Jack Monroe again

[scabbers44]

Has anyone seen the recent tweet about her pawning/selling three diamond engagement rings? Aibu to think if you are pleading poverty and asking the general public to donate money one week and then showing off pictures of three massive diamonds you own the next, it's never going to go down well? Especially when you are already being challenged on lying and grifting?

For a long time I thought JM was nothing but a force of a good but I can't understand how she can be so tone deaf. It can't be deliberate but equally how can she not realise how it looks to produce three huge rings just a week after claiming she's so skint she needs handouts.

Apologies if there's already a thread on this.

I'm surprised that she's still so broke but her work is absolutely necessary and needed.

What work?

What work is that?

Her menus on how to cook with food bank staples and generally how to cook with absolute minimum funds. I don't know too much about her but I thought that's what she does. Surely that's meaningful work when everyone else was detailing how they used to eat gruel and dust when the tories refused to feed the children FSM.

Her chaotic financial lifestyle is exactly what people who are genuinely poor are so frequently accused of and she is doing them no favours by her association, before we get to the often bizarre conduct on Twitter and elsewhere. I don't see any credibility, at least now.

I think this is a really important point. You know all the “I knew someone once who took a taxi home from the food bank” type stuff that crops up on here? The hate / suspicion towards that is one station away from the (to my mind) correct reaction to pleading poverty when you’re knocking around in a four-bed house two years after your breakup, or asking for financial support while there’s valuable art on the walls and a designer dog round the place.

I find her responses to any kind of criticism to be very aggressive. I don't think she does herself any favours on social media at all.

Martin Lewis, Greta Thunberg, Marcus Rashford, Jamie Oliver have all done significantly more than Jack ever has yet she plays she is the voice of the poor card.

Quite a few of the recipes don't stand up to scrutiny financially and nutritionally.

I did calculations on another thread including energy costs on the rinsed hoops vs normal pasta and pasta won hands down.
Similarly probably with the famous rinsed baked beans. Half of can is gone like that.

Imho, some of these are performative, oddly or not at all researched "recipes" which are not actually in any way really beneficial to person with minimal funds or foodbank parcels. Some are ok.

The bigger issue is the grifting. I mean, writing some recipes doesn't mean person can be then forgiven for anything.

Can someone explain the bean washing?

The idea was to rinse them so you can get the haricot beans and then... Make new tomato sauce for them...
Rinsing these will lose about half a tin. Beans are usually just under 50%.

What eould be better is to do a recipe where you don't just end up with massive food waste (and 200g of perfectly good sauce IS massive food waste) and just flavour and top up the existing sauce.

Baked beans are cheaper than plain beans. I think that was the theory behind it. I don't know what the weight of washed beans is vs naked ones though so whether it's cheaper per bean who knows?

Oh there you go. Just a colossal waste of money and nutrients then.

Bonkers.

I think it depends where you shop. I buy 400g cans of butter beans for 25p each in local asian shop. Chickpea and other beans 40p usually. ASDA often has KTC for 50p. The cheapest baked beans are 25p? Or thereabouts.
I think most of plain beans are 60% bean so it then honestly depends on what your shops have on offer. However, even if it would be few pence cheaper, I can't get over food waste and telling people in that money situation to waste what could be sauce base🤷🏻

Re you comments re Tattle. Admittedly I didn't know about it, it's reputation. However I only googled something about JM and that link came up. Other links may be bitchy. But this one was incredibly factual and mainly listed only stuff I already knew to be true about her.

I follow a couple of threads on Tattle. Its primary focus is to call out the manipulative behaviour of Instagram influencers. Read a couple of the pinned "wikis" on some threads and you might be surprised by the level of deception. There's some very witty posters and a surprisingly supportive community when posters are facing difficult times. I don't agree with some of the posts, as with MN which can also be very cutting and critical.

If you're effectively selling products as an influencers, particularly to people that don't have a lot of money, not everyone will necessarily like you. Which I guess is the case for Jack Monroe too?

I agree with this - I have ADHD and some of the stuff she does I can see in myself - overpromising, not following through, not having a filter, impulsive spending, getting upset at any perceived rejection etc. The ADHD is a reason though, not an excuse and she probably does need some support and someone to tell her to wind it in.

There’s nothing wrong with admitting she’s not currently on the bones of her arse - she has clearly been there and she has plenty to share to help other people. Her whole schtick though seems to be ‘desperately struggling single mum in terrible poverty’ and it’s as if she thinks she won’t be respected or listened to if she admits that’s no longer true.

@Bubblebubblebah Tbf all I know about her is that she won a libel case and has been the face of 'food bank' poverty and something about changing the way a particular figure is recorded. I don't keep up to date with her work that much except when it's briefly trending on twitter hence curious as to why she's still absolutely penniless given she's built quite a platform. I know that that doesn't necessarily translate to riches but surely you've got more than a tin of beans and a loaf of bread by now!!!

Re that Tattle link I posted that was deleted.

They have a five bed detached house in a nice part of Southend.

By May 2015, Jack had moved in with millionaire chef Allegra McEvedy.

Louisa Compton, head of news at Channel 4.

Which parts are factually incorrect?

All of the above I already knew. Where she grew up. 2 relationships with other well known women.
Well known facts.
Hardly controversial is it?

Three engagement rings? Has she been married three times? Aren't you supposed to give them back if you don't marry. I'm confused .

She could have proposed 3 times

I'm new to the Jack Monroe stuff - she's never been on my radar tbh.

I did look at her pages a few months back and was astonished how aggressive she was to lots of people - some who patently didn't deserve it, and were possibly upset by it.

I wondered then about how joined up the whole still-in-poverty thing really was - it didn't make any sense from the posts I glanced at, but I admit I then looked away and forgot all about it again.

She seems to be pretty inauthentic all round and has been for...how long? Someone should tell her that she doesn't have to pretend to be poor in order to try to lift people out of poverty.

Marcus Rashford is the perfect example - he is completely authentic. He can be rich and still want other people not to be impoverished. HIs message isn't muddied by any poverty cosplay - he's fantastic.

Pretty sure they split up years ago.

Which is the danger of quoting a notoriously vicious and unreliable source such as tattle.

Same here - and he is very open about what can and cannot be achieved.

And he isn't constantly rattling a begging bowl.

@BishyBarnyBee

And. So? So they split up. And? Doesn't negate that they were together. Doesn't change the history. The timeline.