Jack Monroe #65 Green gages and ham

[Gentlemensrelish]

I confess I am barely managing to Grunka, just dipping in and out so I'm sorry if this has been discussed but why the duck would she need to be signed off? It's just a letter (or form) for your employer saying you won't be in. Isn't she... self-employed? Her mental health issues run deeper than I previously believed if she thinks her and her employer are two distinct people.

There's much else to comment on but the gist of it is she remains an absolute melt and @Pocahontas amazing thread recaps are really all anyone needs to know.

 

[Captainmouse]

The only downside to mega grunka is being unable to comment. I am at the bit where she says she prefers a relationship where her other half doesn’t cook, as it’s less competitive and makes her indispensable. I can think of nothing worse than coming home from a days work, including the commute, to be faced with a bowl of unidentifiable slop.

 

[Mustard]

Can you get sick pay from the government if you are signed off?

 

[TheDragonWithAFlagon]

Another thing I’ve just thought of is her constant assurances that accounts can be made anonymous. So you can basically say whatever you want & no doubt she’ll find it tricky to stick to verifiable facts given the ‘rage’.
So many parts of her own story don’t add up. I can well imagine some poor sod who gives her an honest but measured account of their hardship reading about themselves as some urchin, sobbing on the ground as they picked crumbs off the pavement & wondering how their story about needing to use a food bank a couple of times turned into that.
Obviously there are some terrible tales out there but I think Jack is the worst person to be presenting them. She’s known for exaggerating & rage. A balanced, razor sharp journalist would be a far more credible author.

Meh. As somebody who actually knows what it's like to be poor pretty much throughout their life, the important thing to know is HOW MUCH WILL YOU PAY ME?

 

[Cuileann]

Another thing I’ve just thought of is her constant assurances that accounts can be made anonymous. So you can basically say whatever you want & no doubt she’ll find it tricky to stick to verifiable facts given the ‘rage’.
So many parts of her own story don’t add up. I can well imagine some poor sod who gives her an honest but measured account of their hardship reading about themselves as some urchin, sobbing on the ground as they picked crumbs off the pavement & wondering how their story about needing to use a food bank a couple of times turned into that.
Obviously there are some terrible tales out there but I think Jack is the worst person to be presenting them. She’s known for exaggerating & rage. A balanced, razor sharp journalist would be a far more credible author.

See, I'm of the mind that she'll actually downplay things more than exaggerate? Because her experience simply MUST be the worst, the most SEVERE, experience of poverty ever heard. She wouldn't want to make out that anyone has ever had it worse than her.

She is, however, absoLUTely the wrong person to be writing this book, I agree with you there.

 

[People-huv-tae-know]

Many many books have been written on poverty and I don't believe a single one has made a difference. It did not stop me growing up in a high rise with single glazing, no central heating and inadequate food. It did not stop some of the neighbours from turning to drugs. It did not stop my father from spending what little excess we had on alcohol which further fuelled his rage. Fast forward 30 years later and I still see the same people on the fringes of society completely bereft of any happiness or point to life because genuine poverty is what they live and breathe. There are still children going hungry, still homes with no heating and many people helplessly addicted to various substances. Nothing has really changed with the exception of how widespread and normal food banks are. No book has ever changed that and people knew deep in poverty are not going to be reading these kind of books either.
Jack's book if published might be lauded by white saviour blue stickers but apart from this it will fall into the abyss of other books which failed to make a difference. It's real policies and on the ground action that can make a difference.

 

[Squandaaaaa]

Can you get sick pay from the government if you are signed off?

Nope not unless you have self employment insurance.

 

[Nottonightbabe]

Inspirational...
(with apologies for shaky font - lettering is not my thing, and I was giggling a bit)

FFS that just tested my pelvic floor

 

[Alansbigplate]

Inspirational...
(with apologies for shaky font - lettering is not my thing, and I was giggling a bit)

Wheeeeeze the bloody reverse rat tail you and @Pocahontas have written the children’s book David Walliams could never

 

[istapp]

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this has proper steamed my clams. you can't SEE the beans in the magnifying glass because reflections. what a numpty.

