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.

Yup. She posted a few different accounts then a bit later mentioned she had a savings account with the money she would have spent on alcohol put by to take her son on holiday with. So she obviously has money somewhere it just depends on on who she is replying to and whether she needs to be seen as poor or not at that particular moment. Absolutely ridiculous.

she obviously has money somewhere it just depends on on who she is replying to and whether she needs to be seen as poor or not at that particular moment

This is the nub of it really.

I agree there are some vile trolls messaging her on Twitter (although she and her supporters are equally vile to others) and I don't like some of the meanness on tattle (picking apart her outfits etc). But ... She's painting a picture of an implausibly Dickensian poverty in one blog (with a paypal.me link) and then the next tweet is a handful of giant engagement rings/a photo of her with the latest iPhone/a selfie with her designer puppy (I could go on ...)

She's painting a picture of an implausibly Dickensian poverty in one blog (with a paypal.me link)

Jack Monroe blog (4 weeks ago): “No, I’m not ‘poor’ any more. Nor do I pretend to be. I work, I get paid, I have some nice things, I’m managing,…”

@SweetSakura can you cite anything from JM’s blog or elsewhere which says she’s currently living in poverty because I can’t find it.

Penny, a few of us have come on here to say the same thing and been pointed at the awfully molly document with all her tweets. It's very thought provoking and you should probably read it. It is just her own words and she really is all over the place.

There are a lot of people jumping on the bandwagon to stick the boot in for trivial reasons, and I've no doubt the right wing are among them. But she isn't coming out of it looking great.

Some of us feel she is vulnerable, others feel she's a grifter. But the one thing she isn't is consistent.

About a month ago she posted this on her blog: cookingonabootstrap.com/2022/07/31/the-curse-of-the-poverty-hangover-ten-years-on/
Among other "poor me" statements, she says
"Once again, and quite a while ago now, I took my lightbulbs out. I replaced them with solar lanterns meant for garden decor, and they work just fine. A little dim on overcast days, but fine. And importantly, free. I stopped getting my hair cut; what used to be a regular essential is suddenly a gross luxury, so you throw it back in an Alice band and tell your friends that you’re growing it, not that you can’t afford to maintain it. I haven’t bought shampoo or conditioner for two years, and I make my own shower gel by boiling cheap soap bars in plenty of water until they dissolve, and then leaving them to set. Everything in my home is cleaned with either basic disinfectant, 27p bleach, 29p washing up liquid, vinegar, or bicarbonate of soda."
If that doesn't say "I'm poor, here's my paypal" I don't know what does.

@Penny242 clever of you to lift the same few words jack keeps lifting on Twitter.

People may want to read the whole blog and make up their own minds cookingonabootstrap.com/2022/07/31/the-curse-of-the-poverty-hangover-ten-years-on/?amp=1

In the meantime, some extracts:

Today has seen a dozen job applications drafted, painstakingly typed on my mobile phone (no idea why, she has a laptop!)

I, and my bank account currently -£14.60 in the red

my god the lengths I have to go to every damn day to manage are grinding my bones into dust.

I find myself – ten years to the day of the last time I had to – sitting at my table with a pencil and paper in hand, making a list of everything I own of value to sell. Again. Much of it bought as insurance policies against this kind of thing, much of it celebratory for each book contract or publication day, barely enjoyed and preserved in case one day I found myself needing to cash it in. The Katie Hopkins sofa. The Burberry coat. All of my haunted engagement rings. My photography equipment, again. A Vivienne Westwood dress. My laptop. My mobile phone. My dining table. My bed. My home. Our home.

Once again, and quite a while ago now, I took my lightbulbs out. I replaced them with solar lanterns meant for garden decor, and they work just fine. A little dim on overcast days, but fine. And importantly, free. I stopped getting my hair cut; what used to be a regular essential is suddenly a gross luxury, so you throw it back in an Alice band and tell your friends that you’re growing it, not that you can’t afford to maintain it. I haven’t bought shampoo or conditioner for two years, and I make my own shower gel by boiling cheap soap bars in plenty of water until they dissolve, and then leaving them to set. Everything in my home is cleaned with either basic disinfectant, 27p bleach, 29p washing up liquid, vinegar, or bicarbonate of soda. My food shop is still around £20 a week. I’m running out of corners to cut and holes in the belt to tighten it; it’s already hard enough to breathe without constricting myself further.

And then, of course, a link to her "tip jar"

For anyone tempted to tip:

• she also recently acquired a golden doodle puppy (expensive to buy and to feed)
• she has a new iPhone and airpods.
• she has asserted on twitter over the last few days that she definitely isn't poor and definite doesn't want people to donate money to her

Yes, in one of the early paragraphs of the same article (Poverty Hangover) she says she's not poor anymore, and then goes on to tell her sad tale of taking out lightbulbs and taking her meagre possessions to the pawn shop. Which is calculated to get people donating to her paypal.

Which is it? Not poor and downsizing by choice to save for a house deposit, or terrible poor can't afford lightbulbs, cutting every possible corner.

If you're saving money out of choice, don't play the sobstory angle - let people tip you without the emotive panhandling, or you know, since you're not poor, direct them to a charity you support instead.

Also the Botox and lip filler. That’s got to have been in the last few months because it wears off. Absolutely fine to have them, but a bit hard to defend when you say you can’t afford shower gel.

And what is your excuse for such a shitty comment? Are you severely neurotypical?

