A Medium account with less than a dozen followers, and only one post where they go on a 40 page rant about why someone critical of the government is a scammer.
Seems legit…
Does any good she’s done outweigh any lies she might have told? If yes, I don’t see a problem.
Part of this garbage points out the whole middle class then describing herself as working class later on in a change of tone, well if the writer had half a working brain you could see she was referring to what she believed her adult life to be (middle class 27k a year, possibly with a partner at the time? debatable if you call that middle class anyway) vs her being working class in June 2022, which she clearly is Either way, class isn’t a permenant tag lmao what is the blogger trying to really achieve, show their inability to understand how someones life changes over the years.
Im not reading that.
You could have just said you dont like her instead of this pseudo intellectual rant.
I expect this will be removed.
That’s actually a pretty damning read. Wow. Shows the issue with Twitter
[deleted]
A long read, but absolutely damning.
I used to follow her on Twitter, but after spending a lot more time online during lockdown, I started noticing that things weren’t adding up after a while.
It seemed like I was the only left wing person who felt this way though, and the only pushback I saw at the time against her was just from transphobes rather than any valid criticism. I just quietly unfollowed and ignored her (apart from ranting to my poor cousin about her once or twice lol).
Seeing all this laid out in one place though…there’s so much here that’s utterly indefensible. Way worse than I thought, they’re a scammer, plain and simple.
Article didn’t really touch on it in too much detail but I found the lack of calories in those recipes one of the most horrifying parts – some of the most hard up people in our society could spend their entire weekly food budget on her recipes only to end up starving.
What I learned from Jack is that even if someone’s politics align with yours it doesn’t mean they’re a good person, sadly.
How about just a human whose life may have changed for good, bad, good and back again many times over, in the 10 years that this article covers?
The first line of the article, for those who may have missed it is:
*”*Disclaimer — this is an opinion piece, based on the information and screenshots featured below.”*
The only thing you are going to glean from reading this, is Awfully Molly’s own OPINION.
Twitter posts are NOT facts. Facebook posts are NOT facts. They can be true or not, but there really is no way that anyone of us can be certain of whether anyone of us reading this can decide factually, whether Jack is a Saint or Scammer.
However, my OPINION is that this article very much wants you to think that that she is a “Scammer” and on that alone I smell a very big fat rat.
I found a similar thread a while back on Tatler, and shared it over here. Of course, it was mass downvoted because the truth of the matter is uncomfortable.
It seems quite obvious to me that this whole poverty posturing act doesn’t add up for someone with a thriving, prominent career in the media, publishing and online, not to mention partnerships and so on with Sainsbury’s and Del Monte, and others. Frankly, with so many sources of income, the fact she claims she’s had to sell a plastic dinosaur of her son’s is simply damning. If it does happen to be true, she’s not fit to hold the positions she has.
There’s a few posters here already saying ‘You know what, I refuse to read this’ or immediately dismissing the quite hard evidence within. All should hang their heads in shame. Truth is much more important than narrative. Anyone partakiing in such denialism may as well move to North Korea. Or remain inside Plato’s cave.
At the same time, there is no need to be ashamed about being wrong, or Monroe’s lack of perfection. She’s still right about the travesty of this government, she stills contributes towards a fight against poverty, she still nailed Katie Hopkins in court. She doesn’t need to be perfect or beyond reproach to be right about these things.
Oh well, that’s poverty in the UK sorted then. /s
For my sins, it’s a quiet afternoon and I read the whole thing.
Honestly it’s pretty weak sauce, and comes across more like the result of some obsessive stalker than an actual investigating journalist.
I don’t have any interest in Monroe, or have ever read her but the picture I get from this article is of someone, like many creatives/writers/journalists, with an extremely variable income over the last decade. Sometimes you have money coming in and perhaps foolishly spend it on a Lastminute holiday to Italy; sometimes you’re scraping around for enough to pay the rent, and eking out the shampoo.
I think a lot of people can relate to that. But for this author it’s the sinister evidence of some vast lie.
