I love Jack’s writing style. These posts are always great.
“So it comes as no surprise that eventually the frothing cannons of barely-comprehensible bile and poorly-threaded attempts at argument would be turned on me in the end. After all, there are only a finite number of Public Gays To Disapprove Of for £1 a word, so it was going to be my turn in the end.”
One of them is directly responsible for the reason people are struggling to feed themselves?
She’s not accusing people of getting themselves into this mess because they don’t know how to cook
The Tory MPs aren’t actually suggesting the recipes, for one thing.
About thirty quid a plate.
Jack offers solutions, the Tories are reiterating that they think poverty is a character flaw in an attempt to absolve themselves of responsibility.
Just so many great and honest quotes in this piece, I had to share it.
> Early on in my career, I was advised to step away from political and social commentary, because I would ‘sell more books, be more palatable to the Waitrose set.’ I parted ways with that person pretty swiftly, because while I don’t doubt that my outspoken brand of visceral campaigning absolutely harms my book sales, I was a political writer, sitting in the public gallery of my local council meetings, blogging about the people who were making the decisions that disproportionately impacted me and my peers, like the closure of Sure Start centres, libraries, the demonisation of single mothers, the cuts to local funding, long before I ever wrote a list of basic ingredients down and scrawled together a recipe.
really captures everything that the Tories have done in a nutshell in the last ten years
> Every one of the millions of hungry people in Britain today has a different story of how they got there. Benefit sanctions. Illness. redundancy. cancer. Military veterans. Survivors of domestic abuse. Generational trauma. Unpaid carers. The gig economy. Poverty wages. Zero hour contracts. Underemployment. Cleaners. Nurses. Teachers. Neighbours.
> But every single one of us, who has been desperately hungry, intolerably cold, suicidal, clutching at the periphery of survival by our bitten-down fingernails, have a single rotten thread that runs through us all. Binding us together, in our common unspoken grief for the ordinary lives that we didn’t get to have. That thread is austerity. A needless, useless ideology dreamed up by spin doctors and Old Etonians who have never missed a single one of their taxpayer-subsidised meals, let alone ten in a row.
Says it all.
​
One of them has loads of powers to help and could solve this basically overnight and they are doing nothing, the other has almost no power to solve this but is doing everything they can to try and help.
Jack understands the problem and is not afraid to lay blame at the correct door. The Tories cannot allow her to do that.
What the difference between a journalist saying what’s happing in Ukraine is bad and putin saying it. One is commenting on a subject and one is responsible.
> Firstly, to point out the flaming obvious, I’m not actually a Member of Parliament.
I feel like this single line shows how bafflingly stupid the Daily Mail’s comparison is.
It’s like the difference between someone beating the shit out of you and telling you to stop whinging and fuck off to the hospital and someone who sees you after you’ve been beaten up trying to do what they can to help and calling an ambulance for you.
One is taking a rare opportunity to do their duty by their constituency, the other is taking an even rarer break from their perennial self-promotion.
Note the inclusion of their name in the title of the article, where “me” or “a cookbook writer” would have worked better.
1. Jack isn’t part of the government actively causing their poverty
2. Jack is actually providing solutions to a problem (the recipes) without judgement, not just saying “cook more cheaply” and blaming the reader for their own predicament
3. Jack isn’t actually telling people to cook more cheaply, she’s just offering recipes and letting people use them if they want
4. Intent: with Jack it comes from a good place (being motivated by trying to help), with these Tory MPs it clearly does not (being motivated by snobbishness, and a refusal to accept the harm being done by their own actions)
What’s the difference between the king telling the peasants to eat dirt and a fellow peasant showing other peasants how to fill out bread by using sawdust.
Nothing at all.
One is a grade A cunt that works for an even bigger cunt who cares about himself instead of the country. The other is Jack Monroe, who went through hard times and knows what it’s like to live on fuck all. Jamie Oliver is just a middle class twat that believes everyone has £300 to spare, the space to store all of the equipment he suggests, a pantry, can afford expensive parts of meat etc..
Great writing on an essential subject. God I hate this government, this system, the capitalist filth that perpetuates – *requires* – poverty.
One of the main differences is that I’d vote for Jack Monroe.
I’ve heard of Jack but this is the first time I’ve read one of her blogposts and I’m glad I did. She has perfectly and articulately summed up the present situation.
The current right wing media influencers are a distraction. They serve The Optics of the Government in order to make money and a name for themselves, all the while the actions of the Government and their damaging ideology of “Poor? Just Stop being Poor then” is literally starving people to death.
I really hope that middle-England pulls the wool from their eyes sooner rather than later so we can vote these treacherous, self serving narcissists out at the next GE. For good.
I’m not optimistic.
Let’s imagine what people like Lee Anderson was saying is true (it’s not) –
There’s no denying that food bank usage has exploded in the last ten years. If its as simple as people “can’t cook or budget”…. why has that changed in ten years?
What’s caused people to stop knowing how to cook when they did ten years ago?
Surely he must have an answer for that?
