DisgruntledGoat
VIP Member
Checking Twitter before Tattle and seeing the Diva tweet and the withering replies like
- Notice
SmolWarrior
Well-known member
Diva tweeting 'We are reading the targeted attack on one the valued members of our community and less than impressed' is INFURIATING.
What exactly is this targeted attack? None of the comments the canal has been busy receipting (before they get hidden) has been 'attacking' Jack. At the risk of sounding like JM, SHOW US where these attacks are.
Also, 'valued member of our community': get in the bin. What the fuck has she ever done for LGBT+ people? She's only part of your (and my
) community when it suits her to put on one of her labels.
I am incandescent that her playing the lesbian card apparently entitles her to immunity from scrutiny and polite requests for transparency.
I know her sexuality shouldn't be here nor there (but she's quite happy to weaponise it when it suits her), but I'd posit she is Jacksexual - she is overwhelmingly attracted to herself and she'll go with anyone who's giving her the attention she craves.
What exactly is this targeted attack? None of the comments the canal has been busy receipting (before they get hidden) has been 'attacking' Jack. At the risk of sounding like JM, SHOW US where these attacks are.
Also, 'valued member of our community': get in the bin. What the fuck has she ever done for LGBT+ people? She's only part of your (and my
) community when it suits her to put on one of her labels.I am incandescent that her playing the lesbian card apparently entitles her to immunity from scrutiny and polite requests for transparency.
I know her sexuality shouldn't be here nor there (but she's quite happy to weaponise it when it suits her), but I'd posit she is Jacksexual - she is overwhelmingly attracted to herself and she'll go with anyone who's giving her the attention she craves.
Justacatindisguise
VIP Member
Lol she's definitely slid into Russ's DMs
HodgeSplodge
Active member
I echo what everyone else has theorised about the Teemill scandal and just wanted to add that I think the reason the amount donated to the Trussell Trust is such a weird number is because if you deduct the £10,000 (aka the amount Jack claimed had been raised in the first two days and also the amount that would be paid to the Trussell Trust before the rest would go to other charities) you get £1,082.39 which is a more plausible amount of sales.
I think Jack decided to donate that amount plus £10k of her own savings and thought that would be enough to make the scrutiny go away.
I don't have the screenshots to hand but remember when she showed the bank transfer screenshot - she also showed an alleged spreadsheet screenshot but it only showed a total figure. Not the whole spreadsheet of Teemill sales which if my theory stacks up, would show £1,082.39 after Teemill's cut.
There is a chance that what has been raised since still doesn't total the original £10k Jack has paid from her own savings so in her head she's just repaying herself.
This of course is fraud. Obviously this is all just a theory but if any journalist is reading, feel free to investigate. Jack always loves to moan about journalists not doing any real investigation into this sort of thing so I'm sure she'd welcome the scrutiny.
I think Jack decided to donate that amount plus £10k of her own savings and thought that would be enough to make the scrutiny go away.
I don't have the screenshots to hand but remember when she showed the bank transfer screenshot - she also showed an alleged spreadsheet screenshot but it only showed a total figure. Not the whole spreadsheet of Teemill sales which if my theory stacks up, would show £1,082.39 after Teemill's cut.
There is a chance that what has been raised since still doesn't total the original £10k Jack has paid from her own savings so in her head she's just repaying herself.
This of course is fraud. Obviously this is all just a theory but if any journalist is reading, feel free to investigate. Jack always loves to moan about journalists not doing any real investigation into this sort of thing so I'm sure she'd welcome the scrutiny.
AthelstanWessex
New member
I'm sure most here will have read the 1000+ comments on JM's "Cooking On A Bootstrap" Kickstarter website. But if you haven't, I highly recommend doing so. Together these comments create a perfect narrative for the current chaos.
Caveat emptor, quia ignorare non debuit quod jus alienum emit
("Let a purchaser beware, for he ought not to be ignorant of the nature of the property which he is buying from another party.")
- People generously provide funding and then patiently await the arrival of their book.
- As the years pass, patience begins to wear thin, thanks in no small part to a complete lack of communications from JM (who meanwhile is extremely active on Instagram and Twitter). Despite their frustrations, most backers remain patient and polite.
- As even more years pass, backers start to become frustrated and angry. Some of the complainants are "superbackers", which presumably means they've contributed a significant amount of money. (One such backer states that he and his wife pledged £340, which he asks to be refunded.)