There’s also a bizarre attempt to equate Monroe’s worth as a writer and campaigner with her day to day finances as if digging your way out of a financial hole completely invalidates your previous experiences.
I think that Twitter is awful, and if you decide to live your life entirely on it and post every thought you’re going to get caught out in those little lies or exaggerations we all tell ourselves to get through. You may also attract the sort of person who’d spend the time compiling a hit piece like this.
Wasted so much time reading this and it’s a nothing burger.
[deleted]
Quite a lot of those accusations don’t match up with the content of the screenshots.
So it comes across more as a whiny moan about someone they don’t like, rather than a compelling takedown of a public figure.
Looks like we found Katie Hopkins medium account
EDIT: and their various downvoting sock accounts
She’s soliciting donations, and inevitably people who can’t afford to donate are donating anyway. They aren’t forced to do so, of course, but the “mummy I’m hungry, bread and jam please mummy” blogposts are explicitly there to tug at the heartstrings. (Never mind her kid must be about 12 by now, and acutely embarrassed by being written about as if he’s a Dickensian toddler.)
The worst thing, of course, is that it crushes all hope in what she claims is her core audience: people on the breadline. The message here is that however many bestselling books you write, however many deals you make with Sainsbury’s et all, however many people donate regularly on your Patreon, you will always end up utterly broke, unscrewing your lightbulbs, selling your son’s toys, and rinsing your spaghetti hoops. There is never any escape from poverty. It’s a terrible message.
Do i think jack does good for people? sure, do i think shes a bellend? yes. is she in it for her own gain? definitely.
I don’t care if Jack monroe is genuine or not…probably someone else quite far up the ladder but unable to buy property pleading poverty. I don’t think that’s relevant.
Her work is spot on. It seems odd to attack the messenger and ignore the message. I had my eyes opened by basic maths that I had been oblivious to with value lines
She joined in with slandering Corbyn at the most crucial time – says all you need to know about her.
A really amateurish hit piece published on _medium_ because no reputable paper would carry junk like this.
I remember coming across her in the Guardian and being very impressed with her creativity and her ability to describe in very clear terms how soul-destroying poverty is.
There were a couple of times when I would read her column and think something didn’t quite chime with how she’d described things before (like raving about what a great dad the father of her son was, when she’d very much given the impression that she was left to support the kid on her own when she was struggling). But I thought I was either misremembering or she was leaving out some details to protect their privacy.
Then I saw one of her tweets (since deleted) where she had a pretty nasty response to a fairly innocuous comment. It startled me enough that I googled her, which led to finding out about the Jamie Oliver debacle and the rest of her blow-ups.
I think she genuinely has had some difficult experiences that she rose above – but I also think she both hides exactly how privileged her upbringing was and how well she’s doing now, which wouldn’t be an issue if she wasn’t also constantly getting her begging bowl out from fans who are experiencing far more hardship.
Reading all of this I can relate to a surprising amount of it. My upbringing was solidly middle class but sometimes the money was really tight. As an adult I’ve had months when we’ve really struggled in the week leading up to payday, and times when I’ve fantasised about buying some ridiculous luxury like a beach hut.
But Jack Monroe does this all in the public eye, and with the pressure of being a bit of a celebrity. I suspect that sometimes she struggles with her mental health and sometimes she has days when she’s less proud of herself than others, and she’s possibly her own unreliable narrator. Aren’t we all?
Overall she’s a better force for good than most, and this level of public scrutiny would be better directed at the people who actually influence how this country is run.
This was a very interesting read. I used to like Jack, but as a lot of people have been commenting, the longer I followed, the more inconsistencies seemed to pop up.
The harmful advice under the guise of do-gooding (advocating cancelling direct debits, ‘4 person’ dinners that turn out to just about scrape 400 calories, boiling soap to make shower gel when you could just, yknow, _use_ the soap without increasing your energy bill) is very worrying.
What makes it worse is that she’s so averse to criticism, and will threaten to sue or claim bullying when (often rightfully) called out on things. People have the right to complain if they’ve paid for a product they haven’t received – those complaints aren’t bullying.
