by existing members. Despite protectionist fears to the contrary, NAFTA has proved a success for the USA as more prosperous Mexicans spend more on imported American-made consumer goods, while the availability of cheaper labour south of the border has helped American manufacturers compete globally.
Enlargement will undermine the Common Agricultural Policy, but this should be welcomed. The CAP’s s...

Enlargement will undermine the Common Agricultural Policy, but this should be welcomed. The CAP’s subsidies are costly, inefficient and bad for EU consumers. Reform has been sought unsuccessfully for many years, so if EU expansion finally prompts change it will be a benefit. The prospect of cheaper food and manufactured goods from Central and Eastern Europe is clearly of benefit to EU consumers.
The prospect of joining the EU has been an impetus for reform in many ex-communist countries, drivin...

The prospect of joining the EU has been an impetus for reform in many ex-communist countries, driving changes (e.g. legal reforms, privatisations, in human rights) which are desirable in their own right. The progress made in a few years by the likely early entrants to the EU has been impressive and deserves reward. Conversely, if the prospect of EU membership was now denied to these states, the often unpopular reform process might stall and public opinion could turn towards dangerous nationalisms.
New entrants are unlikely to wreak havoc on the EU’s workings just because they have not enacted all...

New entrants are unlikely to wreak havoc on the EU’s workings just because they have not enacted all aspects of EU law and standards into their domestic systems – no current member complies with all EU requirements and some fall far short. Economic integration will be relatively easy as prospective members already enjoy free trade with the EU in manufactures already, and no one expects them to receive agricultural subsidies under the CAP as the current members do. Candidates may be backward compared to current members, e.g. industrially or in terms of corruption or environmental protection, but these shortcomings have domestic, rather than EU-wide impact.
Morally right. It is right to extend to Central and Eastern Europe the economic and political benef...

Expansion carries dangers for the EU. The ex-communist applicants often lack entrenched democracies and are sometimes prone to political corruption which could undermine the existing strengths of the Union. Furthermore, current EU policies (e.g. on global trade, the environment) reflect the interests of its members, effectively a rich states’ club; it is not in the interests of these states, or their citizens, to dilute the present relative homogeneity of interests with several poorer nations with different priorities.
Good for current EU members politically. It will extend to almost all of continental Europe a projec...

Expansion will place huge strains upon the already stretched EU institutions, e.g. the Commission and Court of Justice, endangering their effective working and the current benefits of membership of the EU. Expansion would be very risky unless it was preceded by major reforms of voting in the Council of Ministers to avoid deadlock in decision-making (or the tyranny of voting majorities by coalitions of small countries with a fraction of the EU’s population), and of the size and national-composition of the EU Commission itself, already unwieldy at 20 members. In addition, the EU stands to gain a long eastern border open to smuggling of both goods and illegal immigrants, and one which will bring the Union into constant friction with a suspicious Russia. The accession of divided Cyprus is also dangerous.
Good for current EU members economically. As new EU members become more prosperous their citizens w...

Even if expansion was limited to the six best candidates, the EU would gain 63 million people, adding 17% to its population but only $255 billion, or 3%, to its GDP. This will put great strains on the EU budget, resulting in the removal of much of the regional aid currently available to poorer members - at a time when the advent of the Euro makes such redistribution of wealth ever more necessary to ensure economic stability.
As well as allowing for flexibility in curriculum choice, boarding schools can also accommodate a va...

While a boarding school may ameliorate some family problems it is unlikely to solve them. Confronting issues head on with help from local social services could allow families to stay together rather than risking the other problems listed above. It is not unreasonable to expect parents to consider the education of their children when selecting their careers and to do so in a way that would not force them to board. Most difficulties of working parents could be equally well addressed by after school clubs or better childcare provision.
Being in school all the time allows children full access to its facilities. This is good for creatin...

Being in school all the time allows children full access to its facilities. This is good for creating a learning environment as pupils can have access to libraries, computers and teachers while doing their homework. Similarly it is easier to take part in extra-curricular activities such as plays, sports matches and art if they do not have to arrange travel home late at night or after the school buses have left. Diversity of experience is not neglected as many schools run community volunteering schemes, and anyway students will spend substantial periods away from school in the holidays.
Living with peers of their own age, round the clock, teaches children how to get along with each oth...