- JM becomes defensive as the backers' anger mounts. She does apologise, but deflectively. Her many excuses for lack of general or personal communications include: moving house; backers' emails going into junk folder; MH, etcetera. At one point, she warns a complaining backer not to be "libellous". On another occasion, she says to her backers: "I presume you backed this project to support me not to hurt me".
- When books do eventually start to arrive, many backers are surprised but appreciative. Others, however, are not so impressed, primarily because a professionally published and improved version of the book they crowdfunded is now available to buy on Amazon.
- However, nearly 7 years after the funding target was reached, there are still backers who have yet to receive their book. The most recent comment, posted 6 months ago, comes from someone so resigned to the inevitable that you can almost hear him sigh: "Sadly, never got my book".
Caveat emptor, quia ignorare non debuit quod jus alienum emit
("Let a purchaser beware, for he ought not to be ignorant of the nature of the property which he is buying from another party.")
Emmapism
VIP Member
400 threads and an ever growing collection of dickwads. Toot toot!
Can I just say the fact that @Silver Linings strode in and created the thread is
Can I just say the fact that @Silver Linings strode in and created the thread is
Smeghead
VIP Member
Jack’s first day as social media manager at Diva Mag off to a flierWow, nice tone you're taking their DIVA. Snark to match Jack's
View attachment 1592552
View attachment 1592560
Switchstreetz
VIP Member
I was saving this for the Sloppies, but unfortunately I won't have time this year to do them. Thread 400 looks like a fine occasion to unveil my cursed creation though - especially as she's finally stopped causing chaos every 30 seconds!
We've had Potatoes, and then there was Pasta. After much research (googling "carbohydrates that begin with P") I asked an AI https://app.inferkit.com/demo to write another installment of the Hunger Hurts series.
I then asked another AI (Craiyon) to create the images for the article.
Trigger warnings: mentions of death, mental illness, blood. There were mentions of sucide in the original, I believe I've removed them all but just to warn you in case some have slipped the net.
This is Popcorn.
I don't know about you but I think it really captured her tone in certain parts, a bit uncanny!
The essay was completed on Sunday 31st July. You can imagine my 'delight' when Jack suddenly dropped 2 Hunger 2 Hurts.
We've had Potatoes, and then there was Pasta. After much research (googling "carbohydrates that begin with P") I asked an AI https://app.inferkit.com/demo to write another installment of the Hunger Hurts series.
I then asked another AI (Craiyon) to create the images for the article.
Trigger warnings: mentions of death, mental illness, blood. There were mentions of sucide in the original, I believe I've removed them all but just to warn you in case some have slipped the net.
This is Popcorn.
To say I disagree, in effect, with the prioritization of food purchases in terms of your net pay, would be a bit of a paradox.
My long-time friend, who is in graduate school, knows the value of a single avocado or banana, and she’s also aware that a single half of an avocado, peeled, can last for days if you leave it on the counter, or some fresh mint or dried herbs can keep for weeks, all for your daily breakfast. She knows that frozen organic veggies are of less quality than fresh.
We, the rapidly falling share-owners of this island, are furious and are tearing our hair out about it. All the pensions that people rely upon are being cut, but the wealth, which is the real culprit here, is constantly gobbled up. What if someone is earning a few hundred pounds a week on which they’ve maxed out their credit card, or used to supplement a pension for a single parent, then lo and behold, with the savings they’ve got, they have a job? How happy would they be? The current cliche about some impoverished pensioner living a simple life of bare bones accommodation and homemade bread isn’t even true anymore. Does anyone remember the furore over a third house owned by a pensioner in Dorset?
As Ms Rees-Mogg later added in her blog, “The pie-and-prune diet will be showing its age soon enough, but for now, this form of slow starvation is easy for the elderly to follow as all it requires is a little discipline and planning ahead. And don’t worry about running out of greens at the end of the week: just keep making a mixture of puréed greens, cooked chickpeas, onions, dried beans and spices and freeze it in batches, ready to go at the weekend.”
This is only sensible food policy if you’re old, but how many of the 150+ young people we talked to earlier this year, on our anti-food poverty campaign in Norwich, pointed out how good food was?
After all, there’s something to be said for a balanced diet when there is a price to pay for every thing.
