Jack Monroe #244 Why has she turned this into supermarket sweep?

[DisgruntledGoat]

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Nobody in the history of humanity has ever been less able to laugh at themselves than Jack Monroe. She views herself with the delusional pomp of the teenaged Adrian Mole, without any of the honesty.

 

[Django]

My theory, and it's purely speculative, m'lud, is that there is no working party or crack team other than in Jack's fevered imagination. Neither is there an army of concerned friends making sure that she doesn't slip into a coma or have convulsions.
There is Jack, sitting in her 3/4 million pound rented house, wondering how the holy fuck she is going to wriggle out of this one whilst praying for more well paid gigs in the meantime.

 

[Terrible]

She’d never dare actually sue - there’s only one side here with the receipts.

I’ve just had to pop into Tesco to validate parking. Figured there might be a rush on rice, but all is well, and stock high. I do however realise this is purely anecdotal.

 

[Julianastraat]

Highly recommend the Twitter of James Rebanks (hope it's okay to post this here...he is a blue tick with 160k followers). He is a farmer and gives a good overview why cheap food is not the answer...

"In ten years talking about this stuff I’ve never had a poor person tell me they want cheaper food - they want better jobs and opportunities and the things the rest of us want I’ve had about a thousand right wing affluent people tell me cheap food is all for poor people’s sake"

 

[Veronicaaa]

Did we get that she deleted this? Probably because it's a MASSIVE LIE.

 

[Ispyabudgetbeanblogger]

Can't afford chicken for Sunday lunch just cook a worm #jackhack

Animals are animals.

When she first emerged on the scene, her recipes seemed to be about making meals out of what might be a somewhat random selection of ingredients from a foodbank. I think at the time this made some sense. I think now there is demand for showing people how to make everyday staples interesting, and how to make the most of seasonal ingredients, so people don't get sick of 'cabbage, again' or 'courgette, again'. As much as we all laugh about 'herbs are herbs', I also think there is room for helping people learn about what things in a recipe you can change. But often that rule isn't universal. In some recipes, you can replace basil with parsley. In some recipes you really can't. In no recipe should you replace rosemary with coriander. When you first start cooking, you don't know these things, so a good recipe writer should help you with it.

Before the 90s, many recipes were written with exact measurements (50g carrot, 25g minced onion). This really isn't helpful for homecooks, because who wants to be left with a small piece of carrot in their fridge? We now have much better recipes for normal homecooking, which can tolerate the difference between a large carrot and a small carrot. (Baking is obvs different). The problem for her is, that in her niche, there is no money to be made (cooking when very poor) and she shouts down everything that is 'budget cooking' in the more conventional sense, i.e. people who have a working oven, who can afford rice, even at £1.08, but who don't want to/can't spend £20 on a family dinner every night.

Oh, and of course, she also can't cook.

I'm not sure what this essay is about, but I feel better now.

 

[kachoochoo]

Newbie to Jack tbh but out of curiosity (have read the wiki) is there a reason she still pretends to live in poverty?

her reasons are threefold - tip jar, paypal and patreon

 

[Legionnairess]

I have muted Jack Monroe from my twitter timeline. It’s just lovely. They can all tweet at each other in their own echo chamber and my blood pressure remains normal.

 

[sioc]

The writer of a piece doesn't choose the headline, but her retweeting it implies she endorses it. Gross.

 

[OwlRightsReserved]

I also feel like Jack has a really bizarre (read: unhinged) conception of how other people function when money is scarce.

It feels so patronising for her to behave as though someone living below the poverty line might never have purchased branded foodstuffs. People choose to spend their money as they see fit. There's a whole host of complicated, nuanced relationships that people have with food that go beyond Jack's "no money smartprice beans" attitude.

She's also boring. And I know that's not an erudite criticism of her, but she's so fucking boring.

 

[Emmapism]

My own very dear sister shared Jack's viral tweet screenshot on Facebook today. We just had a very frank WhatsApp chat about it and she has removed it after I explained why it was incorrect. She said

'I was sure I’d seen costs go up so I figured I’d not have noticed as much as a poorer person would'

Keep having these chats with people my loves

 

[CabalofBolorneaise]

I'm sure the TT would rather someone with only £34.34 in their bank account didn't donate their fee and instead used it to pay their council tax...

ETA: Ohh she's going to explode about Mr Dresser isn't she... the prayer hands emoji means nothing.

 

[Silver Linings]

 

[ChickenPorridge]

Sad that people are gonna send her research they've actually spent time on only for her to at best completely ignore it, at worst use it as her own

 

[LavaFlake]

This is why I could never stick my head above the parapet and call her out on social. Everything I say here, I'd happily say to her face but jesus those flying monkeys at her circus are nasty.

 

[Silver Linings]

Title by @ecdb

Spoiler: Housekeeping

Please keep thread title nominations until the end of the thread and remember no swearing and to add ‘thread title’ or ‘thread title nomination’ etc

Pink button is the wiki for newbies.

Jack right now -

 

[colouredlines]

What has Jack done to help poor people in the last year?

- Free school meals tantrum on Twitter
- Promised family recipes during school meal saga (never delivered)
- Partnership with Del Monte, claiming that Del Monte canned goods are worth spending more on
- errrr...
- Sticky brown poo?
- Helped anonymous secret toothpaste eater on Twitter (allegedly)

That's it. She hasn't even provided budget recipes. Being poor is not fun, but there are things you can do to make it more tolerable.

She NEVER offers solutions. Whenever someone says "Tesco is cheaper" or "Aldi is great" she starts ranting about how irrelevant that is because apparently she is legally prohibited from shopping anywhere but Asda. Instead of offering tips, she tells people they are going to starve to death.

Ironically, this should have been the best year of her career, as more people than ever are on tight budgets. But she has no interest in doing anything productive.

 

[Ispyabudgetbeanblogger]

Doesn’t everyone just buy secondhand uniform from the PTA stall?

Yes, but it's actually been quite hard during pandemic (no stall). Our schools were good and just gave donated items directly to families who needed them.

Anyway, as this thread proves time and time again, things are complicated and often nuanced. For people without kids, school uniforms are irrelevant. Vegans don't care about the price of sardines. What everyone deserves is a safe, warm place to live, good quality, healthy food and a few things that make life enjoyable.

 

[PuritySpiral]

This price index thing she's making.

Exhibit 1

It IS a huge job, she's not wrong

Exhibit 2

It'll take a weekend.

Huge/big/complicated job v it'll take a weekend.


Make it make sense.

 

[Flash123]

Are these people fucking thick. They aren’t using lamb and champagne to measure poverty…. They are measuring the average cost of living.
more needs to be done to support people in poverty absolutely but this is just going to be bullshit and the only person who will benefit financially will be Jack…. Until HMRC take what is owed to us.
I look forward to Jack’s taxes actually contributing to society instead of J1G