Living with peers of their own age, round the clock, teaches children how to get along with each other and compromise. A variety of characters and interests must be accommodated, teaching children tolerance and compromise in a regulated environment. This can be especially helpful for working with university or company colleagues in the future. Furthermore, many boarding schools celebrate diversity as international students with different cultural, religious and ethnic backgrounds frequently make up a significant minority of the student body. A proportion of non-boarding day pupils, and boarding students whose fees are paid through bursaries (means-related grants), scholarships (academic grants), or by the state (e.g. children with parents on military or diplomatic service overseas) means that students are not all drawn from one class or income bracket.
Many specialised interests, such as ballet, tennis or music require training from a young age. Boar...

Many specialised interests, such as ballet, tennis or music require training from a young age. Boarding schools, including ballet schools, tennis academies and cathedral choir schools, allow children to pursue excellence with like-minded peers. This would be difficult to arrange on a local basis as specialist equipment and training is expensive and therefore concentrated in a few centres. Boarding schools minimise disruption to children’s academic work by reducing the need for extended travel/time off school to reach them.
As well as allowing for flexibility in curriculum choice, boarding schools can also accommodate a va...

As well as allowing for flexibility in curriculum choice, boarding schools can also accommodate a variety of specific family or lifestyle considerations. Children with specific learning or emotional needs can also benefit from specialised help as noted above. Particularly important is the way a boarding school may provide relief for parents from the day to day strains of dealing with a child’s problems, making time spent together more pleasant. Sometimes time away from the home benefits the child whose problems may be caused or exacerbated by troubles at home, for example divorce, bereavement or illness of a parent. On a merely practical level, parents whose work requires them to travel extensively, live in remote areas or abroad may find boarding school a useful way to provide stability and continuity in their child’s education.
Being in school all the time allows children full access to its facilities. This is good for creatin...

Spending all your time in school restricts the circle of people you come into contact with. Extra-curricular activities organised by the school will largely be with peers rather than the whole range of the community as might be the case with local choirs, amateur dramatic groups, sports clubs, etc. This loss of diversity may also be seen as detrimental to a holistic conception of education (for example a library may provide books on wartime evacuation but might not be as good a resource as the pensioner down your street who was themselves evacuated).
Living with peers of their own age, round the clock, teaches children how to get along with each oth...

Friendships and relations between peers are governed by the rules of the school and therefore do not always reflect real life. Pupils at the school may be drawn from only one gender or religion, and will certainly be drawn only from the wealthier social classes because of the high fees charged by all boarding schools. Because the school controls a large portion of their pupils' lives they may never come into contact with individuals who think differently from them. Also, the very regulation of the pupils' lives can lead some to become institutionalised, i.e. unable to cope with life and relate to others outside the regulated framework of the school. It was traditional boarding schools which Evelyn Waugh had in mind when he wrote, 'Anyone who has been to an English public school will always feel comparatively at home in prison'.
There exists a current problem that many talented athletes cannot devote themselves full time to the...

There exists a current problem that many talented athletes cannot devote themselves full time to the extensive training required to compete at Olympic level, instead they often have to work part-time to fund their living and training costs. Indeed in 2005, B&Q in the UK developed ‘Team B&Q’ to employ athletes in their home hardware stores but offering the flexible hours that athletes find it difficult to secure at other employers. Those who cannot find work are forced to borrow money, often from their parents, as was the case with the 1992 US Olympic sailing team. This need to scrabble for money puts pressure on the athletes, takes their minds off competing and sometimes can even make them consider quitting. The amounts of money involved are large, for instance the 1996 Olympic gold medallist Todd Elderidge’s build-up training cost over $250,000 and financial pressures in the late 1980’s almost forced him to quit. State funding of elite athletes would remove undue pressures which impair their performance for their country.
The funding squeeze unfairly affects sports that are not considered commercially attractive by spons...

The funding squeeze unfairly affects sports that are not considered commercially attractive by sponsors. At inter-competition level this has the effect of creating a significant disparity in funding between the Olympics and the Para-Olympics due to differences in media coverage and sponsor exposure. At an inter-sport level, less popular Olympic sports such as Taekwando have access to a significantly smaller sponsorship pot than Baseball or Basketball although the elite athletes across most sports have to shoulder similar training costs. Softball, for instance involves 70mph pitches and a similarly rigorous training regime to Baseball but National Softball Federations preparing for the Olympics receive only a fraction of the sponsorship received by a single US Baseball franchise in one year. State funding would create a level playing-field at both inter-competition and inter-sport levels and prevent corporate sponsors for determining the quality of the sport we can enjoy.
Athletes who do succeed in gaining sponsorship are beholden to pressures from their sponsors which c...