@BishyBarnyBee i haven’t read the awfully Molly docs yet. Currently all I see is a woman who’s experienced poverty in the past and became well known for budget recipes and campaigning for those stuck in the poverty trap. Maybe she been a bit inconsistent, maybe she overshares on social media but I really don’t think she deserves this amount of online kicking. Ultimately nobody is to read JM’s blog or twitter or donate to her PayPal tipbox.

@LeilaRose777 I think most people across the UK are currently very nervous about this winter thanks to the perfect storm of energy price rises, inflation and potential redundancies. JM’s current earnings are quoted as circa £27k pa - she may get more depending on book sales and other work but I’d say it doesn’t leave much room for manoeuvre when you factor in these price rises as well as expensive rent/bills etc. Some people see her descriptions of removing lightbulbs and boiling cheap soap as a ploy to get sympathy or a way to hint she’s living in extreme poverty; I see it as someone trying to save every penny for what’s coming round the corner.

Penny242
You should probably read it.

medium.com/@AwfullyMolly

I think that's a low estimate of how much she earns - she has 800-odd people on her Patreon and the lower suggested level is £3.50 per month. If they're all giving that, she's making around £33K from her Patreon alone.

The highest rate is £44 but you'd have to be a super-fanboi for that.

I didn’t know much about this personality until I read this link here but she’s certainly very self absorbed and not averse to washing her dirty laundry in public…why so much detail about her finances? It’s really weird.

There are people on Twitter saying they donated £50/ £200 etc after they read her blog that I linked to.
Others saying they had £24 patreon subscriptions.

She's turned performative poverty with a tip jar into a career

and campaigning for those stuck in the poverty trap

Once again, her 'campaigning' consists of nothing more than Tweeting all hours of the day. She does absolutely nothing substantial, behind the scenes or otherwise.

I think most people across the UK are currently very nervous about this winter thanks to the perfect storm of energy price rises, inflation and potential redundancies

I agree but do you honestly think that Jack's advice of telling people to cancel their direct debits and pay by standing order what they can afford or what they think their bills should be is good advice? Because I don't. And for someone who is apparently an expert in matters relating to poverty, this is truly shocking advice and has been debunked by several real experts.

Some people see her descriptions of removing lightbulbs and boiling cheap soap as a ploy to get sympathy or a way to hint she’s living in extreme poverty; I see it as someone trying to save every penny for what’s coming round the corner

If it wasn't a way to garner sympathy or money, she should have removed the PayPal link from the bottom of the blog post. As for the £27k a year earning, she's probably getting that from her Patreon alone (and an easy way for her to be transparent about that is to publish what she makes, which several other Patreon users already do for the sake of transparency. I wonder why Jack hasn't).

The £27k was what she earned in the fire service. I am guessing she earns way way more than that now. Some of her collabs have been ‘5 figures’ on their own.

She said she’d stopped getting her haircut but went to Toni and Guy and had her hair cut by a senior stylist in December. But no shampoo for 2 years.

She recently tweeted that MPs earned about 3 x her salary and she practically did the same job as them so I think thats where the current references to £27k salary comes from...

There are books and then there are books. Bestselling cookery books by authors with name-recognition sell far better than even other types of bestseller. The claim that authors only make pennies per sale is true but there's a big difference between someone who writes highbrow literary fiction or acclaimed but obscure biographies and someone whose books get sold in supermarkets and can be snapped up as Christmas presents.

It's also true that freelancers who set up their own companies can honestly claim they are paid very little but fail to mention how much profit their company is making. It would be interesting to know if an anti-poverty campaigner arranged their affairs so they paid corporation tax rather than income tax.

To be honest, for the sake of her son and her pets, I hope she is comfortably off. I just hate the thought that people worse off than her might be sending her money purely because they think she's in desperation. Can she imagine how someone trapped into living on a grotty, crime-ridden sink estate feels when she's constantly moaning about her 'shitty bungalow' when all the pictures show a home that is perfectly nice?

I am nitpicky but as someone who uses soap bars, I just can't get over the boiling of them to make shower gel. It's illogical like advice of throwing away half a food portion. I had a look at some more of the recipes and I just... Yeah, lots are just questionable.

I honestly believe that no person who actually was or is in poverty would ever come up with these things. It's such a waste of food/money/time for nothing but performance.

She's tweeted today about doing a £20 shop again - fulsome praise for Asda's budget range.

I don't think it helps the people she's supposed to be championing to promote a narrative like that, to tell them they can feed themselves on so little. How is it much different from that Lee Anderson MP bloke saying you can make meals for 30p? He was making in bulk in a commercial kitchen, therefore talking out of his arse, while the recent pictures of her kitchen were positively groaning with containers of stock ingredients.

It's stupid and pointless, isn't it? Just use the damned soap in the shower. 😂

I have read some of the Tattle threads about her, and although really good questions are raised there is also a lot of vile stuff said about her that would be horrendous for her son to read.

Why is challenging her about the lies she has told, and the scams she seems to have perpetrated, worse than the lies she has told, and the scams she seems to have perpetrated?

Surely it isn't anyone's responsibility to protect her son except hers?

I thought about melting one to test it and calculate price, but 1-don't wasnt to buy 1 because it's a waste and 2-don't want to melt mine because they are (sorry, very wanky) special and not available in UK🙈
So I can just make a logical guess of "it will cost more than a shower gel'