The Looking Glass

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Highly Commended Essay: Should the UK Government Introduce a "Robot Tax" ?

Note: The following essay by Mehdi Ali L6 (20alim1@students.watfordboys.org) placed in the top 5% of entries in the Future Thought Leaders 2026 Essay Competition. If machines and artificial chatbots can now perform not only manual tasks but also cognitive reasoning once only attributed to humankind, who should reap the benefits of the postmodern technological revolution, and who should bear its costs? As artificial intelligence and robots receive record levels of investment, what happens when machines replace workers? From self-checkout tills to generative AI in professional services and predictive AI evolving in the stock market, the 21st century has seen a shift in the factors of production, with growing investment in capital substituting for labour. In response, some economists and policymakers have proposed a form of “robot tax”: an indirect form of taxation levied on firms that restructure and increasingly digitalise their factors of production and divest from the labour force. Pr...

EPQ: A* example 'To what extent do plastics affect human life and the endocrine system, and how can it be mitigated?'

Below is a curtailed version of an EPQ that achieved 45/50 in 2025/26 from Shubber Fatlawi (19FatlawiS@students.watfordboys.org) Introduction Every year, approximately 445 million tonnes of plastics are produced globally, a figure that reflects the material’s increasingly dominant role in modern society (1). Plastics have become deeply embedded in daily life, appearing in everything from medical devices and food packaging to construction materials and transportation systems. Their widespread use is not coincidental; rather, it stems from their unique physical and chemical properties, including durability, versatility, and low production cost (2). Plastics are synthesised polymer compounds characterised by high molecular mass and plasticity, while microplastics—particles between 1 and 1000 nanometres—arise from the degradation or production of larger plastics and display colloidal properties due to their extremely small size (3). These particles are now ubiquitous in the environmen...

Law: Ethics, Suffering and Euthanasia

Any question concerning an authorised imposition of death must be evaluated and critiqued. Typically, one would associate such a ‘legal’ extermination with capital punishment. Yet, the fundamental immorality behind its practice has rendered it illegal in most countries. Conversely, the increasing legalisation of abortion also involves death, but this time of a potential human being. Whilst abortion and capital punishment differ entirely in reasoning, they both converge in the lawful termination of life. Both may be heavily regulated, but in the UK there is some scope for abortion and none for capital punishment. This introduces a third consideration: euthanasia, more commonly known as assisted dying. Recently, activists have brought this issue to the forefront of public debate. In the UK, administering such a procedure remains criminalised. However, the expansion in the number of countries legally permitting euthanasia has raised the question: is there scope for the UK to also legalise...

English: “The Red Emerald” – An extract from a book series by Rian Sheth (Year 7)

Below is the opening prologue to the first book in Rian’s book series. The series includes so far: 1. The Red Emerald: The Beginning 2. The Red Emerald: The Discovery 3. The Red Emerald: The Hidden Threat 4. The Red Emerald: The Flames of War 5. The Red Emerald: The Palace of Darkness (with 3 more books on the way) Special recognition should be given to Rian’s initiative and creativity in developing his own book series at such a young age. For a short summary of the series, Rian describes it as 'a fantasy series that involves a sacred, powerful object called the Red Emerald. When this artefact is found in medieval England, a dark force wants it. The Emerald bearer battles his way through tough obstacles in the hope of freeing the treasure within the Emerald.' Prologue: Once, long ago, there was darkness. Not the sort of darkness that lingers in corners that are not yet dominated by light. This darkness was much, much more. When the earth was first created, darkness surrounded ...

Engineering: Biomimicry – The Kingfisher and the Shinkansen

Biomimicry, also known as biomimetics, is defined as the mimicry of models and systems present in nature to solve complex engineering issues. Rather than developing entirely new designs from scratch, engineers analyse biological structures that have been refined over millions of years of evolution. One of the most well-known examples of biomimicry was when Swiss engineer George De Mestral drew inspiration from the hook-like features on the seed heads of the burdock plant to create Velcro. A more advanced and large-scale application of biomimetics was seen in the development of Japan’s high-speed rail system, the Shinkansen. In October 1964, the Japanese National Railways introduced the Shinkansen 0 series for use on the Tokaido Shinkansen line, connecting Japan’s largest cities: Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto, and Osaka. When it was first introduced, the Shinkansen 0 series became the fastest passenger train in the world, operating at 210 km/h (compared to most trains globally traveli...

Politics: Attention Spans, Politics and Populism – Why Does It Work?

Shakespeare’s first performed plays occurred in the late 16th century, the colour television was first demonstrated in 1928, the first YouTube video (‘Me at the zoo’, uploaded by co-founder Jawed Karim) was released approximately 23 years ago, and the modern social media titan, TikTok, was created approximately 10 years ago. The final marked an important, dangerous and disquieting epoch in entertainment. Though the claim that human attention span has dropped under that of a goldfish remains an incontrovertibly proven fallacy, in the past 20 years alone, the average amount of time a person can spend focused on a task digitally has plummeted from two and a half minutes to just 47 seconds. 47 seconds before we check the time, fiddle with our phones and lose our train of thought. Addiction to short-form content as such has greatly contributed to this collapse. To put it plainly, attention is a digital drug. It harnesses mass amounts of political, economic and social sway. For...

Cryptocurrencies: The end of Traditional Banking or the beginning of a new dawn?

By Shrey Parikh What is Cryptocurrency? Have you ever wondered about cryptocurrency? What makes people talk about it, and what has led to its popularity during this decade? The answer is as follows: A cryptocurrency is a type of digital money or an alternative way of making payments, and it enables people to exchange goods and services securely without involving a third-party system. It is a peer-to-peer network or a system that enables everyone globally to make or receive payments. Whereas physical currencies are moved and traded in the real world, cryptocurrency deals exist only as digital entries in an online ledger that describes specific transactions. When you transfer cryptocurrency funds, the transactions are recorded in a public ledger. Cryptocurrency is typically stored in digital wallets, where the owner of the cryptocurrency has the private key to their wallet; this setup makes it impossible for any unauthorised party to access the wallet1 . Cryptocurrency in the modern econ...