 

[Uberrima fides]

Jack liked this post.
@Incywincy I love your determinationView attachment 228496 q

The thing about these books is 1) where did she get the money from to buy them because that pile would cost quite a bit; and 2) All she is doing is piggybacking on those who have already researched and written in this area.

She refers to 'this week'. Who is she trying to convince that she can read those in a week. She will probably need the 40 days, and all she will do is lift chunks from each book and paraphrase them. She will feel safe as long as she puts them in the bibliography.

 

[Scotty1976]

Oh FFS, she actually bloody thinks she's Jesus going into the wilderness to test himself doesn't she?

What will she do with the yellow stickered 5 loafs and 2 fishes ?

 

[Nottonightbabe]

I think she probably should have been writing this from Feb/March.

Aye... But she only thought of it last week.

 

[SoulRebel]

Psst, she's not writing a book.

 

[Alansbigplate]

My friend did a kind thing and I’m going to publicly shame them for not knowing me well enough to choose something more suitable

 

[Marmalade Atkins]

I'm on a Grunka. Stop tweeting, Jack.

 

[Tabitha D]

The only downside to mega grunka is being unable to comment. I am at the bit where she says she prefers a relationship where her other half doesn’t cook, as it’s less competitive and makes her indispensable. I can think of nothing worse than coming home from a days work, including the commute, to be faced with a bowl of unidentifiable slop.

And then having to praise it to the skies, in case Jack has one of her screaming tantrums.
It’s also controlling behaviour, saying that you have to be the only cook in the relationship.

 

[Marmalade Atkins]

 

[Doobots]

Psst, she's not writing a book.

A woman who has successfully parented a child for ten years but still pretending she's useless at caring for things as some kind of wacky personality trait.

 

[Uberrima fides]

But she claims to have been a journalist and they definitely have similar codes of conduct with regard to ethics and choosing their informants.

I think we can all agree that Jack and her publisher should be carefully following an ethical procedure for both procuring her informant sample and the process of interviewing them, and they know this. However, we all also know that her "research" is inevitably going to consist of this casual twitter shout out for stories, Jack choosing and not fact-checking the most ostentatious screeds of woe, and then bullishly inserting her own experiences into any interview she may conduct, with no aftercare or signposting to further help.

It's a horror show, and absolutely ridiculous that nobody involved has thought about the implications of making money by weaponising accounts of poverty (I don't care if the respondents are paid because it won't be anything like the fee Cackie pockets). I wish someone would put Stuart Hall's 'Representation' into her "to read" pile, as it's a great explanation of why upper to middle class publishers think that publishing a middle class girl's account of briefly being skint is some form of poverty activism. However, Jack would no doubt read it and her narcissistic brain would take it as a vindication of her baffling success as an urchin done good.

She was as much a journalist as I was Santa Claus. I have respect for journalists who learn their trade by formal qualification, experience or a combination of both. She probably counts doing some opinion pieces for The Guardian as giving her the right to refer to herself as a journalist. I am currently trying to think of a job she hasn't claimed to have worked at.

I saw an advert on tv last night for the excellent 1960's film 'Oliver' which is to be shown soon. No doubt, Jack will watch it and appropriate it as her own cinematic biography.

What I am also concerned about is that when the book is published and pre-publication copies are sent to the press, that journalists will be scared of giving a full critical appraisal of the book, due to the subject matter and JM's social media presence as a 'poverty campaigner'. When the mainstream press refer to JM, her name is invariably prefaced with the words 'poverty campaigner'. She is never subject to an interview by a tough probing interviewer. I cannot stand Edwina Currie, but at least she had the guts to question JM's backstory.

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People got really mad, love because your cooking advice is a load of verbal diarrhoea. Sadly, you haven't quite got it that most of the time, people are laughing at you. They shake their heads in belief because, in an age when there are so many talented people out there, how on earth you got on tv, a book deal and in newspapers is a mystery. That, Jack is what people are mad about.