Athletes who do succeed in gaining sponsorship are beholden to pressures from their sponsors which conflict with the athletes, governing bodies and nation’s best interests. The companies such as RBC Financial and Bank of America which do sponsor high-profile sport at Olympic level tend both to sponsor individual athletes rather than governing bodies and require corporate commitments of those athletes. If money is received solely by athletes rather than governing bodies, all of a nation’s athletes do not benefit from the advanced facilities such as the Colorado Altitude Centre, available to the Nike Elite Distance Running Team, that some athletes do. Funding directed at governing bodies could be used to construct these facilities for the use of youth and development squads rather than the very best simply being siphoned off to train only with those also sponsored by Nike. In team sports where team training time is already cut to a narrow window by club commitments, domestic seasons and athletes competing in different leagues around the world, the precedence of corporate sponsorship tours further cuts down the ability of Olympic teams to train together. Football (Soccer), whilst probably not a sport eligible for public funding, is a classic example of where international managers already have to negotiate with clubs for player availability for friendly games (facing overlapping domestic seasons). At the same time they also have to defer to sponsorship tours for Bryl Cream endorsements and motivational speeches to company board members.
Private rather than public funding removes the leverage that governing bodies have over their elite ...

Private rather than public funding removes the leverage that governing bodies have over their elite athletes. Those athletes who are funded or part-funded through the state can be required to assist in the training of athletes in development squads, providing a trickle-down effect, or even asked to help coach in schools. This practice is common-place in Badminton in the UK where members of the England squad based in Milton Keynes are required to put in a certain number of hours assisting in the training of members of Junior squads and coaching in either schools or clubs. The result is a support network for the players and often those players who do not succeed at international level turn out to be talented coaches. Further, public funding thus means that the state can inspire talented young athletes at school level, provide strong role models even to those who would not compete above regional level, and have a positive public health impact by motivating children to get out of the classroom and off the sofa. In the UK House of Commons debate on Olympic funding, one MP pointed out that it was the strong link between schools and sports federations, allowing identification of potential future Olympians from the age of 10, that contributed to the success of the former East Germany in Olympic competition.
A successful Olympic squad allows a country to punch above its weight in international relations. S...

A successful Olympic squad allows a country to punch above its weight in international relations. State funding clearly increases the number of medals a nation wins. A 20 year study by the Australian Institute of Sport found a strong linear correlation between the amount of funding received and the number of medals won both between nations and sports. On average, each gold medal costs around $37million and each medal in general costs around $8million. Hence there is a benefit to the state in terms of prestige from choosing to spend some of their limited pot of funding on elite athletes. Further, the population of a nation gets something out of watching their national athletes winning Olympic medals. Sporting achievement can bring people together from different cultural communities and promotes a cohesive national identity. Even at an international level, elite sport can be a great healer of wounds, the resumption of cricket fixtures between India and Pakistan was widely seen as a sign of greater cooperation.
There exists a current problem that many talented athletes cannot devote themselves full time to the...

State funding is a state-run, merit-based system of subsidised leisure for athletes. In most countries the department for Sport (Culture, Media and Sport in the UK) has a limited budget within the overall government budget and funding of elite athletes takes up a share of this budget. The money could be better spent on related areas such as health and education or on increasing the number of sports available at school or club level. The world’s most successful Olympic nation, the United States does not publicly fund its Olympic teams but instead considers their funding a “private and community affair”. The United States Olympic Committee (USOC) receives significant corporate funding which it is free to distribute to individual governing bodies. School pupils in Georgia are encouraged to collect pennies for the Olympic effort and the US Ski and Snowboard team’s celebrity status allows them to organise balls and funding tours in order to raise money to pay for their training and travel. In developed nations funding from the private sector does exist and the obligation should be on athletes and governing bodies to find that funding rather than on the government to provide it.
The funding squeeze unfairly affects sports that are not considered commercially attractive by spons...

