Lee Anderson, Ashfield MP insists Jack Monroe has made a fortune on the backs of the poor.

[newnamethanks]

AIBU to hope for a libel trial as entertaining as Vardy v Rooney and an outcome that rivals the Katy Hopkins debacle?

She's also claiming she could claim benefits, she just don't wanna

I'd love to know what benefits she thinks she could claim. She's taking in at least £2500 form her Patreon each month and I think that estimate is based on the lower tier, so probably a lot higher. She's had several articles published in national newspapers this year, radio and tv appearances and she's just done a regular slot on Lorraine. Plus, I assume she's getting maintenance for her kid. Maybe she should stop giving away her earnings to charity as her followers claim (LOL) and keep some to live on instead.

Hmm, I wouldn't have made that tweet but its certainly the case that Cameron did soft focus interview after soft focus interview about his experiences of the NHS with his son. All designed to promote the "NHS safe in our hands" message.

He then went on to impose ten years of austerity and the hell that is the changed disability benefits, which has seen many more disabled in poverty and people with terminal illnesses, barely able to function being told they are fit for work.

After years of Cameron/Osborne public health care was amonst the worst in Europe before the pandemic.

@Luculentus
He hasn't worked down a mine.
What is your source for that?

I have to say, I didn’t entirely disagree with her tweet about David Cameron. I can understand why Sainsburys backed off working with her.

But I don’t think she was entirely wrong either.

WeCouldBeSpearows

Thank you for your reply. I think your comment that there's not much on my list that your children would eat illustrates my point: we didn't have a choice as children; you ate the meal you were given, there was no plan B. How could there be? There wasn't anything else to eat -we had to eat those meals through the 70s and 80s.

And "worthy" is your moniker, not mine. Of course, you don't have to have grown up in poverty to help others, but seeing the quotes attributed to her re. people brought up on benefits reminded me of her own words (Cooking on a Bootstrap: July 30, 2020):

You don’t choose to be born into an income bracket, a country pile, a housing estate, a double barrelled name or a damp tenement bedsit. But ignorance is a choice. And choosing to use your privileges to patronise people whose lives are entirely beyond your experience and comprehension, is a choice.

Probably implying she could claim PIP.

I mean, Anderson seems like a really deeply unpleasant sort, but it looks like JM got to his Wikipedia page to prove they’re both as bad as each other in their various wonderful ways 😂 en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Anderson_(British_politician)

Agreed on both points. Jack was correct, and it's noteworthy that people who didn't like her saying it mostly made a moral objection rather than disputing the truth of what she said. Because they can't. It's also very telling now that people are claiming she said something about the death of David Cameron's son rather than him using it for political purposes, which is what actually happened.

But it caused enough of a shitstorm that it's understandable they would disassociate themselves. It was a commercial decision.

Coal miners were thought of as salt of the earth, the very definition of the working class and whom the Labour party represented

Not in Notts where they created a different union and refused to participate in the strike.

TBH I've no idea why people think that working in an institutionally misogynist industry or being a WC man makes him an expert in an area of poverty which sees women on the coal front.

There is no shortage of racists and misogynists amongst WC men. God knows I grew up with enough of them.

Exactly.

Hear, hear.

And how is she an expert? Because she says so and she’s a woman? Ok then.

Hi Jack

Can you link us up to the Vimes Boots Index that I believe you said would be completed by end of Feb whilst rattling your tip jar? There’s no sign of it anywhere.

Can you confirm the amount and also where the rest of the profits from your Teemill t-shirts were donated to, and show us the receipts?

Can you confirm the amount of donations made to your personal PayPal that you linked to on Friday when you were asking for funding for your upcoming lawsuit? And can you also confirm that now you’ve got a pro-bono lawyer you’ll refund anyone that wants their money back?

Thanks Jack.

Is it not possible for neither of them to be an expert?

.
The difference is that the Tory Mp categorically stated that the people using food banks can neither cook or budget and that you can eat a cooked meal for 30p. His inference was that ALL these people were ignorant and wilfully so.

