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Showing posts from July, 2024

A New Leaf for the Looking Glass 2026/27

Dear all, Upon inheriting the Looking Glass from our predecessors, we identified a number of key issues. Firstly, there were simply not enough articles being published, due both to a lack of submissions from the school community and limited responsiveness from the previous Academic Team. Secondly, the Looking Glass had not been advertised or explained effectively enough to the wider school community. As a result, we plan to implement a more consistent and engaging stream of articles on the Looking Glass. As part of this initiative, we are looking to recruit a select group of keen writers from across the lower school who would be willing to produce one high-quality piece of writing, discussion, or media each month for publication on the Looking Glass. We believe this will be hugely beneficial both to the school community, which will gain access to a wider range of opinions and viewpoints, and to prospective writers, who will be able to reference their experience contributing to the Look...
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Economic woes, distrust and the inability to disagree: Why Labour's Victory Won't Bring Instant Change

DISCLAIMER : This was written the week BEFORE   the election results were announced. by Sam Waddell L6F When Britain wakes up to a Labour government on Friday morning, it will be a government which the majority of people have not voted for. Keir Starmer will potentially command the biggest majority of the post-war era, with the power to pass anything and everything he chooses to, manifesto pledge or not. The Labour party will have the power to, as the Conservatives did on no less than 4 occasions in the last decade, install a new, unelected Prime Minister with the same power as Keir. Ordinary Britons will see their tax burden increased yet again, having already risen to its highest level in the post-war era. And all of this without the majority of the British electorate backing the Labour party at the ballot box. This article is not intended to be an attack on the UK’s ‘First Past the Post’ voting system, although it does desperately need reform. Neither, despite my obvious misgivi...
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Game Theory Fundamentals

By Rohith-Raj Dhinakaran Game Theory, as described by Steve Levitt, delves into “strategic interactions between a small number of adversaries (2 to 3 competitors)” . It's a fascinating concept ranging from every situation like “holding the door open for someone” all the way to significant global problems such as “nuclear weapon conflicts between the USA and the Soviet Union in the late 1940’s”. I will discuss the rudiments associated with this discombobulating idea and perhaps help you understand how pertinent this is to the real world. Case 1: Static Game Static Game: This is a game that happens only once and all decisions are made simultaneously.  The most common/simple game which we relate to game theory is the “Prisoner’s Dilemma”.  Explanation of the Game: The “Prisoner's Dilemma” is a scenario which involves two prisoners who each have two options: stay silent or betray the other person. If both prisoners decide to stay silent, they will each serve one month in prison. I...
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What broke the Pearl of the Indian Ocean?

by Renon Prasad L6G Sri Lanka, otherwise known as the pearl of the Indian Ocean, has recently been marred by economic turmoil. What happened to this country known for its spiritual rich landscape and tourism? One could argue the root cause of Sri Lanka’s economic crisis has been persistent and large fiscal deficits, which were increasingly financed by unsustained public debt, particularly foreign commercial borrowings. In this environment of rising fiscal deficit and debt, the real economy stagnated at around 3.6% annual real GDP growth in the 10 years before 2022 and grew at an average of just 1.5% in the five years before the crisis. After the civil war ended in 2009, then President Mahinda Rajapaksa took out massive foreign loans to pay for war expenses and, more importantly, to start flashy infrastructure projects to attract tourism. In a vicious cycle, the government had to turn to foreign lenders, such as the Chinese to help service already existing debt because they had limited ...
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Is the UK becoming a police state?

  by Joseph Evans L6P Introduction A police state is defined as ‘a political unit characterised by repressive governmental control of political, economic, and social life usually by an arbitrary exercise of power by police and especially secret police in place of regular operation of administrative and judicial organs of the government according to publicly known legal procedures’ [1] . In order to then call the UK a police state, the government would need to be moving towards control of political and social life (it already effectively controls economic life) through exercise of police power, which is most often exercised in the form of arrests. When the police identify a suspect, they can begin to gather evidence, which includes a warrant or permission to see what the suspect has been posting. If they then believe that the suspect had suspected involvement or attempted involvement in the commission of a criminal offence, and have reasonable grounds for believing that the person’...
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