Jack Monroe #116 Burger and lies

[ReginaPhalangee]

Jeeze that whole letter from her is a massive pile of cringe. Made even worse by the fact that if any of it is true, she could have prevented a lot of it by telling SBs dad or her own family how she was living. If I couldn’t afford to feed my kids or heat their room at night but I knew someone in my family could there would be no question of me making sure they were staying somewhere safe and warm until I could sort my financial tit out.

 

[BeautifulTrauma]

I knew Jack’s article was full of lies when I read the highlighted bit. She has ALWAYS tried everything before a squiggle suggests it.

 

[TillyMiffin]

Just catching up and the Stan rewrite has made me splurt out my coffee with laughing. Bravo Frauen what a collective genius presentation

Also I am not as posh as Nige but we do call it the “meekrowave” for some reason in our house. But you have to roll the r like a bad Russian accent impression. Also spiders are “speedré”. It’s just one of those things you dunno where it originates but you all say it



Also just lol at this photo. The hair. What was she thinking. That must have taken some time to create so it’s not like she didn’t have time to consider and rethink it.
maybe her 6 inch boots weren’t available that day so she was using her hair to add height to her teeny tiny ickle pixie-like smol frame

Yes! We say sausage as “soss arrj” because someone on the apprentice said it about 19 years ago

 

[Emmapism]

Jack: 'My family weren't rich'

Also Jack: 'When I was drinking lemonade with my grandad in his guest house'

 

[Veronicaaa]

Scotsman columnists win Zero Tolerance Awards | The Scotsman



I think it is fair to say that Edwina rather got under her skin. 'Mummy' said her piece in a written response the next day, 4th February 2014.


Dear Edwina,

It’s 9 o'clock on Tuesday, the morning after the night before, where we were both on a panel on The Big Benefits Row on Channel 5. I haven’t watched it back, I was there, and know what I look like when I’m angry.

I need to get this out – because it’s everything I wanted to say last night but couldn’t, as I kept being rudely shouted over by you. Honestly, my three year old behaves better than that. At least he knows that when Mummy does her ‘will you just be QUIET and LISTEN to me’ then the best thing to do is to stop running your mouth and let Mummy say her piece.

But you didn’t. Because you were terrified of what I had to say.

I wanted to say, when asked by Matthew Wright, that poverty is almost indescribable to someone as blinkered as you. That turning off the fridge because it’s empty anyway, that sitting across the table from your young son enviously staring down his breakfast, having freezing cold showers and putting your child to bed in god knows how many layers of clothes in the evening – it’s distressing. Depressing. Destabilising.

Sure – you could probably live on benefits for a week to ‘prove it could be done’. But imagine living for 11 weeks with no housing benefit, because of ‘delays’. Imagine those 77 days of being chased for rent that you can’t pay, ignoring the phone, ignoring the door, drawing the curtains so the bailiffs can’t see that you’re home, cradling your son to your chest and sobbing that this is where it’s all ended up. It feels endless. Hopeless. Cold. Wet. Day after day of ‘no’. No we aren’t looking for staff. No there isn’t anything else to eat. No I can’t put the heating on. No I haven’t got any money to pay my rent arrears. No, no, no,


Sitting on the bathroom floor vomiting up the paracetamol and sleeping pills I took to try to end my own life – that wasn’t, as you hissed in an aside, “a rich girl pretending to be poor.” I was alone, with nobody to ‘pretend’ to. I didn’t write about my suicide attempts, because I was scared that if anyone knew how bad things were, I would lose my son. There was a lot I didn’t write about. You become adept at keeping up appearances, at smiling and saying you’re fine. It was almost a year before I was referred to a food bank for help, almost a year of searching for work, holding my home and my son together at the seams with an iron will. And all those ‘no’s.

When you descend into personal attacks against your opponent, it is because you have no political argument left.

When you tweet your opponent's grandfather's obituary all over the internet in a foul attempt at smearing their reputation, it is because you are scum.

Did you stop to think for one moment how you might have made my family feel? My nan, my mum, my dad, all people who dearly love the man whose life and death you used in a live television debate last night to try to unsettle your opponent? Of course you didn’t.

