The speaking formulas: a shape for any answer.

Band 8. PFor me, cooking at home wins most of the time. RThe main reason is control: you decide what goes in, how much, and when you eat. EDuring the week, for example, I batch-cook on Sundays, and it saves me money and about an hour every evening. PSo although I love a restaurant on a special occasion, home cooking is the better everyday habit.

Band 8. OOn balance, I think the benefits still outweigh the harms, though not by much. RBecause for all its noise, it keeps people connected across distances that used to end friendships. EMy cousin moved to Canada, and we talk more now than when she lived an hour away. OSo yes, the harms are real, but I would not give up that connection to escape them.

Band 8. PYes, I genuinely think they should. SThe evidence is everywhere: people answer emails at midnight because the culture quietly expects it, not because anyone ordered it. CAnd the consequence of ignoring that is burnout, which costs an employer far more than an unanswered email ever would.

Band 8. SA couple of years ago I took the overnight train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai with my brother. CThe challenge was that we had booked late, so we were in the cheapest carriage, no air conditioning, seats that barely reclined. AWe decided to treat it as part of the trip rather than the price of it, so we bought food from every platform vendor and talked most of the night. LWhat I learned is that comfort and memorability are almost opposites. EIt is still the journey we talk about, years later, which the flights we have taken since never are.

Band 8. PPersonally, I have seen both: my own town is livelier for its visitors but pricier for its residents. RRegionally it depends on scale, because a coastal city can absorb a season of tourists in a way a small mountain village cannot. IInstitutions matter too: where local government reinvests what tourism brings in, the benefits stay. SAnd at the level of society, tourism funds the preservation of things we might otherwise lose, crafts, languages, old buildings. MSo my answer is that it does more good than harm where it is managed, and the reverse where it is not.

Band 8. TThe trigger, obviously, has been technology, and lately AI in particular. HIt has developed gradually, first automating routine tasks, then creative ones nobody expected. RThe result is that job descriptions now change faster than careers used to. EThe effect on people is a constant need to retrain, which suits some temperaments and exhausts others. AWe are adjusting through short courses and mid-life career changes that would have looked reckless to my grandparents. DAnd the direction, I think, is towards valuing the skills machines are worst at: judgement, care, persuasion.

Band 8. CThe core value here is health, but also freedom, and they pull in opposite directions. OThe options run from soft measures like labelling to hard ones like sugar taxes. MWeighing them, I would say information is a duty while prohibition is an overreach. PSo my priority would be schools, because habits form there and nobody’s liberty is offended by teaching children to cook. AThe action I would recommend is exactly that, food education, plus honest labelling. SThe stakeholders are all of us, though children most of all. SAnd picture the scenario where a generation leaves school able to cook five cheap meals: half the problem quietly disappears.