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

[BobRob]

It is in the full length GMB segment. She says at 7.32am Fri 21/01/22:
“I had a message last night from a gentleman who’d read my thread who said that he was going to bed having eaten a teaspoon of toothpaste in order to fool himself into thinking that he’d had a meal.”

Weird though that she would stop people from trying to help him further.

Also lol I didn’t realise GMB gave her figs quite the tarting up. So you can literally just say anything and as long as it gets millions of tweets they will put it on breakfast tv the next day as word art? Incredible!

View attachment 1008875

ETA: @Marmalade Atkins I screen recorded the entire piece if you want it, nothing of note imo.

Just leaving this here...

Absolutely not denying that food costs have gone up but Tesco still sells 29p pasta shapes and also 20p spaghetti.

 

[anon12300]

Two years ago!! Wtf do you spend your time doing woman. It took me 4 months to write a first draft.

If I were her publisher, I'd be very pissed off that nobody RSM is putting a poverty book together before the celebrity 'writer' I've paid two years ago has.

 

[BooBooPoohPooh]

Some new squiggs

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I LIKE these people. They totally get it.

 

[Prognosis Negative]

It shows what utter Dickensian drivel she spouts. How would someone who moved home eleventysix times, lived rough etc etc, sold their child’s toys et al manage to lug bleeping Asda receipts about the south east?

Perhaps some of them are softly, gently, filled away in the fantasy (Cotswold?) storage unit in which she keeps all her unopened brown bills? The one earmarked for screaming and clawing

 

[J4n0Z]

I saw that R Jackie was trending on tw@tter and came here to vent.

I'm still amazed people fall for her shite. Saw some poor squig get jumped on and accused of all sorts for daring to venture some mild criticism of her.

Awful, awful woman

 

[StringyMango]

That headline is so wildly irresponsible, I’m bleeping fuming. And her stupid smug face absolutely loving all the drama she’s causing and attention she’s getting.

I know! That smirk. Eyes like pissholes in snow.

 

[ednaturnblad]

I made a point about the Vimes Boots thing on here being an emotive hook that doesn't translate well to other types of consumables on Friday at 6.29, deliberately obfuscated and behind a spoiler in an attempt not to give anyone any ideas.

Jack tweeted about her VB index for what I can gather was the first time 45 minutes later, implying she'd been working on it for some time. Hopefully a coincidence but it has made me feel a bit weird.

Spoiler: Receipts

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Feel a bit weird going back and screenshotting it, but she also replied to this squig saying that she hoped their tweet talking about being poor ‘didn’t bring too much to the surface for them’. This was after a few of us on here had spoken about how the poverty porn tweets could be potentially upsetting for those who are/have been there.

Of course it could be a complete coincidence, but it stood out to me as her earlier replies to similar tweets had been along the lines of ‘I did/still do this’.

 

[Rekyavikgirl]

Big JO interview in the Sunday Times today. The timing has made me laugh.

 

[blurstoftimes]

I'm intrigued by the silence of the Vittles crowd. You'd think she'd be their demographic. I am a bit cheered by this.

Vittles’ refusal to ever acknowledge or involve Jack brings me sooooo much joy

 

[Squashedbanana]

Do none of these people have friends?

I get it's embarrassing having no money but if people are you're real friends they won't care. If any of my mates came to me for anything I and I could sort it I would and wouldn't question it or mention it.

I also think that reading her piece of people are literally starving goes deeper than just the price it beans, has civilisation became so selfish?

I agree, I have been thinking about this a lot throughout this… how she says she had no lighting, heating and only a nibble on a stock cube for dinner… is this not irresponsible with a small child in tow, when you have parents who could help? Encouraging people to speak up to trusted friends and families when they are in a tough spot could be really useful? Not in the long term but, perhaps this is something we could be encouraging, helping one another? I’m struggling to understand that part. Again I don’t know the circumstances, but surely she would have been eligible for council housing which would have severely slashed her rent outgoings? Sounds like a number of bad choices/ wrong priorities.

I’ve got into tough spots before - thankfully only temporary, but the most recent period I shrugged off my pride and told a couple of people I was struggling - I was helped out and I didn’t feel ashamed, I felt grateful I had people to turn and grateful I had spoken up! I just think suffering in silence is not the way.

The other thing is, does she use her garden? I watched a show (rich house poor house) and this woman grew enough fruit and veg on her allotment to freeze year round, or does Jack think poor people only want tinned food?

 

[Django]

Just a silly thought, but if Jack really had kept these receipts (I know!) then they would show her excessive alcohol purchases?

 

[Wooh]

View attachment 1008940

Roadsidemum really wanted to read this. She became impatient so had to "commission" her own zine

Kapow is the sound of

Mod edit: Roadside Mum has her own thread.

 

[Arsov Cooper]

That Man is on the cover of the Sunday Times' culture supplement today, and there's a comprehensive article over three pages about the writers of successful cookbooks. Jack Monroe is not mentioned.

ETA @Rekyavikgirl got there first.

 

[Rekyavikgirl]

Vittles’ refusal to ever acknowledge or involve Jack brings me sooooo much joy

Imagining the Whatsapp conversations gives me life.

Just a silly thought, but if Jack really had kept these receipts (I know!) then they would show her excessive alcohol purchases?

YES THIS

 

[Dogmuck]

Finally caught up! Many Frauen have already made the points that I wanted to make while I was reading, but bleeping hell. What a wild ride.

1) Don't panic, this will pass. Jack seems to have a knack for going viral once a year, and always in Q1: in 2020, it led to the GENIUS that was Daily Morning Kitchen, and in 2021 we had that weird photo crying at Rishi Sunak that led to her appearing on the news and allegedly being cut off for calling Boris Johnson a narcissist. This is the latest version, and it will fizzle out soon.