And as for these obvious answers. Do they actually think the plebs are too thick to think “I’ll do more hours” or “I’ll turn the heating down” or “I’ll stop buying takeaways” or whatever?
That there’s people sat in their underwear, heating set to 23c, crying over their gas bill, who’ve not considered another jumper?
They either think poor people are completely stupid, or the people who vote Tory are completely stupid for thinking “yes, that’s a useful bit of advice”.
They just know they can’t say “lol, sucks to be you, we’renot going to help” so they have to say *something* and come out with this “don’t buy name brands” shite
omg the tory nudge department hireing you to post hit pieces to reddit as she dared to speak out and sue you paymasters?
I’ve not seen any reviews for his “cooking on a bootstrap” recipes that offer practical help from being desperate. I use Jack Monroe recipes.
So Jack can’t help enough to stop people from starving.
He victim-shames the desperate and vilifies those who care.
Jack Monroe is motivated by empathy, Tory MPs are making excuses for their lack of empathy.
The gulf couldn’t possible be wider.
She doesn’t judge people. She actually understands the issues better than the people who are largely responsible for them. She has skills and experience that make her able to offer actual practical advice.
Also, MPs aren’t speaking to the poor when they offer this “advice”, they’re only ever speaking to their electorate, who are mainly smug middle class people who also have no clue about what it’s like to really struggle.
Damn, this is a good article. Well worth reading if only for this paragraph:
>But every single one of us, who has been desperately hungry, intolerably cold, suicidal, clutching at the periphery of survival by our bitten-down fingernails, have a single rotten thread that runs through us all. Binding us together, in our common unspoken grief for the ordinary lives that we didn’t get to have. That thread is austerity. A needless, useless ideology dreamed up by spin doctors and Old Etonians who have never missed a single one of their taxpayer-subsidised meals, let alone ten in a row. Its the idealistic abject cruelty of deliberately inflicting human suffering to bolster profit margins for the Treasury, by the rich, at the expense of the most vulnerable. Many of whom end up paying with their lives; snuffed-out mothers and disabled people, balancing the books of the economy, fertilising those much-lauded ‘green shoots of recovery’ with their decaying bones and subsequent ‘efficiency savings’.
Tory MPs suggest budget recipes.
Jack Monroe, with multiple book deals, ad deals and TV appearances, suggests that you donate money to buy copies of her book of budget recipes to give to food banks.
26 comments
I love Jack’s writing style. These posts are always great.
“So it comes as no surprise that eventually the frothing cannons of barely-comprehensible bile and poorly-threaded attempts at argument would be turned on me in the end. After all, there are only a finite number of Public Gays To Disapprove Of for £1 a word, so it was going to be my turn in the end.”
One of them is directly responsible for the reason people are struggling to feed themselves?
She’s not accusing people of getting themselves into this mess because they don’t know how to cook
The Tory MPs aren’t actually suggesting the recipes, for one thing.
About thirty quid a plate.
Jack offers solutions, the Tories are reiterating that they think poverty is a character flaw in an attempt to absolve themselves of responsibility.
Just so many great and honest quotes in this piece, I had to share it.
> Early on in my career, I was advised to step away from political and social commentary, because I would ‘sell more books, be more palatable to the Waitrose set.’ I parted ways with that person pretty swiftly, because while I don’t doubt that my outspoken brand of visceral campaigning absolutely harms my book sales, I was a political writer, sitting in the public gallery of my local council meetings, blogging about the people who were making the decisions that disproportionately impacted me and my peers, like the closure of Sure Start centres, libraries, the demonisation of single mothers, the cuts to local funding, long before I ever wrote a list of basic ingredients down and scrawled together a recipe.
really captures everything that the Tories have done in a nutshell in the last ten years
> Every one of the millions of hungry people in Britain today has a different story of how they got there. Benefit sanctions. Illness. redundancy. cancer. Military veterans. Survivors of domestic abuse. Generational trauma. Unpaid carers. The gig economy. Poverty wages. Zero hour contracts. Underemployment. Cleaners. Nurses. Teachers. Neighbours.
> But every single one of us, who has been desperately hungry, intolerably cold, suicidal, clutching at the periphery of survival by our bitten-down fingernails, have a single rotten thread that runs through us all. Binding us together, in our common unspoken grief for the ordinary lives that we didn’t get to have. That thread is austerity. A needless, useless ideology dreamed up by spin doctors and Old Etonians who have never missed a single one of their taxpayer-subsidised meals, let alone ten in a row.
Says it all.
​
One of them has loads of powers to help and could solve this basically overnight and they are doing nothing, the other has almost no power to solve this but is doing everything they can to try and help.
Jack understands the problem and is not afraid to lay blame at the correct door. The Tories cannot allow her to do that.
What the difference between a journalist saying what’s happing in Ukraine is bad and putin saying it. One is commenting on a subject and one is responsible.
> Firstly, to point out the flaming obvious, I’m not actually a Member of Parliament.
