Welcome to Friday, I hope you’ve all had a good week? Here are this week’s links:

1) Mark Steel on food banks

Oxfam says “changes to the benefit system are the most common reasons for people using food banks”, but the Department for Work and Pensions disagrees, saying the benefits system leaves “no one having to struggle to meet their basic needs”. And that must be true, as long as you don’t include food as a basic need.

2) Why Finnish babies sleep in boxes. And have Europe’s lowest infant mortality rate..I wish the UK was so enlightened..

3) Now I need to go and re-watch A Prophet. You should too, it was a great film.

4) Zoe Williams on the ‘me-first’ parents. Also have a look at the comments for Diane Abbot defending her decision to send her son to private school. I get when Tories do it, but when Labour politicians do it, I get really cross. I went to a ‘bog-standard’ comprehensive and if at any point Ma had felt that my failure to succeed was down to more than my laziness (I was very lazy!) or that there was stuff going on at school that wasn’t right for me, she got involved and sorted it. If it wasn’t right for me, it wasn’t right for anyone else’s children either!  Se worked full time but was one of the few parents that come to parents assemblies and so on. That’s what you do, you get involved and make sure that everyone gets a decent chance and it’s the ‘me-first’ parents that only fight for their children, claiming that their children are a special exception to what they believe in, that are the issue.

5) Things Boris Johnson should actually be doing instead of writing a Churchill biography. I’m not sure that we really need another Churchill biography, I would recommend Roy Jenkins’ Churchill which is brilliant, but as Mayor, Johnson gets paid £143,911 a year. I don’t begrudge the money, it’s a major and important job running London. You know what else it is or at least should be? A full time  job. Johnson doesn’t have time to write a book, a column or arse about on have I Got News for You.  He should be busy running my city. If he’s not or would like to do the part time, he should either take a pay cut or resign and let us elect a mayor that will commit themselves to the job full time.

6) David Sedaris on the joys of having a guest bedroom (and guests to put in them!)

Though there’s an industry built on telling you otherwise, there are few real joys to middle age. The only perk I can see is that, with luck, you’ll acquire a guest room.

7) This looks good.