I was asked to sell my life rights to a movie director last week. I refused on two counts.

1. I’m not that interesting. As proved by you, when the biggest scandal you can dig up is that I used to drink Aldi lemonade with my grandad at his guest house.

2. I’m not an island. My life is interwoven with complex relationships, as are all of ours. Having been subjected to professional trolling for over a year now, I would never put my family through those levels of abuse. I get death threats. Rape threats. Personal attacks on my weight, appearance, sexuality, education, lack thereof. So I try to retain a degree of privacy, for the ordinary people on the periphery of the right wing media monstering of Jack Monroe. If you love someone, you don’t throw them into a bear pit.

If you’d have been willing to listen, you’d have realised how spectacularly you missed the point.

Poverty can happen to anyone. That’s why I unsettle you and your cronies. Because the Tory party rhetoric of ‘work hard and get on’ can fall apart in the blink of an eyelid. I worked hard. I got on. And I still spent a year and a half scrabbling around in a festering pit of depression, joblessness, benefit delays and suspensions, hunger, and the entrenching, gut wrenching fear that I was failing as a parent.

I’ve never claimed anywhere that my family were “poor”. They weren’t “rich” either. I’m not really sure what they were, which I guess makes them quite ordinary. As a child, I had dinner on the table and always had clean clothes. We had a holiday a year in a caravan in Devon or Yorkshire, and the occasional foray to Ireland.

I went to a grammar school, not with any coaching or private tuition, I just sat the entrance exam aged 10 and was offered a place. It was hardly Eton. I struggled at that school, grades gradually getting worse each year, until I dropped out with not enough GCSEs to take A Levels. I went to work, in a shop, at the age of 16. No degree, no Oxbridge education, no feet on ladders, no family business to inherit – just me and about £5.85 an hour.

But thank you, for giving me the opportunity to set the record straight about my upbringing live on air.

Thank you for showing your party to be the nasty, out of touch, gutter-scraping worms that they are.

Thank you for the extra 5,000 supporters I’ve had on Twitter, my blog, personal emails since your revolting attack.

And I ultimately feel very sad for you. Sad that you can say on television, without an ounce of remorse, that people should be starving in Britain. Sad that you cannot see beyond party battle lines to the real human pain and suffering up and down the country. Because it’s easier to talk in statistics and sound bites than it is to hear one persons story. It’s easier to shout down than to have to hear what poverty is like in Britain.

As for your little hissed aside when the cameras stopped rolling: “Still working for Sainsburys are you?” Yes, I am. The ad campaign runs for another couple of days. I guess I ‘worked hard and got on.’

My mum wants you to apologise, by the way. Are you woman enough?

Jack

First of all, congrats to Laura and Kirsty! Perhaps Jack can read their winning articles to get some tips on how to write SCATHING essays without resorting to a diatribe about how they tried to commit suicide.

On that point, it really is the sign of a narc abuser to bring something like that up in order to, what, win an argument? Divert attention from the fact that she didn't grow up in a working class environment? I could take this piece apart sentence by sentence but I love the juxtaposition of "When you descend into personal attacks against your opponent, it is because you have no political argument left." with "When you tweet your opponent's grandfather's obituary all over the internet in a foul attempt at smearing their reputation, it is because you are scum."

Jack: 'My family weren't rich'

Also Jack: 'When I was drinking lemonade with my grandad in his guest house'

She leaves out the fact that it was just one of his many 'guesthouses'.

 

[PoorPatrol]

Exactly! This is typical Nigella being playful and arch. Are people really suggesting this is an example of a posh person not really knowing how to say “microwave”?

Oh, honestly! Anyone who thought Nigella was being serious needs to do some deep thinking. It’s a bit like people who try and be funny/silly by calling Primark pree-marsh-ay, a sort of French slant, as if making it posher. Might not be side-splittingly hilarious, but hardly marks someone as a posh freak!

 

[Emmapism]

The white middle class privilege is just so strong! How can she not see that? Guest houses. Guest houses!

Sometimes I think to myself 'well you weren't that poor really, your family managed to buy a house' One house. That my family almost lost when the mortgage rates soared. But I wouldn't consider myself poor. We just struggled like most working class families. bleeping melt she is.