To top it off, she dishes out an absolute slap in the face to volunteers, charity workers, unpaid carers etc by claiming that she’s the only one trying to do anything about it. She is not ‘the only poor in the village’, and budget cooking is not a niche. If bigger names want to chime in on the issue and help raise awareness, provided it is well-researched and genuinely helpful, (unlike a lot of Jack’s advice), surely that can only be a good thing. Gatekeeping poverty isn’t a good look.
Anyone who is defending her, ask yourself how you’d view someone who didn’t say things you agreed with politically doing exactly the same.
I am a left leaning voter, I’m progressive and am not gender critical or a bot etc. but I read this and read up more on Jack monroe and was appalled. I was appalled that people regularly message her saying they’re sending her their benefits and what little money they have. I don’t care what she’s saying politically at this rate. She’s asking for money from those who can least afford to give, lacking any transparency, and pleading poverty all the while behaving in ways that would suggest that she’s scamming people. Why would she hide her Patreon earnings if it wasn’t for the fact that she’s potentially making a large amount a month off there. There are plenty of people whose tweets you can find who admit to paying her £10 a month or more or who have sent her £100’s. Where are the funds for suing Lee Anderson? Why has the never mentioned this again? Why hasn’t she been transparent *as required by fundraising regulations* with her proceeds from her teemill sales? Why is she saying she can’t afford anything yet boasting about turning down potentially lucrative TV jobs?
I was very poor when Jack monroe first came on the scene. I was as poor as she was. I bought her first book and though I found the recipes to be pretty crappy I figured perhaps they were aimed at someone who couldn’t cook at all. I’ve supported her for years and thought she was fantastic. But this has opened my eyes. I’m so sorry but I don’t trust her any more.
Only is this country could you get a bunch of centrist/rightwing cunts arguing that someone who wants to help out people who have been forced into poverty by the voters is a scammer. No wonder we’re all in the shit. This country deserves everything it gets and voted for.
25 comments
A Medium account with less than a dozen followers, and only one post where they go on a 40 page rant about why someone critical of the government is a scammer.
Seems legit…
Does any good she’s done outweigh any lies she might have told? If yes, I don’t see a problem.
Part of this garbage points out the whole middle class then describing herself as working class later on in a change of tone, well if the writer had half a working brain you could see she was referring to what she believed her adult life to be (middle class 27k a year, possibly with a partner at the time? debatable if you call that middle class anyway) vs her being working class in June 2022, which she clearly is Either way, class isn’t a permenant tag lmao what is the blogger trying to really achieve, show their inability to understand how someones life changes over the years.
Im not reading that.
You could have just said you dont like her instead of this pseudo intellectual rant.
I expect this will be removed.
That’s actually a pretty damning read. Wow. Shows the issue with Twitter
[deleted]
A long read, but absolutely damning.
I used to follow her on Twitter, but after spending a lot more time online during lockdown, I started noticing that things weren’t adding up after a while.
It seemed like I was the only left wing person who felt this way though, and the only pushback I saw at the time against her was just from transphobes rather than any valid criticism. I just quietly unfollowed and ignored her (apart from ranting to my poor cousin about her once or twice lol).
Seeing all this laid out in one place though…there’s so much here that’s utterly indefensible. Way worse than I thought, they’re a scammer, plain and simple.
Article didn’t really touch on it in too much detail but I found the lack of calories in those recipes one of the most horrifying parts – some of the most hard up people in our society could spend their entire weekly food budget on her recipes only to end up starving.
What I learned from Jack is that even if someone’s politics align with yours it doesn’t mean they’re a good person, sadly.
How about just a human whose life may have changed for good, bad, good and back again many times over, in the 10 years that this article covers?
The first line of the article, for those who may have missed it is:
*”*Disclaimer — this is an opinion piece, based on the information and screenshots featured below.”*
The only thing you are going to glean from reading this, is Awfully Molly’s own OPINION.
