Jack Monroe posing in a bath of coins was the ultimate "ha, I've got away with it, you idiots". Extremely offensive. But considering the Guardian's demographic, the audience probably thought it was a witty, ironic photoshoot. I despair.
And why would we want to "save the NHS"? Surely you mean radically reform the NHS so it delivers a half decent service from GPs to social care to ending postcode lottery of care?
Quite. What matters is that the people have a health regime that actually works, and which is actually available to people. The NHS is increasingly in a state where it really does not work properly.
Seems the best thing for Jack Monroe to do now is refund all Patreons (pro rata if money is spent), refund the "legal fund" money, close Patreon/tip jar etc, delete socials then leave public life & get proper help? She can't keep up these lies, grifting & the scrutiny it brings.
That is not going to happen, for several reasons, but mainly because “Jack Monroe” now has only one substantial and regular source of income, i.e. the 635 utter mugs donating to her regularly on Patreon, and thus bringing in tens of thousands of pounds each month.
Exposing someone is not harassment. Jack Monroe owes money to lots of people who gave her cash in good faith. How you have the audacity to come on a public forum and defend such diabolical behaviour is embarrassing. There is no nice way to expose someone as a fraud.
The propaganda is constant now, now that we are in the period 2022-2055. Look at the idea that people will be paid to turn off heating or electricity. It’s mad. The whole point of having gas or electricity is so as to be able to keep warm, use appliances etc.
…people giving a rentier-parasite maybe half their take-home pay in return for being allowed to occupy some cramped urban hutch. Sick society.
I have been, in the past (pre-2009) self-employed (as a barrister in England), employed offshore (i.e. not having to pay UK income tax), and at other times employed in the UK, paying UK income tax.
The worst of the three possibilities is when someone is employed in the UK, and having to pay UK income tax, especially when having also to pay out to rent a house or apartment, and/or commute, a fortiori when having to lay out money for a long commute by rail, perhaps even —as at times in my own case— for a long-distance First Class season ticket.
Once someone has paid income tax, he or she has those unavoidable chunks taken out: rent, travel costs, costs of suitable clothing, other costs such as lunch money etc. The last may seem small, and not everyone will have to pay for restaurants or whatever, but even a Pret or the like might add up to £5, or more, per working day, say £1,000-£2,000 a year.
No wonder many, especially on modest earnings, decide (if they can) to opt out, throwing themselves on the admittedly rather strained mercies of the State by applying for small State cash benefits, but also having most if not all of their housing costs paid, having Council Tax paid, and not having to pay out for long distance or other travel, nor for formal clothing, for lunches, and for other incidental costs. Also, of course, not having to pay income tax.
For many employed people, once those chunks are taken out of gross pay, there is not a lot left, especially when one considers that those on the lowest income levels do not pay for basic NHS dental work, or prescriptions.
Poor levels of pay in the UK are a disgrace, and poor-paying employers are having their profits underpinned via Universal Credit etc paid to employed but underpaid employees. It’s quite wrong.
In the case of a “poor” pensioner, just retired from, say, a modest or low-level job, that person will be entitled to, from April 2023, about £200 per week State Pension and Pension Guarantee Credit, Housing Benefit (if applicable), Council Tax Benefit, free medical and basic dental, various extras such as Cold Weather Payments, special one-off Treasury giveaways, free bus travel etc; the upshot being that that person might well be far better off (albeit on a low level) than he/she was the year before he/she reached State Pension age.
For younger people, the best option (especially if not paying out for rent) is to get off-grid as far as possible: do work that pays in cash or in kind, or start a small business that pays (eg car repair), use (if you can afford the capital outlay at the start) renewable heat and power via solar, pico-hydro and the like, and keep outgoings small. You do not need the often-useless “advice” of such as “Jack Monroe” to do that. Commonsense does most of the heavy lifting. Cheese rather than smoked salmon, water rather than wine.
True, that kind of “off-grid” lifestyle will not get you a Rolls-Royce, or a Mercedes SUV, or holidays in Barbados; you may have to settle for a £1,000 clapped-out estate-car, and no overseas holidays, but in return you have freedom, and that is worth rubies.
Incidentally, I am not exactly describing myself. For one thing, I am now already 66, and so beyond official “working age” anyway, but in the past have experienced almost every kind of working and non-working scenario.
Those best-off in WW2 Britain were probably not only those with money (who could pay for quite good dinners and lunches in the better hotels) but also and especially those in country houses, who might have had the money and space to stock up on tinned food (as Dennis Wheatley —https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Wheatley—had advised in his pre-war newspaper column).
Such people would have had enough land on which to grow fruits and vegetables for themselves, and might well have the possibility to shoot game birds, rabbits, hares, even deer, and also fish for trout, salmon etc. They could also easily raise chickens for eggs, despite the paucity of chickenfeed, while the rest of the population was rationed to 1 egg per week.
Anyone in a country house would quite likely also have a wine cellar, which, if replete with Claret, Burgundy or Champagne —and adapting Sam in Casablanca— “sure takes the sting out of being occupied ” [or rationed].