 

[MooBelle]

Scotsman columnists win Zero Tolerance Awards | The Scotsman



I think it is fair to say that Edwina rather got under her skin. 'Mummy' said her piece in a written response the next day, 4th February 2014.


Dear Edwina,

It’s 9 o'clock on Tuesday, the morning after the night before, where we were both on a panel on The Big Benefits Row on Channel 5. I haven’t watched it back, I was there, and know what I look like when I’m angry.

I need to get this out – because it’s everything I wanted to say last night but couldn’t, as I kept being rudely shouted over by you. Honestly, my three year old behaves better than that. At least he knows that when Mummy does her ‘will you just be QUIET and LISTEN to me’ then the best thing to do is to stop running your mouth and let Mummy say her piece.

But you didn’t. Because you were terrified of what I had to say.

I wanted to say, when asked by Matthew Wright, that poverty is almost indescribable to someone as blinkered as you. That turning off the fridge because it’s empty anyway, that sitting across the table from your young son enviously staring down his breakfast, having freezing cold showers and putting your child to bed in god knows how many layers of clothes in the evening – it’s distressing. Depressing. Destabilising.

Sure – you could probably live on benefits for a week to ‘prove it could be done’. But imagine living for 11 weeks with no housing benefit, because of ‘delays’. Imagine those 77 days of being chased for rent that you can’t pay, ignoring the phone, ignoring the door, drawing the curtains so the bailiffs can’t see that you’re home, cradling your son to your chest and sobbing that this is where it’s all ended up. It feels endless. Hopeless. Cold. Wet. Day after day of ‘no’. No we aren’t looking for staff. No there isn’t anything else to eat. No I can’t put the heating on. No I haven’t got any money to pay my rent arrears. No, no, no,


Sitting on the bathroom floor vomiting up the paracetamol and sleeping pills I took to try to end my own life – that wasn’t, as you hissed in an aside, “a rich girl pretending to be poor.” I was alone, with nobody to ‘pretend’ to. I didn’t write about my suicide attempts, because I was scared that if anyone knew how bad things were, I would lose my son. There was a lot I didn’t write about. You become adept at keeping up appearances, at smiling and saying you’re fine. It was almost a year before I was referred to a food bank for help, almost a year of searching for work, holding my home and my son together at the seams with an iron will. And all those ‘no’s.

When you descend into personal attacks against your opponent, it is because you have no political argument left.

When you tweet your opponent's grandfather's obituary all over the internet in a foul attempt at smearing their reputation, it is because you are scum.

Did you stop to think for one moment how you might have made my family feel? My nan, my mum, my dad, all people who dearly love the man whose life and death you used in a live television debate last night to try to unsettle your opponent? Of course you didn’t.

I was asked to sell my life rights to a movie director last week. I refused on two counts.

1. I’m not that interesting. As proved by you, when the biggest scandal you can dig up is that I used to drink Aldi lemonade with my grandad at his guest house.

2. I’m not an island. My life is interwoven with complex relationships, as are all of ours. Having been subjected to professional trolling for over a year now, I would never put my family through those levels of abuse. I get death threats. Rape threats. Personal attacks on my weight, appearance, sexuality, education, lack thereof. So I try to retain a degree of privacy, for the ordinary people on the periphery of the right wing media monstering of Jack Monroe. If you love someone, you don’t throw them into a bear pit.

If you’d have been willing to listen, you’d have realised how spectacularly you missed the point.

Poverty can happen to anyone. That’s why I unsettle you and your cronies. Because the Tory party rhetoric of ‘work hard and get on’ can fall apart in the blink of an eyelid. I worked hard. I got on. And I still spent a year and a half scrabbling around in a festering pit of depression, joblessness, benefit delays and suspensions, hunger, and the entrenching, gut wrenching fear that I was failing as a parent.

I’ve never claimed anywhere that my family were “poor”. They weren’t “rich” either. I’m not really sure what they were, which I guess makes them quite ordinary. As a child, I had dinner on the table and always had clean clothes. We had a holiday a year in a caravan in Devon or Yorkshire, and the occasional foray to Ireland.

