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?

@AppleandRhubarbTart In fact if you follow that through to its logical conclusion it is certainly possible that an unemployed CHEF or a chef on limited hours could be forced to do the cookery course to access the food bank.

I'm actually not sure what we are differing on here. I never said that Cameron's son was used as a ruse to privatise health care (which has substantial areas of privatisation in place already). I said that it was presented repeatedly in the campaign as part of the image of a new fluffy Tory party could be trusted with teh NHS.

Cameron could at any time in those interviews said that his family experience was a private matter or that he didn't want them to be part of campaigning. It was used in campaigning and was often a key element of those soft focus interviews. As I said upthread, I would not have made that tweet but the facts of that campaign would support her point.

The moment they got into power, Cameron and Osborne launched an austerity campaign and the underfunded UC disaster which had horrific impact on the disabled and chronically ill leading not only to poverty in this group but deaths waiting for benefits and suicides whilst navigating the kafkaesque systems.

The pair of them (and Clegg) then fucked off after a disastrous performance and maximised the revenue streams whilst their names were still hot, instead of staying around to try and help with the fall out. Yes a shining example of commitment and integrity to us all.

Well I'd imagine the questions are because the only evidence anyone has cited is from his own pages rather than anything third party.

I don't particularly care about his mining experience but since he makes such a big deal of it as evidence that he is an expert on poverty then he should expect that claim to be challenged.

Anyone who starts from a premise that women using foodbanks (and yes this is about women) are simply incompetent and if they just tried harder they could feed people on 30p a day is trading in old fashioned populist tropes and benefits bashing.

but since he makes such a big deal of it as evidence that he is an expert on poverty then he should expect that claim to be challenged.
Same as jack then really, both making claims to past poverty to make their point the loudest.
I don't think either come out of this particular situation looking good.

True. Imagine the ridiculousness.

@WilmaFlintstone1 I agree with most of that. I followed her for a long time on Twitter, then I saw a lot of inconsistencies in some of the things she says. And it’s unpleasant to see how vicious she can be to ordinary people who do nothing worse than disagree with what she’s said in some minor way.

Not just 'ordinary' people either. She's taken a pop at some big names too, including David Walliams, Jamie Oliver (AKA THAT MAN) and JK Rowling. All of whom had the good sense to completely ignore her.

Jack will get support if she goes after the right people.

People don't like Laurence Fox or Tory MPs, so she'll get support. There's little risk to her after all, every penny she gets is handed to her by someone poor schmuck that has drunk Monroe's 6p version of Kool-Aid made from puddle water strained through a scarf.

Depends. I've worked (waitressed, let's be honest about it - it was my second job because I was skint) with 'chefs' whose only experience was microwaving things vacuum packed from Brakes or dropping something from the freezer into a deep fat fryer and some who wouldn't dream of touching any ingredient that wasn't the best of the best and therefore had never touched a tin of basics beans, much less considered using them in a recipe. At one place, the one person who could make great meals out of almost nothing was the guy on potwash.

If they're that broke they need a foodbank referral, it's unlikely they can't afford the fuel to cook anything or could live somewhere that doesn't have cooking facilities - so a class would mean they had access to free gas/electricity, leaving the lower cost option of reheating in a microwave or eating cold as well, whereas without the money to feed themselves and put more money on the gas/electricity, they would have been left with raw ingredients and no means to cook them.

He's worked at Sutton, Wellbeck, Manton and Creswell pits, there's plenty of reference to these on his own Facebook and website im not sure why people are making out he's secretive about where he worked

Thank you for that @C8H10N4O2 As I said it wasn't that I thought he was making it up, it was the whole 'oh he was a coal miner so knows poverty' stuff, it was a relatively decent 'for life' job at one point, obviously not MP salary decent but well above NMW or average UK salary.

Not since he went into it - the entire Miners' Strike was about them being shut down.

I think the advice and suggestions from JM are good- however having looked into her a bit more it's clear there's a little bit of playing at being poor going on here , as I said on a previous post it's a poverty/cost of living equivalent of Farage and Tommy Robinson with Brexit- taking poor circumstances for others to actually feather their own next-- they are all huge attention seekers. In JMs case I feel the message is good , but the messenger is a bit dodgy. Maybe she should take a lesson from Martin Lewis who clearly still wants to help people but doesn't remotely pretend he is at all poor- however working in media I suspect she's doing 'ok' but she won't be rich.

