We need to combat TikTok misinformation – but our MPs aren’t the ones to do it

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Are we really buying it that teenagers are going to listen to government ministers? (PA)

This week, a cross-party committee urged ministers to develop a TikTok strategy to combat dangerous misinformation consumed by young people online.

As someone who speaks to teenagers on a daily basis, I fully support tackling the masses of flippant, misleading and downright dangerous news plaguing social media.

But are we really buying it that teenagers are going to listen to government ministers?

I don’t think so.

If we really want to move the dial and influence the next generation in a positive way, we have to deliver reliable and trustworthy information to teens through people and channels they will actually engage with.

Is this a step in the right direction? Yes.

Is TikTok the right platform to focus on? Yes.

Ultimately, are MPs the right people? No.

Jas Schembri-Stothart and Jo Goodall

Address supplied

Our cars are getting bigger – so why aren’t our parking spaces?

If you’ve been driving for more than just a few years, you’ll have watched how car sizes are increasing. What used to be a small family car a few decades ago has grown into supersized cars and then to monstrous tanks, large enough to occupy a full road lane width when driving. Unfortunately, car parks all over the land have not expanded their parking spaces to match.

The standard size of a parking space is set by the government to be 2.4 metres (a little over seven and a half feet). Some cars occupy almost all that width, and if you are unfortunate enough to find a space, there’s a good chance that even if you can get your car in there, you won’t be able to get your door open enough to get out.

Is it not time that we should be having a conversation about parking spaces – including existing spaces in the biggest supermarket car parks? Sadly, we can’t just ban these cars, but we could require that supermarkets and shopping malls redraw their parking spaces to accommodate the biggest of cars.

Richard Grant

Address supplied

Low birth rates are not the problem with schools – poor planning is

Education is vital to prepare our children for a future that we know will be shaped by an unprecedented era of climate change. However, blaming low birth rates for a possible funding crisis fails to take account of the fact that policies can and should adapt to ensure schools are always adequately funded. We can reap the benefits of smaller class sizes with more targeted support and resources dedicated to individual children, providing higher-quality education.

In the long term, a lower birth rate will help ease the UK into achieving a sustainable population size. The IPCC in its 2022 report clearly stated the two strongest drivers of carbon emissions are population growth and per capita GDP. As a high-consuming country, a lower birth rate in the UK is one of the key ways we can reduce our total carbon emissions. We all want the best for our children, by ensuring they get a good education, and by our collective efforts to solve the climate crisis.

Madeleine Hewitt

Address supplied

The Tories blew up the economy – is Labour ready to blow up everything else?

It is immeasurably sad that Kier Starmer has put the power of nuclear weapon politics ahead of Britain’s economic welfare. The nearly £200bn that Trident will cost over its lifetime could be so much better used to restore our social and armed services to an acceptable level.

With almost all government-funded public sectors struggling to provide even the most basic of needs and with frequent warnings of a conventional war in Europe engaging Nato countries in the next decade or so, one has to question this fixation on building bigger and better nuclear weapons of mass destruction – the warheads for which, we have just been told, are to be called “Astraea” after the Greek virgin goddess of “justice, innocence, purity and precision”.

Observing that such weapons are totally imprecise and indiscriminate as to the millions of innocent civilians that they may kill through the impurities of radiation (not to mention their use in general), someone in government has an extremely poor sense of humour or a misplaced sense of irony.

Robert Forsyth

Deddington