Weed killer

Something like Roundup with glyphosphate. You have to spray active growth then wait patiently for up to two weeks. In the first few days it will look as though you have fertilised it, but it will die as the stuff gets to the roots. You may have to do a second spray a month later and it will not take out plants that grow from weed seeds after you have sprayed (ie you can grow things in the soil after using it).

Pathclear claims to also stop new seedling growth for 3 months but I would not spray this on places where you do want stuff to grow.

No, you are not an outlier, many if not most, people think the same way. I use very little weedkiller but I do use it on paths and drives where I don't believe it does any harm. Otherwise my garden is full of both cultivated plants and weeds, with quite a lot of the latter serving as the former.

My (rural) roadside verge is the despair of some of my neighbours who have dropped hints that it could be made match their sprayed stone ditches and verges where nothing green is allowed to peep through.

So the three links you provided are from Injury lawyers, Beyond pesticides and the British ecological society. Hardly independent.

As for the bee experiment, if i was needlessly directly sprayed with Roundup for 'research' purposes i doubt i'd be too healthy either, but as i've used it carefully for nigh on 30 years with no ill effects i'm yet to be persuaded that it's as lethal as some profess.

Of course, there's no guarantee that everyone will treat it with the respect it deserves, like any toxic substance.

It really doesn't. How do forests regenerate with plantlife after fires if the roots are destroyed?

Roundup for something like Japanese knotweed, and then it has to be injected into the stems. Really it's only as a last resort.

Otherwise it's only going to temporarily work and kill everything else and maybe risk your health too. And any animals, pets, children ... who go near it. And damage the soil etc etc.

I've used it in the past a couple of times e.g on winter heliotrope, but the weeds just comes back stronger anyway. So, the weedkiller approach is an annual destruction of your local environment. And you should be wearing protection spraying it. It's a curse. You still have to spray and spray again.

Pulling the weeds after a heavy fall of rain works and it's easier to extract the roots too. Or maybe borrow a pig 😆

So, TL;DR for your own garden it'll probably be quicker, safer, more relaxing to just pull up the weeds to keep them under control. Or burn, boil the ones in paving, awkward spots.

And dandelions,.daisys, thistles, ... the native food web all need these plants. Your garden will be alive then. You don't need a tennis court lawn..leave parts to go (a bit) wild.

You should ask to see the qualifications of the person doing the spraying.

Nobody should be spraying herbicides or insecticides professionally unless they have had the proper training.

If they have had the proper training they will know not to spray if there is a risk of the wind causing spray drift.

Round Up is sprayed directly onto crops prior to harvest in some countries.

It's one of the more researched weedkillers out there. I think if there was a smoking gun it would have been found by now.

That said Monsanto/Bayer have a long history of scumbaggery so I'm not hugely inclined to trust their flagship product on an emotional level. I still use it because thankfully I can apply logic to the situation.

As it stands it's up there with wine and red meat as a probable cause of cancer. I'm not giving up wine or red meat.