Maybe you won’t win the argument, or the contract. Or your relationship is over, or your house isn’t sold. Or it turns out the kintsugi technique is a load of nonsense. Maybe you won’t win a debate with a politician, or get paid the amount you were promised. Maybe you lose your job. Or you get ill. Maybe the wind blows the door of the cupboard shut on your fingers, or the battery in your car runs out and you’re stranded miles away with no money for petrol. Maybe you get stuck on a massive roundabout for hours and you’re shivering and alone. Maybe it rains.
Dirty washing at a launderette, April 2013.
Two presents, from my niece and nephew, 2008. Both for my mum.
Anxiety, 2007.
I hope you enjoyed my trip back to that parallel world that was my twenties. In fact I probably wasn’t the most ‘normal’ of young people. But the very worst thing that can be said to someone who has suffered serious psychological trauma, either directly or indirectly, is to say “Don’t worry, you were fine when you were laughing, happy, strong, good looking and confident. You must not have been mentally ill at all”. To my mind all I could think was that I had put everything into my job, but I was still back here. And I still am.
Incensed over the fact that they are shooting all kinds of rubbish at the site of my old flat, 2013.
I’ve been back a lot. About six times now. Loving the Game Of Thrones series. Not quite loving Game Of Thrones itself. Because that’s how privileged people are, by ignoring those who aren’t.
Baked potato with mashed swede and gravy and meat, 2013.
Eating eggs for breakfast every morning. The kind of diet which will likely leave me obese but make my brain happier.
If you were upset about my recipe for rice with kidney beans and corned beef, the death of Smiles, the coverage of poverty or just want to be sure you are giving the charities you care about money as well as making the world a more sympathetic, life-saving place, please give any of the organisations you care about a direct donation.
Look in the right hand column of my website, that’s where you can donate to any and every charity you care about. Or not, if you want to continue doing what I’ve done, which is to make every single event about poverty a carefully orchestrated social media fiesta.
Yes I’ve done my bit for ‘the cause’, but not even my unfathomable and extremely satisfying gap year and early adult life with the least amount of responsibility in the UK will prepare
Blanket. October 2012. Slightly dodgy sitting up in bed, all three of us were tumbling around.
Mother, 2012.
I don’t eat a lot of rice, now.
House. November 2013.
The deposit on the house took seven weeks to come through, but by then I had arranged for my mum to be put into a nursing home in Scotland. She was getting very poorly in my damp, cold bungalow. In fact, if my mother hadn’t had heart problems, she probably would have died from stress as a result of living in that tiny flat with three sick and hysterical children for two years. Without mother support, I would probably be lying dead on the pavement in the gutter, somewhere in the middle of that estate, or in a central London homeless shelter, or even at a food bank, surviving on cheap food stamps alone. All three of us would have been hungry and growing up in poverty, living in the gutter, and nobody would have noticed, because we would be invisible. I would have gone to school hungry, been bullied, forgotten, ignored.
Charity, this is depressing. I’m sure you’ve seen the situations on the television and I hate it.
Couldn’t imagine it to be much worse.
What I’m not so keen on is the charity thing, as pictured above, which is always a struggle. The first person I saw I instantly hated and was disgusted and went back for a refund.
I hate supermarkets. No sympathy. This is me buying a sandwich, which was just what I wanted, all day, every day, last year.
And the one magic dish that really fills a gap, that can really make a clog of a budget actually yield a flow of good-quality, healthy, hearty, inexpensive meals, is pasta with a pureed tomato sauce. Pasta for the day, prepared with red-skinned ripe tomatoes, full of goodness and spicing and wonder. A whole bowl for three meals, with seasoning, and left-overs for lunch, and as many as you like for dinner.
The thing is, Kevin is always so nice to us. Yet he’s always insisting that he buys pasta, and so I feel sure Kevin doesn’t have time for making pasta himself.
The madness of Kevin’s austerity regime is that he believes he can have an impact on public life, yet never sees the things in life that really matter to ordinary people.
Kevin loves to go to celebrity chef courses.
What does Kevin know about an ordinary mother’s efforts to cook meals, even the basics, on an austerity budget?
All Kevin’s buying is expensive pasta. And Kevin’s failing to recognize that a week on nothing but pasta would be a bad thing. Because then all the other goodies would be eaten, because everyone’s got an empty belly, and they’ll eat anything.
Because Kevin’s white-wing followers have so completely bought into the simplistic idea that pasta would actually make a difference, they refuse to consider that it might be completely awful to eat pasta without anything to give it any flavour or zest or fragrance.