Anderson is just an unpleasant piece of work trying to be 100% like the men in his constituency. (My original home area) He's a fraud -posing as a Farage type 'geezer' - I'm sorry but it appeals to people who think you are a 'top bloke' if you like a fag and a pint - rather than looking a bit deeper - I was married to a miner and it most definitely wasn't poverty unless you spent all your wages down the pub, the bookies etc. I had a nice 3 bed semi in my early 20s (early 80s) and several holidays abroad every year .

True, miners were very well paid, rightly so, and their Union fought for them to be so.

No one said he was poor because he was a miner. He apparently grew up poor in a very poor area.

which was a comment made in response to posters saying that JM has more authority to speak about poverty as she has lived it and he (based on being a Tory) has not.

The back ground of him being a miner was in reference to the assumptions that he must be and always had been very privileged.

Lee Anderson has definitely not always been privileged. He was a Labour MP (I think) before defecting to the Conservatives. It’s clear he realises poverty exists. I have no idea what his background is or if he grew up in poverty. In fact I believe he grew up on a council estate but so did Mark Francois because I knew him as a child (yes he was an odious little oik then too). It doesn’t mean poverty and growing up in the 60s and 70s had people believing life was simple because there was available social housing, many mothers didn’t work as one wage brought in enough to pay the bills. So Lee Anderson needs to remember al, that before lecturing anyone on how to cook a 30p meal.

Jack HAS been privileged, she had a nice middle class upbringing as she herself has said. Then she contradicts herself at other times,

Neither Lee nor Jack come out of this spat looking good and both have clearly demonstrated they know nothing about current poverty.

Jack on the other hand is a good writer and she needs to keep focusing on that as she gets people talking. This is a good thing.

Jack also needs to be honest about her income, there is no shame in making a living as a writer and defending people who have nothing. You don’t have to pretend you are poor either.

Unfortunately Jack is mentally unwell and needs more support around her, whether she will accept that support is another matter. The support needs to be able to monitor her phone use, take the phone away from her when she is having a meltdown (like last Friday) and calm her down. I

So done with JM's poverty cosplay. Now that she's made money she's backed herself into a corner and is struggling hard to stay hip and relevant, and it's just sad now.

Even back at the start when she was genuinely struggling, there was always an undertone of bitterness in her writing suggesting it was more unfair to her (than to other "real" poor people) because she had a degree or something.

For what it's worth, I work for a charity which deals with hundreds of people in food poverty. JM's "tips" aren't accessable or relevant to them a lot of the time - they can't use the internet and don't buy cook books. JM's content is mostly there to function as poverty porn for the middle classes to read and natter about to show what good people they are.

Jack Monroe sent a tweet that David Cameron used his “dead son” as a “ruse to privatize the NHS”. There was no plan to privatize the NHS. Nor was his son used as a “ruse”. There is absolutely no evidence for either claim.

He did speak positively about his experience with the NHS and social services regarding his son. I don’t believe there was anything inappropriate about anything he said.

It must be absolutely horrific to lose a child. Even if I don’t agree with someone’s politics I can feel compassion for them in such an awful time. I think attacking him like that crosses a line.

No one said he was poor because he was a miner. He apparently grew up poor in a very poor area.

That point has been made repeatedly by the Tories who were so excited to get a bunch of working class blokes into the house because of Brexit that the PR machines went into overdrive.

As @Crikeyalmighty says Anderson is just an unpleasant piece of work trying to be 100% like the men in his constituency. (My original home area) He's a fraud -posing as a Farage type 'geezer' - I'm sorry but it appeals to people who think you are a 'top bloke' if you like a fag and a pint - rather than looking a bit deeper - I was married to a miner and it most definitely wasn't poverty unless you spent all your wages down the pub, the bookies etc. I had a nice 3 bed semi in my early 20s (early 80s) and several holidays abroad every year

This was especially true for many areas of Notts where miners who kept working did pretty well. The idea that Notts working miners' families were living in poverty in the 70s/80s is simply not real. It was a very different picture in the areas where there was a full strike followed by closure.