Jack Monroe started by SHARING ideas for cost effective meals based on her own experiences of being on the breadline. She was spending huge amounts of time figuring out where and how to shop with little money and create interesting meals out of it. She had to. And then she thought others might benefit from what she had to learnt to do. What money she now makes of that grew out of that original intent. If she now makes a good living and doesn’t worry about where the next meal will come form - good for her..because it has been and is useful for other people if they chose to use her suggestions. It’s a bit like Martin Lewis making millions from MSE …he set up a site to offer and suggest to people how to manage their money…he’s saved the public that have used his advice probably billions. If he’s made millions form it so what- it is a win win as far as I’m concerned. (And he, like Jack, do give a lot back in charitable causes)

The MP was not SHARING his lived experience, based on his own circumstances. The 30p suggestion showed how little he understood about economies of scale and balanced varied diets for small families or individuals (I.e. the majority of folks that find themselves in food banks). He was lecturing people based on , I assume, a few hours here and there spent in the food bank and watching mass meals being produced. Quite frankly it stank of mansplaining habits of suddenly finding out something for himself that nobody else could possibly know and therefore he needed to lecture everyone on his new found knowledge by bagging himself up to be an expert now.
. He is also in a position of power to influence legislation and policy around the amount of money people using food banks have actually got to spend, and when you hear such a person state that it’s because the people at foodbanks are basically undeserving because they don’t want to help themselves by cooking healthily or budgeting , we’re one step away from poor houses. He was entitled and arrogant and just plain wrong. As I said on another thread, I can feed myself for 30p for the odd meal by using leftovers and storecupboard stuff. But that’s cos I have the money and space to utilise “economies of scale” by bulk buying, batch cooking, freezing. And I’m not in fuel poverty so can slow cook cheaper cuts of meat when I do have it. You can’t do that in a bed sit or HOMO.

What charitable causes has Monroe given anything to?

Luculentus
Word is that he was a surface worker, so "down the pit" is stretching it a bit.

According to a Facebook discussion between Lee Anderson and fellow ex-miners/pit workers from the same area (reminiscing) he completed his underground training at Lound Hall Mining Centre and Mansfield Colliery - he then worked at Sutton Colliery followed by Welbeck where he was a 'deputy'. Anderson says that his Welbeck deputies lamp takes pride of place on his desk at Westminster - one of the former pit workers says Anderson was his deputy for a short time. Obviously there are various activities he might have undertaken apart from hacking/drilling at the coal face (although they seem to have done that in training) - including track laying, pipe fitting and haulage systems but there's no doubt that he worked "down the pit".

@EmilyBolton - I don't have an issue with JM making money from what she's done. It's the fact that she denies it and pretends she is living on the breadline. Which is exactly Anderson's point and why she says she's going to sue him!

Where does she say she makes a good living? she’s still pretending to be poor and rattling her tin.

Hard agree that the MP seems utterly vile and pretty clueless about improving things other than RW Tories, and that this government has done incalculable damage to the country and those in poverty.

But 1) can you please post a single bit of evidence she’s done any giving, regular or otherwise, of her own money to charitable causes? And 2) re her “spending hours and hours” researching and inventing cheap recipes: imagine, just imagine, you worked at her publisher, having commissioned her recipe book from her successful blog, and just when her book was about to go to print, you discovered they were almost all barely-tweaked (if changed at all) lifts from other authors who wrote cheap recipes (like Nigel Slater) and you had to hurriedly rewrite them all to avoid a lawsuit. Imagine if that had happened!

Just imagine…
looks to camera

@donquixotedelamancha how do you work that out?

Is the book self published? If not, she must have a very unusually lucrative publishing contract. Royalties are usually 10% at the very very most and usually much lower than that, if the format is paper back. E book royalties are about 25%.

So if 6,000 hardback books are sold for 30k, the most she would get is approx £3k before tax and her agent taking a cut if she has one.

Also factor in if she had an advance on the book, her royalties would go to pay that back. Only once the advance has been fully repaid by her royalties would she actually recieve them in cold hard cash.

www.societyofauthors.org/Where-We-Stand/buying-choices/How-do-authors-get-paid#:~:text=Traditionally%20the%20royalty%20is%20a,paperback%20they%20would%20receive%2067p.

We like our heroes to be squeaky clean and deserving and our villains to be wrong always....

Jack Monroe is deeply problematic but actually some of her recipes are decent (with a little tweaking), She has raised the profile of certain issues and I dont remember anyone publicly saying you can cook decent tasting reasonably nutritious meals from the value range.

The Tory MP may be deeply unpleasant but he probably is right in this comment.

We need to get back to the idea that not everyone is perfect and even imperfect people might say something worth hearing

As she's now aware of the thread, I'm sure she'll be creating a new account (if she hasn't already) and clarifying some of the rather grey areas surrounding her. Or threatening to sue.

It isn't a race to the bottom, but, as a serendipitous metaphor, life isn't binary is it?
Lee Anderson- twat does not equal JM - Saint.
JM - a construct who "forgets" to send her declaration in and asks other people to pay for stuff does not equal Lee Anderson- Saint.

If both were on fire I'd piss in my own face tbh and then save some koalas.

The RRP of the paperback Tin Can Cook is £6.99 in paperback. Paperback royalties are usually around 7.5%. So around 53p per book.