to be shocked that Jack Monroe

[samandi]

was on £27,000 a year just back in 2011?

This is a woman I associate with desperate poverty and yet in the space of one and a half years ? she managed to go from having a prosperous job at a pretty young age to struggling to feed her son?

At the age of 22 she had about a £20,000 net income, which is more than many people can dream about. £27,000 is way more than I've ever earned in my life and I'm over ten years older than her.

Am I being unreasonable to think this detracts a bit from her message? Or am I just living in a different world.

Hello Jack - another one who has followed your blog for a while.

I am so delighted that your life has taken the direction it has. You and your boy have a very bright future in front of you.

A Girl Called Jack differs from Jamie Horrider in that she has never denigrated, victim blamed or taken the piss out of people who do eat unhealthily or buy cheap ready or convenience foods. Her recipes are offered as an alternative without blaming those who choose not to cook from them.

Starting off as a local political/social blog Jack addressed her own food poverty in an attempt to help others. as well as the therapeutic effects of writing for herself.

Jack is a political activist- read her blog posts on attending various party conferences. She is grass roots w/ access to the big guns. She has the utmost integrity in my opinion.

She is a great conduit for all of us, especially for Women. Why not utilise this instead of forcing her to waste her time and energy on addressing the attacks on her personal life and integrity?

Samandi, if you can't be bothered to read the reuse, I suggest you find mine on page 7 at least.

Playing at being poor is such a GOD DAMN FUCKING INSULT. Who 'plays' at letting their young child freeze and starve?!!

Samandi If you cannot be arsed to read the whole thread then your summary of what you 'read' has no merit.

Seriously

Samandi I really would actually read the full thread! that you started Jack has actually responded in real life no less to talk about your concerns that there are people out there playing at being in poverty. If there are so many pages isn't it obvious that the discussion has moved on a bit?

You can't call someone "reckless" for giving up a job when there is NO childcare available. They aren't just blithely assuming that they will get another job - there is no choice.

I have never heard of any childcare that can cover irregular shifts including night shifts. I've not heard of any childcare that covers night shifts at all.

I think YABU, and if you think that this "detracts from her message" then it sounds as if you had unreasonable expectations of the message. The message doesn't need to be anything more than "here is food that you can cook cheaply".

Gosh samandi you're so right, we should all be able to save every spare penny of our monthly income and then when something really crappy happens we'll have at least a million in the bank.

Except this is real life. Sometimes stuff happens and we can't control it. Sometimes we can't plan for every single tiny eventuality. Sometimes stuff costs more than we expect it to and we're not prepared for the really big problems.

So Jack earned £27k for a while? So what? You can't go into a shop when your HB hasn't been paid, there are bailiffs at your door and you have less than £10 to feed yourself and your child, and pay for food with 'I used to earn £27k a year'.

Jack I'm really glad you felt able to respond to this thread, even though it must have been upsetting to read. I think some people needed reminding that you are actually a Human Being with actual feelings.

It doesn't matter. Jack didn't have that 27k when she was cold and hungry.

All this comes down to is a feeling that you'd do so much better. Isn't it? That's all I can get from this thread. "She earned more than I do and I'm ten years older, I wouldn't be in that position"

Well done, Captain Hindsight! Aren't you potentially awesome?

Meanwhile the woman you made this thread about is literate and has access to the internet, and has actually posted on it. And you're still being insulting.

Samandi I could save a lot more money than I do. It is my life choice to use some of what I don't need on things that benefit my family in other ways, such as trips to the theatre, visits to other places, books, music lessons for my children. These things are inspiring and in my opinion make life worth living.

If I waited until I had £££££s in the bank the children will have left home before we did anything and it would be too late.

I worked night shifts for years as a nurse when my children were young. I had a partner at home but there was always the anxiety that my morning handover would over run or an incident such as an emergency admission occur that would make me late home. My then partner did not have the luxury of delaying his own departure.

What would I have done had I been a single parent whether that be through bereavement, divorce or because of other reasons?

Name me one nursery that operates all night?

Imagine this scenario as a newly single parent -When you were told you do not have to do night shifts as part of your contract you might have felt safe in deciding to have children. Then some years later (when your relationship has broken down) the trust decides to cut hundreds of jobs meaning you have to re apply for your own job as part of the trust restructuring. The new positions have mandatory night shifts. There are no community nursing positions at the time because many other nurses who are parents or carers all want them. You apply for all the jobs you can that have conducive hours. You do not get any of them because the trust has decided it wants to keep you in your original position.

You can apply for jobs that are not in nursing. None of them pay what you could just about survive on as a single working parent with two nursery/after school childminder fees to pay. None of the jobs utilise the years of training and experience gained in nursing. The training that cost the taxpayer hundreds of thousands.

What would you do?

Basically, threads like this make me wonder about other situations/threads where people claim to be poorer/more hard done by than they actually are.

I'm speechless.

And talking of mijas, I was too shocked last night to actually respond properly to this gem:

People in Spain where I live are lucky if they get 10k per year, and if they are unemployed they get just 5k per year. Yes 5k! Try living on that."

Well fucky luckems. Unemployed people in the UK get less than £4K a year JSA. Some get less than £3K. www.gov.uk/jobseekers-allowance/what-youll-get

It's ALL about accommodation. If you can find somewhere to rent that will take housing benefit, and then the housing benefit actually gets paid, then your nominal income could be more than £4K.