I went to a grammar school, not with any coaching or private tuition, I just sat the entrance exam aged 10 and was offered a place. It was hardly Eton. I struggled at that school, grades gradually getting worse each year, until I dropped out with not enough GCSEs to take A Levels. I went to work, in a shop, at the age of 16. No degree, no Oxbridge education, no feet on ladders, no family business to inherit – just me and about £5.85 an hour.

But thank you, for giving me the opportunity to set the record straight about my upbringing live on air.

Thank you for showing your party to be the nasty, out of touch, gutter-scraping worms that they are.

Thank you for the extra 5,000 supporters I’ve had on Twitter, my blog, personal emails since your revolting attack.

And I ultimately feel very sad for you. Sad that you can say on television, without an ounce of remorse, that people should be starving in Britain. Sad that you cannot see beyond party battle lines to the real human pain and suffering up and down the country. Because it’s easier to talk in statistics and sound bites than it is to hear one persons story. It’s easier to shout down than to have to hear what poverty is like in Britain.

As for your little hissed aside when the cameras stopped rolling: “Still working for Sainsburys are you?” Yes, I am. The ad campaign runs for another couple of days. I guess I ‘worked hard and got on.’

My mum wants you to apologise, by the way. Are you woman enough?

Jack

That last bit about still working for Sainsbury's. That aged well!!

Edwina really did get to her didn't she! Ah poor little Jack, in poverty for 11 weeks. Still going on about it all these years later.
I don't doubt she had a crappy time, but it was 10 years ago. Strictly speaking not 'poverty'
She could easily have tapped the parents or her child's father for 11 weeks. That's not even 3 months.

It will never not baffle me why she hasn't moved on from 'Potatoes' Why hasn't she used all the opportunities she's been given? Why does she lie? Why is she so horrible?

 

[Satisfying Click]

Oh, honestly! Anyone who thought Nigella was being serious needs to do some deep thinking. It’s a bit like people who try and be funny/silly by calling Primark pree-marsh-ay, a sort of French slant, as if making it posher. Might not be side-splittingly hilarious, but hardly marks someone as a posh freak!

Yep! Decades ago, when people were priced out of Chelsea and moving south of the river, they did the same to Battersea (Bat-tease-ee-ahh) and Streatham (Saint Reetham). Dear heart Nige was having a laugh and has created a storm in a portmeirion tea cup.

 

[Pocahontas]

I’ve not seen this, does anyone have a link please?

Here you go!
Big Benefits Row

 

[Veronicaaa]

Edwina really did get to her didn't she! Ah poor little Jack, in poverty for 11 weeks. Still going on about it all these years later.

That's what I noticed too, she's all like 'well you could maybe manage it for one week but ME, I did it for ELEVEN weeks'. Ignoring the literal elevenerifing, it's as though she's actually forgotten that people can spend years/whole lives like that? That they're not suddenly dropped into it in their 20s for a few weeks, that they have childhoods marred by poverty. She says her point is that it can happen to anyone, using herself as an example - basically an admission that it's not something she's ever experienced before, and it's not something which should happen to nice middle class white girls like her.

 

[LeftToMyOwnDevices]

Here you go!
Big Benefits Row

Lovely, thank you very Matt much

 

[PoorPatrol]

Yep! Decades ago, when people were priced out of Chelsea and moving south of the river, they did the same to Battersea (Bat-tease-ee-ahh) and Streatham (Saint Reetham). Dear heart Nige was having a laugh and has created a storm in a portmeirion tea cup.

I think “storm in a Portmeirion tea cup” just about sums up this entire situation, from Jack’s life over the last ten years, to Nigella’s microwave....

 

[LavaFlake]

I think “storm in a Portmeirion tea cup” just about sums up this entire situation, from Jack’s life over the last ten years, to Nigella’s microwave....

Made even better because of Jack's smashed portmeirion crockery

 

[Lumpyspaceprincess]

11 weeks.

how many years can she stretch that out for. Find a new agenda.

 

[Captainmouse]

Scotsman columnists win Zero Tolerance Awards | The Scotsman




I think it is fair to say that Edwina rather got under her skin. 'Mummy' said her piece in a written response the next day, 4th February 2014.