Olympic sports rarely find themselves marginalised due to a lack of funding, rather those who make this claim draw a false parallel between European soccer clubs, North American Basketball and Football teams and National sports bodies to say that whilst clubs receive hundreds of millions of dollars in endorsements and TV rights, the British Taekwando Federation receives comparatively little. However this analogy is false because we should only compare national sports federations, not clubs who attract television money and attract players and fans from around the world. Further, there is always a source of funding for sports from their equipment manufacturers, such as Leon Paul in fencing. Finally, one of the reasons why some sports receive more money than others if we allow the market to decide is a greater level of interest, leading to a greater level of participation leading to a higher standard of competition. A state funding system would presumably also allocate funding on a similar basis (or else it would be unfair) so the disparity would still exist.
Athletes who do succeed in gaining sponsorship are beholden to pressures from their sponsors which c...

There is no problem with the development of strong links between business and elite sport. This encourages the development of long-term sponsorship links between the two and often the firms sponsoring are simply supplying cash that can be used by governing bodies to create state of the art training facilities. It is clearly in the interests of the firms sponsoring athletes not to impede their training through corporate commitments as this would jeopardise the athletes’ performance. Sponsors want to be associated with success, not to be criticised in the media by athletes for standing in the way of the medals. In fact very few athletes have problems training the required number of hours a week, Olympic fencers for instance only train for a maximum of 20-25hrs per week, and far more problems arise from overtraining which can result in injury and stress fractures. In terms of timing, it is perfectly possible to manage both sponsorship commitments and training and still have the recovery time needed. In the longer term, interests outside sport are mentally healthy for athletes, and will help to prepare them for life after their competitive career ends.
Private rather than public funding removes the leverage that governing bodies have over their elite ...

The link between elite sporting success and mass participation is vague and unproven and a 1996 study by the University of South Australia showed, at least in Australia, no statistical or causal link between the two. If the state wishes to promote sport in schools in order to improve public health then the money can be better spent directly by employing more Physical Education teachers, improving schools’ sports facilities and buying back school playing fields which are often sold to raise capital, rather than paying elite athletes to compete and hoping that there will be a trickle-down effect. Further, one of the reasons banks and major corporations sponsor elite athletes is to improve their public image and so it is likely that they too would encourage athletes to become role models by taking time to coach in schools. So if there is a trickle-down effect it can be realised without the state having to divert funds away from where they are needed most, deprived state schools. Nor is it desirable to take potential elite athletes out of school at the ages of 10 or 11 to give them dedicated training. Elite sports development squads are pyramids with very wide bases and many talented athletes who don’t quite make the grade are cast off as they get older, leaving them without a career in elite sport or a satisfactory education.
A successful Olympic squad allows a country to punch above its weight in international relations. S...

International competition probably does breed nationalism but this is not something that the government should fund and sanction. English football hooliganism both domestically and at international tournaments has shown that ‘integration through sport’ is not necessarily desirable. In fact rioting between Honduran and El Salvador fans during a qualifying match for the 1970 World Cup decided on penalties contributed to the 5 day ‘Football War’ between the two countries in 1969. Further, given that many tensions between communities arise from the presence of immigrant groups of a different nationality (Lebanese in Australia, Pakistanis in England) and that these groups often focus their national identity around their home nation’s sports teams (football and cricket respectively), the fact that the government is seen as funding their competitors does not build bridges. Finally, governments who choose to take credit for their national team’s successes must also explain their failures (see pretty much every English national sports team ever for details). The temporary performance of sports teams is not something the government should stake its popularity on.
Many able people get put off going into the political world by exactly this kind of negative adverti...

Many able people get put off going into the political world by exactly this kind of negative advertising. They see that they’ll get paid as much or more without such absurd muckraking, so they don’t go into politics. We should want the best people to go into public office – not merely the best of those able to stomach the way overly aggressive bullies in the media and political worlds will treat them.
The political environment is mired in negativism that turns people off politics and creates the impr...

It is fashionable to exaggerate the ‘negative environment’ but democracy still functions perfectly well – people still vote when it matters. Furthermore, within democracies voters are entitled to know the ‘down-side’ to a candidate – and the other side is obviously well placed to voice it. In effect, the level of scrutiny on politicians is reduced by this proposal, since the ability of voters to hear that scrutiny is curtailed. To stifle one’s ability to voice negative things about a candidate would be to obstruct democracy and limit free speech.