Kevin always puts pasta in his pasta dishes, doesn’t he, Kevin’s pasta sauces aren’t really more than the basics.
If you haven’t got time to walk the steps from the train station and down into the soulless underground tunnels of the downtown docks, on your way to work, you just haven’t got time.
No, you’re sitting at home reading newspapers that say ‘Money Will Never Be Tough For Long’, or that send you into that pathetic tantrum of pleading that all those thousands of families in debt because of this stupidly cruel austerity regime.
But Kevin’s followers are blind, and Kevin knows it. He knows that his followers will accept his own nonsense about the fantasy benefits of a week of pasta, in any circumstances, no matter how absurd. It’s his job, his way of proving to his followers how angry he is, and how mean everyone else is. It’s a fantasy that he can be the hero of public life, simply because his followers believe him.
Maybe Kevin thinks a week without pasta would make a difference, maybe he thinks that, although it would only be a change that would be forced on his own constituents, and his government would just grumble a little and take it to mean that they’d actually have to stop cutting public spending and forcing people into poverty, forcing people who depend on public services into real, bloody despair. But a week on no pasta or cooking would make a difference to everyone who experiences that hopelessness.
You wouldn’t believe what a week of pasta might do, because none of you would know.
Tell Kevin’s supporters to see how important, how vital it is, to stop paying his debts. Tell Kevin’s followers to see how just one week without pasta, a fortnight without a car, or without a home that hasn’t been given away or sold off in a pissing frenzy of white-wing ideology might change the lives of real, working-class families. Tell Kevin’s followers that he is worth far more than his cheap shoes and that the thousands of families who are paying his debts to pay for his pasta and his kitchen and his holiday in Thailand that was taken before he could even earn enough to pay his staff in the first place.
Kevin’s supporters, with the best of intentions, would then tell Kevin to go to hell, and put the pasta back in the cupboard.
If Kevin is mad at me for telling his people that something could be done about the crisis he’s inflicted on them all, and that what he wants isn’t going to help, then at least let him know that his followers will put that pasta back and find someone else to harass.
If Kevin has any doubt that what I’m saying to him isn’t some kind of pathetic begging, then he’ll know.
If Kevin was scared that his pathetic and insidious personal debt crisis would get out of hand, he could stop it right now. It’s right there on Twitter, staring him in the face.
Kevin’s Twitter feeds, the ones that he freely gives out for anyone to flood with calls and questions, and if they aren’t answered promptly by this man, people can flood Twitter and Facebook and his own website with messages of desperation.
He could also shut off his Twitter account to stop all the abuse he receives, in the same way that he tells other poor, desperate families to do. It’s Twitter, Twitter is free, and he can shut it down at any time.
If he doesn’t shut it down, he can prove his own utter and unassailable stupidity by losing.
But it is not your job to be part of the problem, it is your job to work with people like Kevin, to work in the system and help to see that the system is not over-punishing and underfunding the public services that are trying to stop working people from starving, going into debt and dying because of the sheer stress that they’re under.
Or you can just be mean to everyone, call everyone mean, and tell them that nobody’s working anymore, that everyone is being paid rubbish wages and working for rubbish companies and that everything is going to hell in a punchbag because people like Kevin keep borrowing from the Scottish Government’s public services and never being able to pay it back.
Are you willing to fight that fight for us, to fight the small group of people trying to tear a whole nation down because they’re not getting a cup of warm coffee in the morning?
Or would you rather just pretend that nobody is struggling and not actually work to solve the real problem, to tackle real, existing problems, rather than endlessly helping people to fill in spreadsheets so that they can get the money they think they deserve, while stealing and destroying the lives of their neighbours, the people who will fill in your spreadsheets if you decide not to.
It’s time to take a step back and look at that.
____
Jack Monroe, founder of this site, has selected those items which most reflected her feelings about life as a single parent, and life in general.
Together they form a profile of a typical day for her. This is unedited, unreplied to and generally unedited prose, sometimes poignant, sometimes humorous, sometimes honest.
If you find yourself often falling into one or more of the traps outlined here, then please take the time to avert them, before they cost you more than you can afford.
THIS IS NOT A RELATIONSHIP ADVICE SITE.
Don’t go there if you are looking for advice on a relationship.
Do go there if you need a good cry, or to let out some anger, or to work through some problems.
If you’re here looking for a relationship, good luck, but I can’t help you.
If you’re looking for a way of releasing your anger or rage or sadness or worry or disappointment, then this is a good place to start.