Dear Edwina,

It’s 9 o'clock on Tuesday, the morning after the night before, where we were both on a panel on The Big Benefits Row on Channel 5. I haven’t watched it back, I was there, and know what I look like when I’m angry.

I need to get this out – because it’s everything I wanted to say last night but couldn’t, as I kept being rudely shouted over by you. Honestly, my three year old behaves better than that. At least he knows that when Mummy does her ‘will you just be QUIET and LISTEN to me’ then the best thing to do is to stop running your mouth and let Mummy say her piece.

But you didn’t. Because you were terrified of what I had to say.

I wanted to say, when asked by Matthew Wright, that poverty is almost indescribable to someone as blinkered as you. That turning off the fridge because it’s empty anyway, that sitting across the table from your young son enviously staring down his breakfast, having freezing cold showers and putting your child to bed in god knows how many layers of clothes in the evening – it’s distressing. Depressing. Destabilising.

Sure – you could probably live on benefits for a week to ‘prove it could be done’. But imagine living for 11 weeks with no housing benefit, because of ‘delays’. Imagine those 77 days of being chased for rent that you can’t pay, ignoring the phone, ignoring the door, drawing the curtains so the bailiffs can’t see that you’re home, cradling your son to your chest and sobbing that this is where it’s all ended up. It feels endless. Hopeless. Cold. Wet. Day after day of ‘no’. No we aren’t looking for staff. No there isn’t anything else to eat. No I can’t put the heating on. No I haven’t got any money to pay my rent arrears. No, no, no,


Sitting on the bathroom floor vomiting up the paracetamol and sleeping pills I took to try to end my own life – that wasn’t, as you hissed in an aside, “a rich girl pretending to be poor.” I was alone, with nobody to ‘pretend’ to. I didn’t write about my suicide attempts, because I was scared that if anyone knew how bad things were, I would lose my son. There was a lot I didn’t write about. You become adept at keeping up appearances, at smiling and saying you’re fine. It was almost a year before I was referred to a food bank for help, almost a year of searching for work, holding my home and my son together at the seams with an iron will. And all those ‘no’s.

When you descend into personal attacks against your opponent, it is because you have no political argument left.

When you tweet your opponent's grandfather's obituary all over the internet in a foul attempt at smearing their reputation, it is because you are scum.

Did you stop to think for one moment how you might have made my family feel? My nan, my mum, my dad, all people who dearly love the man whose life and death you used in a live television debate last night to try to unsettle your opponent? Of course you didn’t.

I was asked to sell my life rights to a movie director last week. I refused on two counts.

1. I’m not that interesting. As proved by you, when the biggest scandal you can dig up is that I used to drink Aldi lemonade with my grandad at his guest house.

2. I’m not an island. My life is interwoven with complex relationships, as are all of ours. Having been subjected to professional trolling for over a year now, I would never put my family through those levels of abuse. I get death threats. Rape threats. Personal attacks on my weight, appearance, sexuality, education, lack thereof. So I try to retain a degree of privacy, for the ordinary people on the periphery of the right wing media monstering of Jack Monroe. If you love someone, you don’t throw them into a bear pit.

If you’d have been willing to listen, you’d have realised how spectacularly you missed the point.

Poverty can happen to anyone. That’s why I unsettle you and your cronies. Because the Tory party rhetoric of ‘work hard and get on’ can fall apart in the blink of an eyelid. I worked hard. I got on. And I still spent a year and a half scrabbling around in a festering pit of depression, joblessness, benefit delays and suspensions, hunger, and the entrenching, gut wrenching fear that I was failing as a parent.

I’ve never claimed anywhere that my family were “poor”. They weren’t “rich” either. I’m not really sure what they were, which I guess makes them quite ordinary. As a child, I had dinner on the table and always had clean clothes. We had a holiday a year in a caravan in Devon or Yorkshire, and the occasional foray to Ireland.

I went to a grammar school, not with any coaching or private tuition, I just sat the entrance exam aged 10 and was offered a place. It was hardly Eton. I struggled at that school, grades gradually getting worse each year, until I dropped out with not enough GCSEs to take A Levels. I went to work, in a shop, at the age of 16. No degree, no Oxbridge education, no feet on ladders, no family business to inherit – just me and about £5.85 an hour.

