I'd been wondering why this link had been posted, it's certainly come up before and the Canal had been unimpressed for all the reasons Vali gives above - but this last bit is interesting in view of the current 'Guardian journalists made me say track suits'. It is the shift between Jack Monroe's original stance of 'I'm middle class and fell through the welfare cracks' and her current positioning of a working class hero forged in the crucible of class struggle.
This is the crux of it imho. I do not understand why it is so important to her to retconn spending her childhood in poverty (which can be disproved by HER OWN WORDS) unless it's because she feels like it's the only thing that makes her interesting and "authentic" as a voice on budget cookery. Otherwise, rightly, people will tell her to take a back seat for others who actually know what it's like, or at least have some cooking skill and sensible solutions for meal planning and budgeting.
Sometimes I feel sorry for her - it must be horrible living in the world she's constructed for herself where everything is a fragile tissue of lies and she's a laughing stock whose opportunities, friends, youth and even identity are slipping away. I wonder if she knows how
tit at stuff she is, and how much of this is driven by deep insecurity? (No excuse for being a
bleep though.)
And then she goes and posts some kind of blocks on Twitter about journalists or her "staff" or her ouchy shoulder or weaponises her sobriety and I'm like, no,
duck you, witch.
Get off Twitter, touch some grass, do some actual work that genuinely benefits someone else, not nonsense hamsterwheeling and weighing anchovies, and reconnect with the people that love you offline.