However, be warned: you may come away from your visit here with a greater understanding of the emotional turbulence of being single, but more questions.
If you want to ask anything that's not on this page, then please use the contact form.
You will get a personal reply from me within a few days.
Follow Jack Monroe on Twitter:
(it put the wrong handle here so I've removed it)
Use the share buttons to support the site if you like!
I look forward to hearing from you.
Thank you!
Jack Monroe
Co-founder of This Ain't The Lyceum and All The Rest
A consultant psychiatrist, writer, presenter and mindfulness instructor. Please check out my skillset.
If you think you’ve got what it takes, then get in touch.
Email: Jack Monroe.
Website: (removed as not the correct website)
Licensed to practise Psychology in the UK since 1986. (1958 truthers, this one's for you I guess!)
Author of bestselling books on depression.
Charity trustee for Mind.
Fee: £5.00
_____
My long-time friend, who is in graduate school, knows the value of a single avocado or banana, and she’s also aware that a single half of an avocado, peeled, can last for days if you leave it on the counter, or some fresh mint or dried herbs can keep for weeks, all for your daily breakfast. She knows that frozen organic veggies are of less quality than fresh.
We, the rapidly falling share-owners of this island, are furious and are tearing our hair out about it. All the pensions that people rely upon are being cut, but the wealth, which is the real culprit here, is constantly gobbled up. What if someone is earning a few hundred pounds a week on which they’ve maxed out their credit card, or used to supplement a pension for a single parent, then lo and behold, with the savings they’ve got, they have a job? How happy would they be? The current cliche about some impoverished pensioner living a simple life of bare bones accommodation and homemade bread isn’t even true anymore. Does anyone remember the furore over a third house owned by a pensioner in Dorset?
As Ms Rees-Mogg later added in her blog, “The pie-and-prune diet will be showing its age soon enough, but for now, this form of slow starvation is easy for the elderly to follow as all it requires is a little discipline and planning ahead. And don’t worry about running out of greens at the end of the week: just keep making a mixture of puréed greens, cooked chickpeas, onions, dried beans and spices and freeze it in batches, ready to go at the weekend.”
This is only sensible food policy if you’re old, but how many of the 150+ young people we talked to earlier this year, on our anti-food poverty campaign in Norwich, pointed out how good food was?
After all, there’s something to be said for a balanced diet when there is a price to pay for every thing.
Maybe you won’t win the argument, or the contract. Or your relationship is over, or your house isn’t sold. Or it turns out the kintsugi technique is a load of nonsense. Maybe you won’t win a debate with a politician, or get paid the amount you were promised. Maybe you lose your job. Or you get ill. Maybe the wind blows the door of the cupboard shut on your fingers, or the battery in your car runs out and you’re stranded miles away with no money for petrol. Maybe you get stuck on a massive roundabout for hours and you’re shivering and alone. Maybe it rains.
Dirty washing at a launderette, April 2013.
Two presents, from my niece and nephew, 2008. Both for my mum.
Anxiety, 2007.
I hope you enjoyed my trip back to that parallel world that was my twenties. In fact I probably wasn’t the most ‘normal’ of young people. But the very worst thing that can be said to someone who has suffered serious psychological trauma, either directly or indirectly, is to say “Don’t worry, you were fine when you were laughing, happy, strong, good looking and confident. You must not have been mentally ill at all”. To my mind all I could think was that I had put everything into my job, but I was still back here. And I still am.
Incensed over the fact that they are shooting all kinds of rubbish at the site of my old flat, 2013.
I’ve been back a lot. About six times now. Loving the Game Of Thrones series. Not quite loving Game Of Thrones itself. Because that’s how privileged people are, by ignoring those who aren’t.
Baked potato with mashed swede and gravy and meat, 2013.
Eating eggs for breakfast every morning. The kind of diet which will likely leave me obese but make my brain happier.
If you were upset about my recipe for rice with kidney beans and corned beef, the death of Smiles, the coverage of poverty or just want to be sure you are giving the charities you care about money as well as making the world a more sympathetic, life-saving place, please give any of the organisations you care about a direct donation.
Look in the right hand column of my website, that’s where you can donate to any and every charity you care about. Or not, if you want to continue doing what I’ve done, which is to make every single event about poverty a carefully orchestrated social media fiesta.