Poverty is a feminist issue.
Its women who have to manage these budgets in the majority of cases, women who do the bulk of caring for those too ill to work, women who head the majority of single parent families.

Lee Anderson has garnered some cheap headlines by promoting barriers for access to foodbanks which his mandatory "cookery school". Not an offer of cooking classes with a creche/support to attend but mandatory cooking class before you can access help in dire need. Just think about that. It utterly stinks of WC male misogyny.

Whether Anderson/Munroe grew up in mansions or shoeboxes isn't the issue here.

Munroe writes from a perspective of sharing tips, helping people to help themselves and with a degree of empathy. Her materials are made free to any foodbank or charity which can use them.
Anderson is hectoring women and blaming them for their own poverty whilst demonstrating from his comments he has no more clue about actual budgeting that Boris Johnson.

I don’t agree that children will eat what they’re given if there’s no alternative. I wouldn’t growing up and studies show this applies to some degree to children with daily calorie deficits.

@C8H10N4O2 can you provide some evidence for the below:

“Her materials are made free to any foodbank or charity which can use them.
Anderson is hectoring women and blaming them for their own poverty whilst demonstrating from his comments he has no more clue about actual budgeting that Boris Johnson.”

My local foodbank uses recipes and tips provided from her website, free of copyright or royalties. So do others in the area.

Go look at her website - there is a clear statement about free use of her materials published on the site(s).

There’s a lot of words that that have nothing to do with what I said.

Again, no one said because he was a miner or from a mining family that he made him poor.

I haven’t even argued that he was right in what he said or that he should be speaking on these issues. but because my comment wasn’t entirely negative about the Tory, you assumed it was positive.

when it was actually a comment on the thread itself and why his background had been brought up.

Several posters, appeared to have assumed he had a very privileged upbringing and JM did not.

besides which miners may have been paid decently. It didn’t mean, due to other issues, that the family weren’t struggling financially.

But that’s not the point. The point is that his background was brought up, simply because people claimed that someone who had lived in poverty had more right to speak out than someone who had come from a very privileged background. People pointed out that, in that case, he had more right to comment on it.

I think they are both dicks and I dispute either have actually done much of substance to help anyone.

There are repeated claims here that JM ",helps people" with her recipes. She doesn't, because her cooking is absolutely dreadful. Her lack of the most basic food knowledge and cooking skills was particularly exposed on Saturday Morning Kitchen at the start of lockdown, and on Eamon and Ruth's show. Just toe-curlingly bad - a 17 year old commis chef would've done a better job. And this is after ten years at it.

It's insulting to food bank users to give them copies of her books when there are so many real food writers giving away free recipes. What kind of bland abomination is her peach and chickpea curry with its tiny smattering of cumin? When I was a skint young mum in the 90s I learned to cook Indian food from a Madhur Jaffrey book I got for £1 in a charity shop. If I was in that situation today I'd have a limitless choice of free recipes online by actual chefs and which actually work. Why would anyone go near her recipes? What is her audience? Not middle class people like her who have Ottolenghi etc. Not the generationally poor with whom she has nothing in common and for whom she has no empathy. It's obvious that the jig is up and she's getting desperate with the Twitter spats and threats of litigation. She needs to get a job like everyone else.

Agree that her recipes are for the most part rank and there are plenty of better ones out there.
It is remarkable how after a short period of poverty, she managed to build an extremely successful blog and launch a media career. Nobody would have been interested if she had come from an actual poor background and wasn’t a well-spoken, photogenic, middle-class girl with considerable media skills and contacts. JM allows people to pretend that is what poverty looks like (white, slim, pretty, social justice warrior) so that we can feel all good about buying her books while continuing to oppress and harm those living in real poverty (you know, the tracksuit Jeremy Kyle types, in Jack’s own words).

I think JM gets a bit carried away with herself sometimes, clearly has said stuff that is demonstrably untrue, but overall I think she is, or at least she tries to be, a force for good in the world.

I remember someone linking to the Tattle threads about her once. The level of obsession on there, dissecting and cataloguing every thing she says or does... it's relentless. I find that far more worrying, to be honest. Presumably these people have lives and families but they seem to spent every minute of their day - their tiny allotted span on a chunk of rock hurtling around a star in this vast and unfathomable universe - thinking about a minor Twitter celebrity who writes cookbooks.