But thank you, for giving me the opportunity to set the record straight about my upbringing live on air.

Thank you for showing your party to be the nasty, out of touch, gutter-scraping worms that they are.

Thank you for the extra 5,000 supporters I’ve had on Twitter, my blog, personal emails since your revolting attack.

And I ultimately feel very sad for you. Sad that you can say on television, without an ounce of remorse, that people should be starving in Britain. Sad that you cannot see beyond party battle lines to the real human pain and suffering up and down the country. Because it’s easier to talk in statistics and sound bites than it is to hear one persons story. It’s easier to shout down than to have to hear what poverty is like in Britain.

As for your little hissed aside when the cameras stopped rolling: “Still working for Sainsburys are you?” Yes, I am. The ad campaign runs for another couple of days. I guess I ‘worked hard and got on.’

My mum wants you to apologise, by the way. Are you woman enough?

Jack

11weeks!

 

[bananasplit88]

Oh that letter to Edwina. She never fails to give me a daily dose of butt-clenching cringe. She's like a teenager who got into a fight & did nothing to defend themselves at the time but after they act all hard & full of it. I still don't believe she ever kicked anyone in the shins - it happened in her imaginary reenactment of the event.

 

[jenny2603]

Scotsman columnists win Zero Tolerance Awards | The Scotsman



I think it is fair to say that Edwina rather got under her skin. 'Mummy' said her piece in a written response the next day, 4th February 2014.


Dear Edwina,

It’s 9 o'clock on Tuesday, the morning after the night before, where we were both on a panel on The Big Benefits Row on Channel 5. I haven’t watched it back, I was there, and know what I look like when I’m angry.

I need to get this out – because it’s everything I wanted to say last night but couldn’t, as I kept being rudely shouted over by you. Honestly, my three year old behaves better than that. At least he knows that when Mummy does her ‘will you just be QUIET and LISTEN to me’ then the best thing to do is to stop running your mouth and let Mummy say her piece.

But you didn’t. Because you were terrified of what I had to say.

I wanted to say, when asked by Matthew Wright, that poverty is almost indescribable to someone as blinkered as you. That turning off the fridge because it’s empty anyway, that sitting across the table from your young son enviously staring down his breakfast, having freezing cold showers and putting your child to bed in god knows how many layers of clothes in the evening – it’s distressing. Depressing. Destabilising.

Sure – you could probably live on benefits for a week to ‘prove it could be done’. But imagine living for 11 weeks with no housing benefit, because of ‘delays’. Imagine those 77 days of being chased for rent that you can’t pay, ignoring the phone, ignoring the door, drawing the curtains so the bailiffs can’t see that you’re home, cradling your son to your chest and sobbing that this is where it’s all ended up. It feels endless. Hopeless. Cold. Wet. Day after day of ‘no’. No we aren’t looking for staff. No there isn’t anything else to eat. No I can’t put the heating on. No I haven’t got any money to pay my rent arrears. No, no, no,


Sitting on the bathroom floor vomiting up the paracetamol and sleeping pills I took to try to end my own life – that wasn’t, as you hissed in an aside, “a rich girl pretending to be poor.” I was alone, with nobody to ‘pretend’ to. I didn’t write about my suicide attempts, because I was scared that if anyone knew how bad things were, I would lose my son. There was a lot I didn’t write about. You become adept at keeping up appearances, at smiling and saying you’re fine. It was almost a year before I was referred to a food bank for help, almost a year of searching for work, holding my home and my son together at the seams with an iron will. And all those ‘no’s.

When you descend into personal attacks against your opponent, it is because you have no political argument left.

When you tweet your opponent's grandfather's obituary all over the internet in a foul attempt at smearing their reputation, it is because you are scum.

Did you stop to think for one moment how you might have made my family feel? My nan, my mum, my dad, all people who dearly love the man whose life and death you used in a live television debate last night to try to unsettle your opponent? Of course you didn’t.

I was asked to sell my life rights to a movie director last week. I refused on two counts.