Yes I’ve done my bit for ‘the cause’, but not even my unfathomable and extremely satisfying gap year and early adult life with the least amount of responsibility in the UK will prepare
Blanket. October 2012. Slightly dodgy sitting up in bed, all three of us were tumbling around.
Mother, 2012.
I don’t eat a lot of rice, now.
House. November 2013.
The deposit on the house took seven weeks to come through, but by then I had arranged for my mum to be put into a nursing home in Scotland. She was getting very poorly in my damp, cold bungalow. In fact, if my mother hadn’t had heart problems, she probably would have died from stress as a result of living in that tiny flat with three sick and hysterical children for two years. Without mother support, I would probably be lying dead on the pavement in the gutter, somewhere in the middle of that estate, or in a central London homeless shelter, or even at a food bank, surviving on cheap food stamps alone. All three of us would have been hungry and growing up in poverty, living in the gutter, and nobody would have noticed, because we would be invisible. I would have gone to school hungry, been bullied, forgotten, ignored.
Charity, this is depressing. I’m sure you’ve seen the situations on the television and I hate it.
Couldn’t imagine it to be much worse.
What I’m not so keen on is the charity thing, as pictured above, which is always a struggle. The first person I saw I instantly hated and was disgusted and went back for a refund.
I hate supermarkets. No sympathy. This is me buying a sandwich, which was just what I wanted, all day, every day, last year.
And the one magic dish that really fills a gap, that can really make a clog of a budget actually yield a flow of good-quality, healthy, hearty, inexpensive meals, is pasta with a pureed tomato sauce. Pasta for the day, prepared with red-skinned ripe tomatoes, full of goodness and spicing and wonder. A whole bowl for three meals, with seasoning, and left-overs for lunch, and as many as you like for dinner.
The thing is, Kevin is always so nice to us. Yet he’s always insisting that he buys pasta, and so I feel sure Kevin doesn’t have time for making pasta himself.
The madness of Kevin’s austerity regime is that he believes he can have an impact on public life, yet never sees the things in life that really matter to ordinary people.
Kevin loves to go to celebrity chef courses.
What does Kevin know about an ordinary mother’s efforts to cook meals, even the basics, on an austerity budget?
All Kevin’s buying is expensive pasta. And Kevin’s failing to recognize that a week on nothing but pasta would be a bad thing. Because then all the other goodies would be eaten, because everyone’s got an empty belly, and they’ll eat anything.
Because Kevin’s white-wing followers have so completely bought into the simplistic idea that pasta would actually make a difference, they refuse to consider that it might be completely awful to eat pasta without anything to give it any flavour or zest or fragrance.
Kevin always puts pasta in his pasta dishes, doesn’t he, Kevin’s pasta sauces aren’t really more than the basics.
If you haven’t got time to walk the steps from the train station and down into the soulless underground tunnels of the downtown docks, on your way to work, you just haven’t got time.
No, you’re sitting at home reading newspapers that say ‘Money Will Never Be Tough For Long’, or that send you into that pathetic tantrum of pleading that all those thousands of families in debt because of this stupidly cruel austerity regime.
But Kevin’s followers are blind, and Kevin knows it. He knows that his followers will accept his own nonsense about the fantasy benefits of a week of pasta, in any circumstances, no matter how absurd. It’s his job, his way of proving to his followers how angry he is, and how mean everyone else is. It’s a fantasy that he can be the hero of public life, simply because his followers believe him.
Maybe Kevin thinks a week without pasta would make a difference, maybe he thinks that, although it would only be a change that would be forced on his own constituents, and his government would just grumble a little and take it to mean that they’d actually have to stop cutting public spending and forcing people into poverty, forcing people who depend on public services into real, bloody despair. But a week on no pasta or cooking would make a difference to everyone who experiences that hopelessness.
You wouldn’t believe what a week of pasta might do, because none of you would know.
Tell Kevin’s supporters to see how important, how vital it is, to stop paying his debts. Tell Kevin’s followers to see how just one week without pasta, a fortnight without a car, or without a home that hasn’t been given away or sold off in a pissing frenzy of white-wing ideology might change the lives of real, working-class families. Tell Kevin’s followers that he is worth far more than his cheap shoes and that the thousands of families who are paying his debts to pay for his pasta and his kitchen and his holiday in Thailand that was taken before he could even earn enough to pay his staff in the first place.
Kevin’s supporters, with the best of intentions, would then tell Kevin to go to hell, and put the pasta back in the cupboard.