2) That being said, this is particularly insidious. It's incredibly irresponsible to tell people, many of whom are already in a bad mental state, that they're going to starve to death. A week or so ago (a lifetime in thread terms), I linked to an old article of Jack's where she went into inappropriate detail about named individuals' suicides, describing their methods and claiming to know their reasons. This has the same gleeful air of appropriation about it. Jack would absolutely love it if some poor people starved to death. Think of the media opportunities she'd get!

3) The blue tickers who are fawning over her...sorry, but lol. I know a lot of you are big Nigella fans - I'm really, really not - but the idea that she has any clue about the realities of poverty is laughable. Ditto Hugh Grant. This has always been Jack's MO: she can tell absurd stories about poverty, because people with no experience of it will believe her. Then these stories scare people who actually live in poverty, because they start to think, "Oh god, if things don't improve I'll be nibbling stock cubes and selling my lightbulbs." Eventually, a lot of them come around, because they realise that nope, NOBODY nibbles stock cubes and sells their lightbulbs. But the lifelong rich continue to enable her.

4) The basic premise of her rant is flawed, and not just mathematically. First, as has been pointed out, she ignores cultural considerations. Just because someone is poor does not mean they want to eat the vile slurry that is tinned spaghetti, FFS! Take lamb: at the supermarket I use, it takes up very little shelf space. But there's a Moroccan butcher's shop in my neighbourhood which sells a lot more cuts at lower prices. Is that because the Moroccan immigrants are enjoying a jolly knees-up night after night? No, it's because they tend to cook with lamb a lot more than Catalans do. The UK is far, far more ethnically diverse, so this happens on a much wider scale. Then of course she ignores the fact that budget products have been rebranded in an effort to compete with Aldi and Lidl, because Harvest Moon and Crunchy Croc sound nicer than Value and Smart Price.

5) The Vimes analogy makes absolutely no sense in this context. It's also - and with all due respect to Terry Pratchett, who was a great author and an extremely impressive individual - just a more eloquent way of saying "buy cheap, buy twice." This does not apply to food. It does apply to other basic products (washing up liquid, for example), but Jack has never given a tit about those.

6) Speaking of which...I'll say it again: JACK WAS NEVER POOR. I forensically examined her output during the Poverty years a while back, and she was lying from day one - I think it's all on the wiki. In the early years she detailed the massive rent she willingly paid, the cats she adopted at the height of her poverty, the random businesses she kept starting, etc etc. Look at that Sunday People article. She keeps saying how during the Poverty she was so skinny from malnutrition, but...she wasn't? Like, the photo is right there, we have other photos from that time, she was a perfectly healthy weight, she was not starving, duck off Jack.

7) Related to this - when I looked through Jack's old blog archive, it became clear that her first priced recipes were part of the Live Below the Line challenge, which she used to do every year. The thing is, when you look at her old challenges, you realise that she doesn't actually know how to shop on a microbudget. She's always buying things like stock cubes or mixed herbs or jars of lemon curd for 30p, out of a budget of 5£ for 5 days. If you have 5£ for 5 days, it makes NO sense to buy nutritionally void flavourings like mixed herbs or stock cubes; that 30p could buy you a tin of beans, which would provide protein for 2 meals.

8) In fact, here's an example of Vimes maths: there was one old blog I read where she recommended buying stock cubes instead of salt, which is utterly bleeping insane. Salt is far more versatile, is used for baking bread. A bag of salt will last you a year, while a pack of 10 stock cubes will last you...10 meals. You'll spend far, far more on stock cubes than you would on salt if you take Jack's advice.

9) Here's a question: what could a budget-focused recipe writer actually do that's useful in the face of rising inflation? If I were Jack - and in this scenario we'll pretend that Jack actually knows something about food - I'd be pursuing a partnership with Aldi or Lidl. They have the most diverse special offers of any supermarkets (here at least, I assume it's the same in the UK), and they change every week. Wouldn't it be great to have a recipe writer with a deal to say "This week is Japanese Week at Lidl! Here are 5 simple, cheap dishes you can make with their discount products" or "Cabbage is in the Super 6 this week! Why not try one of my great cabbage recipes?" That would be a lot more useful than blindly flailing away at Twitter.

10) Finally: I for one am ecstatic that the last time she went THIS viral she had the kumquat, and this time she has Boris Johnson hair. Great look there, Jack!

I love every bleeping word of this- beautifully put, beautifully delivered and I feel your frustration and rage running through but despite this you never once called her a bleep, so big hats off to you @colouredlines

 

[Rekyavikgirl]

Thank you @colouredlines

 

[AprilLudgate]

Saw she was trending and got great --and immature--pleasure from clicking 'this trend is harmful or spammy' via the three little dots to its right.

OMG I did the same…. Realise this is so petty but I felt GREAT…. Never done it before either.
Some really genuine grassroots workers in my area have retweeted her. Couldn’t stand to block them so this will have to do
This really is a safe space

 

[FlirtyThirty]

I was just thinking about how Jack is the girl from Common People as per downthread and it just came on the radio She needs taking down she really does.

 

[Christina31]

As I was talking of Twitter I thought I’d check Jack on social blade, keeps track of social media followers and the amount of tweets you do in a day. I tweet a few times a week. (If I’m really excited about something I occasionally tweet twice in a day! Woohoo Go me!) I know that’s quite low- I’M BUSY!!-
Jack seems to tweet between 10 to 50 times a day, sometimes it’s over 100 tweets a day, not to judge anyone’s social media habits, but that does seem slightly excessive especially for someone so BUSY.

 

[colouredlines]

I love every bleeping word of this- beautifully put, beautifully delivered and I feel your frustration and rage running through but despite this you never once called her a bleep, so big hats off to you @colouredlines

I knew I forgot something!