Twitter posts are NOT facts. Facebook posts are NOT facts. They can be true or not, but there really is no way that anyone of us can be certain of whether anyone of us reading this can decide factually, whether Jack is a Saint or Scammer.
However, my OPINION is that this article very much wants you to think that that she is a “Scammer” and on that alone I smell a very big fat rat.
I found a similar thread a while back on Tatler, and shared it over here. Of course, it was mass downvoted because the truth of the matter is uncomfortable.
It seems quite obvious to me that this whole poverty posturing act doesn’t add up for someone with a thriving, prominent career in the media, publishing and online, not to mention partnerships and so on with Sainsbury’s and Del Monte, and others. Frankly, with so many sources of income, the fact she claims she’s had to sell a plastic dinosaur of her son’s is simply damning. If it does happen to be true, she’s not fit to hold the positions she has.
There’s a few posters here already saying ‘You know what, I refuse to read this’ or immediately dismissing the quite hard evidence within. All should hang their heads in shame. Truth is much more important than narrative. Anyone partakiing in such denialism may as well move to North Korea. Or remain inside Plato’s cave.
At the same time, there is no need to be ashamed about being wrong, or Monroe’s lack of perfection. She’s still right about the travesty of this government, she stills contributes towards a fight against poverty, she still nailed Katie Hopkins in court. She doesn’t need to be perfect or beyond reproach to be right about these things.
Oh well, that’s poverty in the UK sorted then. /s
For my sins, it’s a quiet afternoon and I read the whole thing.
Honestly it’s pretty weak sauce, and comes across more like the result of some obsessive stalker than an actual investigating journalist.
I don’t have any interest in Monroe, or have ever read her but the picture I get from this article is of someone, like many creatives/writers/journalists, with an extremely variable income over the last decade. Sometimes you have money coming in and perhaps foolishly spend it on a Lastminute holiday to Italy; sometimes you’re scraping around for enough to pay the rent, and eking out the shampoo.
I think a lot of people can relate to that. But for this author it’s the sinister evidence of some vast lie.
There’s also a bizarre attempt to equate Monroe’s worth as a writer and campaigner with her day to day finances as if digging your way out of a financial hole completely invalidates your previous experiences.
I think that Twitter is awful, and if you decide to live your life entirely on it and post every thought you’re going to get caught out in those little lies or exaggerations we all tell ourselves to get through. You may also attract the sort of person who’d spend the time compiling a hit piece like this.
Wasted so much time reading this and it’s a nothing burger.
[deleted]
Quite a lot of those accusations don’t match up with the content of the screenshots.
So it comes across more as a whiny moan about someone they don’t like, rather than a compelling takedown of a public figure.
Looks like we found Katie Hopkins medium account
EDIT: and their various downvoting sock accounts
She’s soliciting donations, and inevitably people who can’t afford to donate are donating anyway. They aren’t forced to do so, of course, but the “mummy I’m hungry, bread and jam please mummy” blogposts are explicitly there to tug at the heartstrings. (Never mind her kid must be about 12 by now, and acutely embarrassed by being written about as if he’s a Dickensian toddler.)
The worst thing, of course, is that it crushes all hope in what she claims is her core audience: people on the breadline. The message here is that however many bestselling books you write, however many deals you make with Sainsbury’s et all, however many people donate regularly on your Patreon, you will always end up utterly broke, unscrewing your lightbulbs, selling your son’s toys, and rinsing your spaghetti hoops. There is never any escape from poverty. It’s a terrible message.
Do i think jack does good for people? sure, do i think shes a bellend? yes. is she in it for her own gain? definitely.
I don’t care if Jack monroe is genuine or not…probably someone else quite far up the ladder but unable to buy property pleading poverty. I don’t think that’s relevant.
Her work is spot on. It seems odd to attack the messenger and ignore the message. I had my eyes opened by basic maths that I had been oblivious to with value lines
She joined in with slandering Corbyn at the most crucial time – says all you need to know about her.
A really amateurish hit piece published on _medium_ because no reputable paper would carry junk like this.