If Kevin is mad at me for telling his people that something could be done about the crisis he’s inflicted on them all, and that what he wants isn’t going to help, then at least let him know that his followers will put that pasta back and find someone else to harass.
If Kevin has any doubt that what I’m saying to him isn’t some kind of pathetic begging, then he’ll know.
If Kevin was scared that his pathetic and insidious personal debt crisis would get out of hand, he could stop it right now. It’s right there on Twitter, staring him in the face.
Kevin’s Twitter feeds, the ones that he freely gives out for anyone to flood with calls and questions, and if they aren’t answered promptly by this man, people can flood Twitter and Facebook and his own website with messages of desperation.
He could also shut off his Twitter account to stop all the abuse he receives, in the same way that he tells other poor, desperate families to do. It’s Twitter, Twitter is free, and he can shut it down at any time.
If he doesn’t shut it down, he can prove his own utter and unassailable stupidity by losing.
But it is not your job to be part of the problem, it is your job to work with people like Kevin, to work in the system and help to see that the system is not over-punishing and underfunding the public services that are trying to stop working people from starving, going into debt and dying because of the sheer stress that they’re under.
Or you can just be mean to everyone, call everyone mean, and tell them that nobody’s working anymore, that everyone is being paid rubbish wages and working for rubbish companies and that everything is going to hell in a punchbag because people like Kevin keep borrowing from the Scottish Government’s public services and never being able to pay it back.
Are you willing to fight that fight for us, to fight the small group of people trying to tear a whole nation down because they’re not getting a cup of warm coffee in the morning?
Or would you rather just pretend that nobody is struggling and not actually work to solve the real problem, to tackle real, existing problems, rather than endlessly helping people to fill in spreadsheets so that they can get the money they think they deserve, while stealing and destroying the lives of their neighbours, the people who will fill in your spreadsheets if you decide not to.
It’s time to take a step back and look at that.
____
Jack Monroe, founder of this site, has selected those items which most reflected her feelings about life as a single parent, and life in general.
Together they form a profile of a typical day for her. This is unedited, unreplied to and generally unedited prose, sometimes poignant, sometimes humorous, sometimes honest.
If you find yourself often falling into one or more of the traps outlined here, then please take the time to avert them, before they cost you more than you can afford.
THIS IS NOT A RELATIONSHIP ADVICE SITE.
Don’t go there if you are looking for advice on a relationship.
Do go there if you need a good cry, or to let out some anger, or to work through some problems.
If you’re here looking for a relationship, good luck, but I can’t help you.
If you’re looking for a way of releasing your anger or rage or sadness or worry or disappointment, then this is a good place to start.
However, be warned: you may come away from your visit here with a greater understanding of the emotional turbulence of being single, but more questions.
If you want to ask anything that's not on this page, then please use the contact form.
You will get a personal reply from me within a few days.
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Jack Monroe
Co-founder of This Ain't The Lyceum and All The Rest
A consultant psychiatrist, writer, presenter and mindfulness instructor. Please check out my skillset.
If you think you’ve got what it takes, then get in touch.
Email: Jack Monroe.
Website: (removed as not the correct website)
Licensed to practise Psychology in the UK since 1986. (1958 truthers, this one's for you I guess!)
Author of bestselling books on depression.
Charity trustee for Mind.
Fee: £5.00
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So I fed this website one paragraph at a time from Pasta & Potatoes, (and a couple of her most banger tweets) and told it to write the next 500 to 750 characters until I'd run out of my free character limit (twice) The only guidance I gave the AI was to include the words "Twitter" "popcorn" (which it ignored! Thanks pal, not like it's the title of the essay or anything!) "Bungalow" "White-wing" and "magic pasta."
Although I haven't added anything to this essay, I have had to remove sentences and paragraphs, because for some inexplicable reason if you give an AI a taste of Jack Monroe essays it starts writing some intensely triggering shit. Almost as triggering as the shite real Jack comes out with on the regular.
I have no idea why it took such a dislike to Kevin. Clearly it also recognised her love of ending tweets/blog posts with a "thankyou" but corrected the spelling.
After hitting the word count on my laptop and then my phone, removing countless mentions of suicide, amending a sentence to chop out a graphic description of a hospital procedure (then deleting another paragraph in which the AI threatened to harm Kevin, I'm a bit worried Jack is a poor influence for the machines) and finally removing several instances of repetition where the AI just said the exact same sentence in different ways back to back to fill out multiple paragraphs - the Popcorn was ready.
