British MP David Miliband talking about one of his constituents.
(Intermediate level vocabulary exercise)
I first met Kirstie in February. I’d come to South Shields for a constituency day and saw in my diary “5:15 Kirstie Hart. She wants to talk about the environment.” It was supposed to be a 15-minute appointment. She stayed quite a lot longer than that and I knew that it wasn’t going to be an ordinary – meeting conference get-together reunion when she said ‘You look tired!’ I was in the middle of a bird ‘flu – critics crisis disaster concern so I wasn’t surprised. Her opening gambit was “I’m very worried about the environment. I want to become a politician and do something to save the planet.” Then she told me that she was a single mum and worked for a printing company where she made them – recover replenish recycle redo everything and only use environmentally – friend friendship friendliness friendly chemicals and ink. She said, “I’ve been following the environmental – debate talk contest questioning and it is absolutely clear to me that unless we get the Americans to change their – attitude mood feeling belief we will never be able to – insist demand enable persuade other nations to change.” The most important thing in politics is that you have to have passion and belief and an interest in making the world a better – place country position situation and Kirstie has a lot of this. She doesn’t have a lot of qualifications but she has a probing intellect and a lot of energy.
(Adapted from an article in the Guardian newspaper.)