I remember coming across her in the Guardian and being very impressed with her creativity and her ability to describe in very clear terms how soul-destroying poverty is.
There were a couple of times when I would read her column and think something didn’t quite chime with how she’d described things before (like raving about what a great dad the father of her son was, when she’d very much given the impression that she was left to support the kid on her own when she was struggling). But I thought I was either misremembering or she was leaving out some details to protect their privacy.
Then I saw one of her tweets (since deleted) where she had a pretty nasty response to a fairly innocuous comment. It startled me enough that I googled her, which led to finding out about the Jamie Oliver debacle and the rest of her blow-ups.
I think she genuinely has had some difficult experiences that she rose above – but I also think she both hides exactly how privileged her upbringing was and how well she’s doing now, which wouldn’t be an issue if she wasn’t also constantly getting her begging bowl out from fans who are experiencing far more hardship.
Reading all of this I can relate to a surprising amount of it. My upbringing was solidly middle class but sometimes the money was really tight. As an adult I’ve had months when we’ve really struggled in the week leading up to payday, and times when I’ve fantasised about buying some ridiculous luxury like a beach hut.
But Jack Monroe does this all in the public eye, and with the pressure of being a bit of a celebrity. I suspect that sometimes she struggles with her mental health and sometimes she has days when she’s less proud of herself than others, and she’s possibly her own unreliable narrator. Aren’t we all?
Overall she’s a better force for good than most, and this level of public scrutiny would be better directed at the people who actually influence how this country is run.
This was a very interesting read. I used to like Jack, but as a lot of people have been commenting, the longer I followed, the more inconsistencies seemed to pop up.
The harmful advice under the guise of do-gooding (advocating cancelling direct debits, ‘4 person’ dinners that turn out to just about scrape 400 calories, boiling soap to make shower gel when you could just, yknow, _use_ the soap without increasing your energy bill) is very worrying.
What makes it worse is that she’s so averse to criticism, and will threaten to sue or claim bullying when (often rightfully) called out on things. People have the right to complain if they’ve paid for a product they haven’t received – those complaints aren’t bullying.
To top it off, she dishes out an absolute slap in the face to volunteers, charity workers, unpaid carers etc by claiming that she’s the only one trying to do anything about it. She is not ‘the only poor in the village’, and budget cooking is not a niche. If bigger names want to chime in on the issue and help raise awareness, provided it is well-researched and genuinely helpful, (unlike a lot of Jack’s advice), surely that can only be a good thing. Gatekeeping poverty isn’t a good look.
Anyone who is defending her, ask yourself how you’d view someone who didn’t say things you agreed with politically doing exactly the same.
I am a left leaning voter, I’m progressive and am not gender critical or a bot etc. but I read this and read up more on Jack monroe and was appalled. I was appalled that people regularly message her saying they’re sending her their benefits and what little money they have. I don’t care what she’s saying politically at this rate. She’s asking for money from those who can least afford to give, lacking any transparency, and pleading poverty all the while behaving in ways that would suggest that she’s scamming people. Why would she hide her Patreon earnings if it wasn’t for the fact that she’s potentially making a large amount a month off there. There are plenty of people whose tweets you can find who admit to paying her £10 a month or more or who have sent her £100’s. Where are the funds for suing Lee Anderson? Why has the never mentioned this again? Why hasn’t she been transparent *as required by fundraising regulations* with her proceeds from her teemill sales? Why is she saying she can’t afford anything yet boasting about turning down potentially lucrative TV jobs?
I was very poor when Jack monroe first came on the scene. I was as poor as she was. I bought her first book and though I found the recipes to be pretty crappy I figured perhaps they were aimed at someone who couldn’t cook at all. I’ve supported her for years and thought she was fantastic. But this has opened my eyes. I’m so sorry but I don’t trust her any more.
Only is this country could you get a bunch of centrist/rightwing cunts arguing that someone who wants to help out people who have been forced into poverty by the voters is a scammer. No wonder we’re all in the shit. This country deserves everything it gets and voted for.