I feel like this single line shows how bafflingly stupid the Daily Mail’s comparison is.
It’s like the difference between someone beating the shit out of you and telling you to stop whinging and fuck off to the hospital and someone who sees you after you’ve been beaten up trying to do what they can to help and calling an ambulance for you.
One is taking a rare opportunity to do their duty by their constituency, the other is taking an even rarer break from their perennial self-promotion.
Note the inclusion of their name in the title of the article, where “me” or “a cookbook writer” would have worked better.
1. Jack isn’t part of the government actively causing their poverty
2. Jack is actually providing solutions to a problem (the recipes) without judgement, not just saying “cook more cheaply” and blaming the reader for their own predicament
3. Jack isn’t actually telling people to cook more cheaply, she’s just offering recipes and letting people use them if they want
4. Intent: with Jack it comes from a good place (being motivated by trying to help), with these Tory MPs it clearly does not (being motivated by snobbishness, and a refusal to accept the harm being done by their own actions)
What’s the difference between the king telling the peasants to eat dirt and a fellow peasant showing other peasants how to fill out bread by using sawdust.
Nothing at all.
One is a grade A cunt that works for an even bigger cunt who cares about himself instead of the country. The other is Jack Monroe, who went through hard times and knows what it’s like to live on fuck all. Jamie Oliver is just a middle class twat that believes everyone has £300 to spare, the space to store all of the equipment he suggests, a pantry, can afford expensive parts of meat etc..
Great writing on an essential subject. God I hate this government, this system, the capitalist filth that perpetuates – *requires* – poverty.
One of the main differences is that I’d vote for Jack Monroe.
I’ve heard of Jack but this is the first time I’ve read one of her blogposts and I’m glad I did. She has perfectly and articulately summed up the present situation.
The current right wing media influencers are a distraction. They serve The Optics of the Government in order to make money and a name for themselves, all the while the actions of the Government and their damaging ideology of “Poor? Just Stop being Poor then” is literally starving people to death.
I really hope that middle-England pulls the wool from their eyes sooner rather than later so we can vote these treacherous, self serving narcissists out at the next GE. For good.
I’m not optimistic.
Let’s imagine what people like Lee Anderson was saying is true (it’s not) –
There’s no denying that food bank usage has exploded in the last ten years. If its as simple as people “can’t cook or budget”…. why has that changed in ten years?
What’s caused people to stop knowing how to cook when they did ten years ago?
Surely he must have an answer for that?
And as for these obvious answers. Do they actually think the plebs are too thick to think “I’ll do more hours” or “I’ll turn the heating down” or “I’ll stop buying takeaways” or whatever?
That there’s people sat in their underwear, heating set to 23c, crying over their gas bill, who’ve not considered another jumper?
They either think poor people are completely stupid, or the people who vote Tory are completely stupid for thinking “yes, that’s a useful bit of advice”.
They just know they can’t say “lol, sucks to be you, we’renot going to help” so they have to say *something* and come out with this “don’t buy name brands” shite
omg the tory nudge department hireing you to post hit pieces to reddit as she dared to speak out and sue you paymasters?
I’ve not seen any reviews for his “cooking on a bootstrap” recipes that offer practical help from being desperate. I use Jack Monroe recipes.
So Jack can’t help enough to stop people from starving.
He victim-shames the desperate and vilifies those who care.
Jack Monroe is motivated by empathy, Tory MPs are making excuses for their lack of empathy.
The gulf couldn’t possible be wider.
She doesn’t judge people. She actually understands the issues better than the people who are largely responsible for them. She has skills and experience that make her able to offer actual practical advice.
Also, MPs aren’t speaking to the poor when they offer this “advice”, they’re only ever speaking to their electorate, who are mainly smug middle class people who also have no clue about what it’s like to really struggle.
Damn, this is a good article. Well worth reading if only for this paragraph:
>But every single one of us, who has been desperately hungry, intolerably cold, suicidal, clutching at the periphery of survival by our bitten-down fingernails, have a single rotten thread that runs through us all. Binding us together, in our common unspoken grief for the ordinary lives that we didn’t get to have. That thread is austerity. A needless, useless ideology dreamed up by spin doctors and Old Etonians who have never missed a single one of their taxpayer-subsidised meals, let alone ten in a row. Its the idealistic abject cruelty of deliberately inflicting human suffering to bolster profit margins for the Treasury, by the rich, at the expense of the most vulnerable. Many of whom end up paying with their lives; snuffed-out mothers and disabled people, balancing the books of the economy, fertilising those much-lauded ‘green shoots of recovery’ with their decaying bones and subsequent ‘efficiency savings’.
Tory MPs suggest budget recipes.
Jack Monroe, with multiple book deals, ad deals and TV appearances, suggests that you donate money to buy copies of her book of budget recipes to give to food banks.
Jack Monroe writes some good points, but she is a [grifter](https://tattle.life/threads/jack-monroe-241-average-level-lies-and-lard-gravy.26422/page-14#post-8012814) who has made a career out of pretending to be poor.