'Rishi Sunak's legislative agenda is thin gruel'

Rishi Sunak is harming the UK's climate reputation

Financial Times editorial board

"Even by the usual standards of governments a year away from an election, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's legislative agenda unveiled in Tuesday's King Speech is thin gruel," writes the Financial Times's editorial board. "Given the scale of challenges facing the UK", it is particularly unfortunate that it "put so much focus on drawing short-term political divides with the Labour opposition". This is especially apparent "in the plan to mandate annual licensing rounds for North Sea oil and gas drilling".

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A ban on laughing gas is long overdue

Lucy Dunn for The Spectator

"On the surface, laughing gas appears to be a fairly harmless drug," writes Lucy Dunn for The Spectator. "It doesn't have a giveaway smell or any obvious adverse side-effects – and it's cheap." But "laughing gas-induced nerve damage is, in fact, fast becoming an epidemic" and "treating it as harmless for so long has left too many young people disabled".

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Act now or we risk turning reading into a niche hobby

Jacqueline Wilson in The Times

"It's frightening for the National Literacy Trust to report that in 2023 only 43% of children and young people say they read for pleasure," says children's author Jacqueline Wilson. "Reading supports empathy and creativity" so it's "worrying that reading is in danger of becoming a niche hobby" and "so important for every primary school to have an attractive, fully stocked library". 

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Sam Bankman-Fried and the Achilles heel of Crypto

Molly White in The New York Times

"Although some might try to dismiss the FTX collapse as a unique case, it is far from it: the funding model has become all too normal in the cryptocurrency world," writes cryptocurrency researcher Molly White in The New York Times. "Entrepreneurs thought they had found a free money machine in 2017" but the "collapse of the FTX exchange revealed the massive duplicity underlying many crypto exchanges".

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