1) North/South Food on why food banks are not the answer. Can’t agree more…

The welfare state is, despite all the claims to the contrary, is a safety net. It’s a brilliant brave thing that gives more back to the nation that it takes. But it’s a precarious thing. You can’t stride across a safety net: you have to shuffle and strategise and take the help given to get to the other side. It can be slow going and it needs trust and courage. It doesn’t need a pit of crocodiles underneath and high winds. But that’s what the Welfare Reform Bill has brought. It’s going to push more people to food banks and it’s going to affect you even if you don’t think it will.

2) Behind the scenes of The Wire. I love The Wire but it sounds like it was stressful.

“He was pissed, man. And I got it, because, in effect, we were firing him,” said George Pelecanos, the crime novelist who wrote the episode. “David and I went to his trailer and tried to talk him down. We said, ‘This is the end of the character. We can’t keep his story going; it’s not logical. And this is exactly the way he would probably go out.’” Elba fixated on the urination. Omar wouldn’t be peeing on him, Simon and Pelecanos said; he’d be peeing on a fictional character. “Not on my character,” Elba told them.

3) Food Intolerance maybe in your head. Interesting.

Occasionally, as with vaccines and climate change denial, alarmism veers into paranoia, yielding accusations that a shadowy East Asian cabal is paying off scientists and journalists to regurgitate their propaganda. (Ajinmoto Corporation, I await your check!) For a small minority, MSG sensitivity somehow became more than a medical condition, and challenging its physiological basis poses a threat to their very identity. The harmfulness of MSG, a seemingly trivial assertion, took on the importance of a religious doctrine, a fundamental truth to be defended at any cost. But why?

4) Christina is running and made a video, go and give her money, please…