1. I’m not that interesting. As proved by you, when the biggest scandal you can dig up is that I used to drink Aldi lemonade with my grandad at his guest house.

2. I’m not an island. My life is interwoven with complex relationships, as are all of ours. Having been subjected to professional trolling for over a year now, I would never put my family through those levels of abuse. I get death threats. Rape threats. Personal attacks on my weight, appearance, sexuality, education, lack thereof. So I try to retain a degree of privacy, for the ordinary people on the periphery of the right wing media monstering of Jack Monroe. If you love someone, you don’t throw them into a bear pit.

If you’d have been willing to listen, you’d have realised how spectacularly you missed the point.

Poverty can happen to anyone. That’s why I unsettle you and your cronies. Because the Tory party rhetoric of ‘work hard and get on’ can fall apart in the blink of an eyelid. I worked hard. I got on. And I still spent a year and a half scrabbling around in a festering pit of depression, joblessness, benefit delays and suspensions, hunger, and the entrenching, gut wrenching fear that I was failing as a parent.

I’ve never claimed anywhere that my family were “poor”. They weren’t “rich” either. I’m not really sure what they were, which I guess makes them quite ordinary. As a child, I had dinner on the table and always had clean clothes. We had a holiday a year in a caravan in Devon or Yorkshire, and the occasional foray to Ireland.

I went to a grammar school, not with any coaching or private tuition, I just sat the entrance exam aged 10 and was offered a place. It was hardly Eton. I struggled at that school, grades gradually getting worse each year, until I dropped out with not enough GCSEs to take A Levels. I went to work, in a shop, at the age of 16. No degree, no Oxbridge education, no feet on ladders, no family business to inherit – just me and about £5.85 an hour.

But thank you, for giving me the opportunity to set the record straight about my upbringing live on air.

Thank you for showing your party to be the nasty, out of touch, gutter-scraping worms that they are.

Thank you for the extra 5,000 supporters I’ve had on Twitter, my blog, personal emails since your revolting attack.

And I ultimately feel very sad for you. Sad that you can say on television, without an ounce of remorse, that people should be starving in Britain. Sad that you cannot see beyond party battle lines to the real human pain and suffering up and down the country. Because it’s easier to talk in statistics and sound bites than it is to hear one persons story. It’s easier to shout down than to have to hear what poverty is like in Britain.

As for your little hissed aside when the cameras stopped rolling: “Still working for Sainsburys are you?” Yes, I am. The ad campaign runs for another couple of days. I guess I ‘worked hard and got on.’

My mum wants you to apologise, by the way. Are you woman enough?

Jack

Christ what an absolute liability Jack is.

I'm also quite disturbed by the way she keeps bringing up these suicide attempts. Ages ago I took part in metal health training for work.One of the tutors was a former service user who at one point discussed his own suicide attempt. Before he started he made clear that he would not be disclosing the method he used or answering any questions on that for the reason that it can influence others who maybe at risk of suicide. The way Jack describes her attempt above could put others at risk, particularly as it worked out OK in so far as she threw up the pills. We think of Paracetamol as almost harmless because it's a cheap everyday drug but it can cause a lot of damage even in cases of accidental overdose. Anyone reading Jacks account who is seriously struggling would be forgiven for thinking such a method might be viable cry for help. It absolutely isn't.

By inserting it into a debate about benefits it gives the impression if we only had a fairer benefits system it would never have happened. People attempt suicide because they are very seriously mentally ill not directly because of a tragic or difficult life event. If Jack were remotely interested in the well being of other people I'd suggest she spend some time reading the Samaritans Media Guidelines on Suicide.

 

[Emmapism]

Doesn't that fluctuate? Sometimes she says 11 weeks, sometimes 18 months? She doesn't exaggerate does she??

 

[Captainmouse]

Jeeze that whole letter from her is a massive pile of cringe. Made even worse by the fact that if any of it is true, she could have prevented a lot of it by telling SBs dad or her own family how she was living. If I couldn’t afford to feed my kids or heat their room at night but I knew someone in my family could there would be no question of me making sure they were staying somewhere safe and warm until I could sort my financial tit out.

No martyr points in that though.