Jack Monroe and the missing money.

[Ostryga]

Anyone been following this madness? A thread popped up on my feed today about how JM asked for people to PayPal her cash donations last year to take 3 people to court for slander and libel. It’s now passed the date of when she was able to bring this to court and no sign of any money being returned.

Just seems completely bizarre to me, and now I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole and seems this is in no way the first time.

https://twitter.com/RedSisterr/status/1657482923908505600

She did turn up, and tweeted it went really well. She also tweeted that "trolls" bulk purchased tickets that weren't used, so there were empty seats. I don't know about that, but do know there were plenty of tickets still available as of yesterday afternoon (toyed with idea of going)

autistic people, and those with adhd, are almost pathological in their need for truth and integrity.

Yes I would absolutely agree with this.

With the rise of trans issues though I think we’ve seen that truth is different to everyone.
Getting stuck in certain identities seems to be a current feature of autism, and the more someone feeds an identity the more real it is, no matter how illogical and lacking in any basis of reality.

I might be wrong, but this has always struck me about Jack.

She's clearly someone that was ill-prepared for social media celebrity and ill-advised upon achieving it - or more probably she hasn't sought out the advice she badly needs. But the media and the public do love a failure. I'm not convinced she's someone that set out to be a grifter, but it's her personality to live for herself in the day. When the donations came in she didn't think to ring-fence them or place them in trust.

She clearly needs an advisor-guardian to help her with financial planning, but this can't be imposed on a mentally competent adult. They have to want it.

I see your point, but doubling down about your own identity, or how people treat you, must be different to relieving people of money they can ill afford ? Not sure. I guess that's why 'ologists get the big bucks!

I think it means " she sees these labels as a way to hide from consequences and latch on to an army of people who will defend her just because she has decided to stand under the umbrella they approve of, irrespective of anything she actually says, does or thinks"

I think.

There is a lot of dodgyness explored in the tattle forum. There definitely seems to be a history of contradictions and a lot of financial ambiguity.

As an aside, that's a nightmare "would you rather" round isn't it: Katie Hopkins or Jack Monroe?

Yes probably. I mean grifting money is surely obviously wrong, especially when you’re regularly called out for it.
She appears to do some serious head in sand stuff though when it comes to that, which makes me wonder if she’s simply blocking this out completely, as I don’t think I’ve ever seen her really address the fact that people are handing out money who can’t afford it.

I’m not meaning to defend her, but I recognise the behaviour in other autistics, including myself in certain circumstances.

I’ve just been reading the wiki and my god. How the hell has she got away with this for so long?!

I've been vaguely following the twitter stuff for a while and she lies. Blatantly and often pointlessly, massively contradicts herself all the time. I'm not sure what the cause of having the compulsion to behave like that would be, but it certainly doensn't strike me as autism.

By pointless lies I mean posting on a well-known beauty group with a picture of what she claimed to be her new perm, while also posting on insta the same picture saying it was from sea swimming. That's one of many examples.

@Biscuitea I’m also a fan of The Skint Foodie - I loved his blog. What really irked me was when Jamie Oliver had some kind of eating on a budget or store cupboard programme and she went on this awful, vindictive rant about how he’d “stolen her niche”. Pretty ironic when she’d stolen it from The Skint Foodie who was waaaay better.

The problem is she could have ADHD or any number of things, including mental health.

None of it, explain why she has stolen money from people and not returned it, to the point that one person has now taken her to court, obtained a CCJ against her and is now taking further.

Its not like she is on her own in this, she has an agent at the very least, the lawyer? They are either throwing her under the bus or helping her along.

She says she has so many friends, why has not one of them gone, you need to return this money, or get the fuck off twitter at the least.

Who knows what is truth and lie anymore with Jack, the only thing that is definite, is she asked for money many times and one of those was to sue an MP, this time is now up, she didnt sue him, so she needs to give that money back.

Hopkins is absolutely awful, but she's a clear real life troll. She's set herself up as someone you love to hate and she serves the market. She isn't playing a goodie.

I don't know why the Guardian keeps giving her column width. It's been obviously for years she's a scam artist. Just like like Laurie Penny who used to do the same thing. And any number of other poverty grifters.

To be honest, anyone who sends cash to random GoFundMes and professional grifters deserves to lose their money as a lesson in not to be so bloody stupid and gullible next time.

No they don’t actually. Let’s not victim blame here, JM knew full well she wasn’t going to sue (there wasn’t a case in the first place) and revelled in the attention and extra cash she could spunk on herself.

By being a pretty, charming middle class woman who is happy to peddle the narrative well off middle class people want to believe, i.e. that if you are on your uppers, all it takes is clever budgeting and you’ll be fine.

It’s soothing to be told that poor people have issues because they are being poor ‘wrong’ because it means if the lives of her well off audience go to shit, they’ll be fine because they will do it right.

I’d be very interested to know what percentage of her audience are actually poor. If she’s selling tickets at festivals, it’s probably not to people who are having difficulty finding money for food.

If you realise that despite what she says, her performative poverty isn’t actually aimed at the poor, her whole performance makes a lot more sense. It also means the gaps don’t show as much because her audience don’t have the life experience to realise some of her hacks are bizarre (if they want an egg ring, they’ll get one off Amazon or pick one up in John Lewis next time they stop in).

There’s a great episode of the Blocked and Reported podcast about Jack. I think that it may be a premium subscriber, but I’ll see if I can find it. (The subscription is worth it for general internet bullshit)

Oh God, flashbacks to when she said Tom Kerridge stole her recipes!
I laughed for days.

I tried the link but it says the thread has been deleted.

She’s been doing this for years without any real consequences so is unlikely to stop now.

What I don't understand is why she hasn't been investigated by HMRC for what must be clear tax avoidance.

Either she knows her own income and correctly declares it and pays all the tax & NI that is due on it, OR she knows that it has been donated for a specific purpose, ie legal fees, does not declare it as personal income and therefore needs to return it. If she doesn't do this then she is committing tax fraud.

Her accountant must have a nightmare trying to sort this out if everything goes into one personal account. HMGov will consider the whole lot as income if they investigate.

Bore off Jack