Getting kids more involved in choosing and preparing the food they bring to school is a crucial step in cutting waste

• Change by degrees offers life hacks and sustainable living tips each Saturday to help reduce your household’s carbon footprint
• Got a question or tip for reducing household emissions? Email us at changebydegrees@theguardian.com

No one with school-age children is a stranger to the drudgery of the lunchbox and chances are, at some stage along the way – possibly weekly – you’ve found yourself at your wits’ end about what to send, not to mention what comes home.

Once upon a time it was socially acceptable and not even considered a health or sustainability issue to slap some Vegemite and margarine in white bread, cover it in Glad Wrap and shove it – along with a Prima and bag of Tiny Teddies – into a plastic lunchbox. Those days are gone.

Getting kids more involved in choosing and preparing the food they bring to school is a crucial step in cutting waste

• Change by degrees offers life hacks and sustainable living tips each Saturday to help reduce your household’s carbon footprint
• Got a question or tip for reducing household emissions? Email us at changebydegrees@theguardian.com

No one with school-age children is a stranger to the drudgery of the lunchbox and chances are, at some stage along the way – possibly weekly – you’ve found yourself at your wits’ end about what to send, not to mention what comes home.

Once upon a time it was socially acceptable and not even considered a health or sustainability issue to slap some Vegemite and margarine in white bread, cover it in Glad Wrap and shove it – along with a Prima and bag of Tiny Teddies – into a plastic lunchbox. Those days are gone.

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• See more of Fiona Katauskas’s cartoons here

Since the 1980s Britain’s military spending has grown in real terms, yet more than half of military jobs have been lost. The sector is hi-tech and low labour

• Khem Rogaly is a senior research fellow at the thinktank Common Wealth

Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have announced their latest rescue remedy for Britain’s economy. Old promises – good jobs, thriving small businesses and regional equality – will now be delivered by an increased military budget, used to buy equipment from the private sector. More military spending is not a tonic, however, but a poison that will worsen our economic ills and make Britain less safe in the long run.

Assurances of prosperity for small businesses and ex-industrial towns rest on a misleading depiction of military spending. Last financial year, 56% of Ministry of Defence spending with UK businesses went to London and the south of England. In the same year, nearly 40% of the £37.6bn military equipment budget went to just 10 multinational companies. “Slashing red tape” and granting small businesses more access to the military budget will not build a family-run missile factory on every street corner of ex-industrial Britain.

Khem Rogaly is a senior research fellow at the thinktank Common Wealth, where he leads a research programme on the military industry

Since the 1980s Britain’s military spending has grown in real terms, yet more than half of military jobs have been lost. The sector is hi-tech and low labour

• Khem Rogaly is a senior research fellow at the thinktank Common Wealth

Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have announced their latest rescue remedy for Britain’s economy. Old promises – good jobs, thriving small businesses and regional equality – will now be delivered by an increased military budget, used to buy equipment from the private sector. More military spending is not a tonic, however, but a poison that will worsen our economic ills and make Britain less safe in the long run.

Assurances of prosperity for small businesses and ex-industrial towns rest on a misleading depiction of military spending. Last financial year, 56% of Ministry of Defence spending with UK businesses went to London and the south of England. In the same year, nearly 40% of the £37.6bn military equipment budget went to just 10 multinational companies. “Slashing red tape” and granting small businesses more access to the military budget will not build a family-run missile factory on every street corner of ex-industrial Britain.

Khem Rogaly is a senior research fellow at the thinktank Common Wealth, where he leads a research programme on the military industry

Setback for Republican governor as economists also dismiss proposal to abolish property taxes as ‘misguided’

Radical plans by Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, to overhaul the state’s financial machinery have hit turbulent waters, with party leaders pushing back on his Doge-style efficiency taskforce, and economists dismissing a proposal to abolish property taxes as essentially unworkable.

DeSantis touted his handling of the economy in his “state of the state” speech at the opening of Florida’s spring legislative session on Tuesday, during which he insisted: “We must continue to be a friend to the taxpayer.”