Although I haven't added anything to this essay, I have had to remove sentences and paragraphs, because for some inexplicable reason if you give an AI a taste of Jack Monroe essays it starts writing some intensely triggering shit. Almost as triggering as the shite real Jack comes out with on the regular.
I have no idea why it took such a dislike to Kevin. Clearly it also recognised her love of ending tweets/blog posts with a "thankyou" but corrected the spelling.
After hitting the word count on my laptop and then my phone, removing countless mentions of suicide, amending a sentence to chop out a graphic description of a hospital procedure (then deleting another paragraph in which the AI threatened to harm Kevin, I'm a bit worried Jack is a poor influence for the machines) and finally removing several instances of repetition where the AI just said the exact same sentence in different ways back to back to fill out multiple paragraphs - the Popcorn was ready.
The essay was completed on Sunday 31st July. You can imagine my 'delight' when Jack suddenly dropped 2 Hunger 2 Hurts.
People-huv-tae-know
VIP Member
Brian Butterfield
VIP Member
Or...Jack Monroe?
FlirtyThirty
VIP Member
Bahhahaha
BeautifulTrauma
VIP Member
The only thing Jack has left in her toolbox now is her least favourite, to disappear from Twitter for a while until the heat dies down and come back with some god-awful recipe like nothing at all has happened.
We’re at the end stage of the routine she constantly does. After this low, the massive high will come. Considering she’s like an emotional vampire, I would assume she’s been dumped and that’s the reason for the epic tantrum yesterday.
As if we are 400 threads in, I didn’t even think it would get to thread two in lockdown!!
We’re at the end stage of the routine she constantly does. After this low, the massive high will come. Considering she’s like an emotional vampire, I would assume she’s been dumped and that’s the reason for the epic tantrum yesterday.
As if we are 400 threads in, I didn’t even think it would get to thread two in lockdown!!
it
Brian Butterfield
VIP Member
I'm actually proper shocked at how unprofessional they are making themselves look.
Yikes.
Yikes.
Ah, speaking of titmus and yule...
My Good Housekeeping Christmas magazine came in the post today (hey, don't @ me, I'm old) and husband and I were discussing Christmas meals this year.
It suddenly dawned on me we always have Nigella's cherry coke ham on Christmas eve. Now I've put her on my Jack list, what am I to do?!!!
My grandchildren will cry if there is no CC ham. Ffs Nigella, do you realise the consequences of your actions? You've helped to con squigs out of their money AND made my grandchildren cry.
Really makes you think.
Brian Butterfield
VIP Member
DIVA's social media team rn.
thisisntreal
Well-known member
If you read the wider t+cs what they’re doing is pretty much illegal. Uni students aren’t entitled to the minimum wage if they’re doing work experience/placements as a required part of their course, but whilst Diva requires someone to be doing a relevant course, it’s not part of that course.
Unpaid work experience/internships are generally allowed (although terrible practice), but only where it’s basically shadowing someone else, not actually doing work. They literally say in the t+cs “you will be required to work individually”
Finally, if someone isn’t doing genuine work experience, nor are they on a recognised student placement, then they’re either an employee or a volunteer.However volunteers should be paid reasonable expenses ie. meals, travel etc, so if anyone on this placement a) isn’t generally entitled to expenses b) isn’t on a student placement and c) is “required to work”…. they should be classed as an employee or worker and should be entitled to at least minimum wage. They’ve worded that page very carefully so they could probably find a way to weasel out of it, but as others have pointed out, it’s really bad practice and pretty outdated now.
Also their application process stinks. Using CVs plus a covering letter is terrible practice in terms of (not) eliminating bias, and the fact you have to do a load of unpaid labour to even get to the application point of… doing more unpaid labour is grim.
[ETA to bring on topic again] That’s real unpaid labour, not titting about on twitter Jack.
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BubbleDuck
VIP Member
It’s worth pointing out the Diva is supposed to be a magazine for both lesbian and bi people so you’d think that they would be more careful about holding her up as some kind of pillar of good for the “ community “ when Jack acts like being bisexual is somehow the worst thing ever . As always it’s not the labels/identities which Jack chooses to apply to herself , it’s how she uses them to shield herself while damaging the very people she claims to be one of. Sexuality, social class, disability, single parent status etc . You only have to look at the quote tweets to see how many people in their own community Divamag has pissed off. What an own goal for Jack