If you're on your friends' sofa, or that of your elderly parents, or living on a roundabout in a sleeping bag, then that £3K is your entire income.

Well, in Spain after a maximum of 2 years there is no more unemployment benefit, so then you live on 0 pounds a year. No housing benefit, no child benefit after the age of 3. Whereas I believe JSA doesn't stop after a set time?
Also you've got far less chance of actually finding work in Spain (especially the south) than in the UK, which although not in a good state is better than the UK atm.
So, she's not that far wrong in the thrust of her argument.

Much kudos to jack for responding with such grace to the attacks on her on this thread.

I'd have more respect for Mijas's argument if she was actually doing something other than attacking somebody who was using her unfortunate set of circumstances to help and support others in similar difficulties. Why don't you start a blog with some better ideas Mijas?

Doing the 'I'm poorer than you' thing is plain daft as we are all 'better off' than the poorest person in the poorest country in the World. The situation in Spain is terrible but at least Jack isn't depicting them as feasting on wonderful food grown by their own fair hands like as certain other food writer did-who clearly believes there is no food poverty in Italy/Spain/Greece. I'm sure that Jack's blog would be as useful to a Spanish person looking for cheap meal ideas as it is to us British.

Jack Monroe has used her wonderful skill as a writer to good end. She will eventually no longer need benefit payments once her payments for her work come through. Although I understand some of her benefits were stopped once she gained commissions despite the fact that she had yet to be paid! She never depicted herself as poster girl for the poor. Neither did she intend more idiotic people to do so. Her blog is a diary.

Me thinks Mijas is a little begrudging because she is envious and maybe feels that Jack doesn't 'deserve' what she has achieved.

I'd say the same about the OP as well, mignonnette. So focused on what she once earned in comparison to herself that it smacks of jealously imo.

She's completely wrong if the thrust of her argument is, "People in Spain are poorER, so people in the UK can't be poor."

BTW, you may not know it, but incapacity benefit/ESA now stops after 1 year for many people. They're still deemed Not Fit to Work, and can't claim JSA, but the money stops. IIRC, about 50% of people nominally on ESA are in this group (WRAG).

I'm not sure what relevance either that or the benefits system in Spain have to this thread, mind you.

The fundamental fact remains that unless you're independently wealthy, once your income stops, your savings won't last forever. And then you'll be poor.

Samandi If you cannot be arsed to read the whole thread then your summary of what you 'read' has no merit.

I just said I was going back to read the whole thread ...

Perhaps you should be arsed to read my one sentence!

That last comment of yours hadn't shown up on my feed when i wrote my post but I am not going to retract what I said. Not reading your own thread before you comment upon it (condemn more like) qualifies you for

The Pit Of Stupid

Samandi - gosh I'm gobsmacked by your thread. Horrible sentiments by you and others on here.

I am going to presume you don't live in the se or have any empathy.

Jack, well done for coming on here and defending yourself although you shouldn't have to.

I hope some of you posters feel thoroughly ashamed of yourselves this morning.

Mignonette - fantastic posts

I just wanted to say - I was in a vile mood with the world yesterday. But I do take the point made that I need to remember people in the public eye get hurt by criticism too, and I'm grateful to jack for being understanding (which I think she was).

Have just finished a run of 10 hr nightshifts finishing at 8am, doing something similar to Jack's old job. I have no idea how single parents cope if they do not have someone to help out.

And I still don't understand the point of the op - are you saying that she shouldn't have written the blog? Or shouldn't take the opportunities given to her? Because she didn't struggle for as long as some other people? What should she do to make it all better? Go back on the dole? Live in a cardboard box in the middle of the road - and think herself lucky?

In response to posters’ comments above I do see the thread moved on. I did want to respond to people’s comments along the way but I see now that’s fairly difficult! And I do have to get to work so I’ll be brief!
Thanks to jack for stopping by and weighing in. The problem faced by single mothers in your kind of situation certainly seems to be in the lack of flexible working practices (and I wonder how clearly this is usually set out in company’s policies) and cock ups by government departments administering housing benefit etc. I certainly have some experience of that myself.

I don’t think anyone is trying to invalidate your experience. If it comes across that way from me then I apologise. I think people are questioning the image you’ve been given in the media. Particularly that you are representative of people living in poverty. That’s my thoughts along the line.

Thanks for comments from other posters too. Especially the balanced comments from LRDtheFeministDragon and Dahlen. I definitely agree with this:

I think one ofg the most important messages from it for me is that having children can severely hurt a woman financially. If you don't have the support network in place and rely totally on professional childcare, you can end up unemployed and poor in no short space of time unless you earn enough to cover the unexpected.

*agirlcalledjack Unfortunately, there seems to be a virtual army of people who think that, "Because I've never experienced this it must never happen."

No imagination, no empathy, no idea.*

I think a lot of the criticisms actually come from people who have experienced poverty. Not the exact same situation perhaps, but poverty nonetheless.

One last thing for now ...

So focused on what she once earned in comparison to herself that it smacks of jealously imo.

I certainly am! I couldn’t have dreamed of earning that amount. So to have someone presented to me as an image of poverty when they’ve had earnings beyond my dreams feels very strange. The image portrayed in the media, of course, is not necessarily jack’s doing. But perhaps she does resonate more with people who have had a good job etc. and then lost that, than with people who didn't have it to start with.