Today, the same applies, pretty much. Had I a country house today, I would certainly be stocking up on tinned food (which in many cases is OK almost indefinately from the safety point of view, though only at peak quality for 5 years or less). I should also be reserving at least an acre per person for vegetables etc, and would be planting, or maintaining any existing, fruit and nut trees and bushes.
I should also be filling my equally-hypothetical wine cellar. Basic or bland food tastes a lot better with a bottle of Chateau Margaux washing it down…
When my wife and I did have (a lease of) a country house (on the Cornwall/Devon border, about 20 years ago), there existed a large number of plum and apple trees, producing a quantity of fruit quite impressive, bearing in mind that they had not been maintained, pruned etc for decades.
With war again now looming on the horizon, together with social collapse, I would, were it possible, relocate back to the South West of the UK and also, were it possible, buy a country house (and follow my own advice above).
It's disingenuous/obtuse to claim the legal fee money hasn't been touched & is going to charity if not used. It can't be kept separate in her tip jar. An honest person would have made it transparent and set up new PayPal or fundraising accounts but she's proved she isn't one.
Crazy how Jack Monroe still gets feted in the media after the evidence that she's a grifter and scammer is so plain and plentiful. Awfully Molly did an amazing job laying it all out. https://t.co/MZH4Pj6nWF
Though my prediction for the next general election (2019) was wrong (I thought hung Parliament or small-majority Labour win), in my defence I can say that that election did not, in the event, happen until almost 2 years after the blog was posted (blog— January 2018, but General Election— December 2019). I think that the rest of the assessment has held up quite well.
“This was the moment at which we began the unstoppable descent into terrible danger which so many of us will bitterly regret in times to come.
I won’t waste time here going over the question of who started the Ukraine war, or even why. Most people don’t want to know and refuse to think about it, or to look up the facts. They defame and abuse anyone who tries to tell them. So to hell with that.
When the Defence Secretary announced that British tanks were going to Ukraine, not one MP raised any doubts or opposed the move. Not one. To read the record of the non-debate is like reading the proceedings of some Communist fake parliament, supine and brain-dead.
The country where political freedom was born has decided not to bother being free any more.
What we have just decided to do is to prolong and deepen the war. Maybe Ukraine’s new tanks will sweep all before them. Maybe they will bog down. Maybe they will try to take Crimea. Maybe they will soon be taking part in a Victory Parade in Red Square. I don’t know. But if they cross into what Russia regards as its own territory, then do not be surprised by anything which happens.
...there is the real possibility that a large chunk of Europe might be turned into a radioactive graveyard and that American conventional retaliation for this (which will be furious and powerful) will take us a stage further into the world of horror, loss, flight, pestilence and poverty which always follows war.”
[Peter Hitchens in the Mail on Sunday].
Exactly.
The Cold War was frozen, formalized, mutual aggression. The world came close to disaster more than once, but the situation was at least stable. That was hard on the peoples of occupied Central and Eastern Europe, caged by the “Big Three” agreements of the WW2 period (Casablanca, Teheran, Yalta, Potsdam), but actually life there was not always and everywhere terrible— just worse (usually, mostly) and —overall— less free than in the (better parts of) Western Europe and North America.
That was better than nuclear war across Europe, the Soviet Union, and the USA.
The gradual collapse of socialism in the 1956-1989 period of 33 years meant that one of the two main pillars of that stasis collapsed, meaning that outside socio-economic and other forces could start to flow into what had been Soviet territory..
Without Soviet power in place, the whole Soviet system fell apart quite quickly. By 1991, the Soviet Union was history. Western goods and ideas flooded Russia and the newly-liberated or created states. Ukraine was, for the first time in history, an independent state (a simplification, but basically correct).
Instead of a genuine attempt to help Russia and other former components of Sovietism transition to a better society, there was a scramble to rule over Russia, and to exploit its people, taken part in not only by Jewish (yes, and other) interests in the West but also by Jews inside Russia, the so-called “oligarchs”. Some, such as Boris Berezovsky, have died (probably murdered, despite living in the UK), others have increased their security and moved permanently to the UK, USA, Israel etc.
I myself saw elements of that scramble, not only when I first visited Moscow in 1993, and not only in my year in Kazakhstan (1996-97) but also in other ways, e.g. by my sitting (1995-1996) on the Committee of the Central Asia and Transcaucasia Law Association [CATLA], a body set up by large law firms with interests in the post-Soviet states, with UK Government assistance.
Also later, when back in London, in the Caribbean, and elsewhere.
On the foreign policy side, the “New World Order” [“NWO”] tried to take over Russia, and nearly did so when Yeltsin was President. What prevented it was a combination of circumstances: Russian pushback fuelled by wounded pride, Putin taking over as President, the collapse of the dotcom bubble in the West, and the focus of the NWO shifting to its other major interest, i.e. destroying the states hostile to Israel; that was after the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001.
The military aid being given has gone from small items of defensive “kit” (in the British military term) to large items of offensive armament, as Hitchens writes. There are few weapons more aggressive in offence than a tank.
I recall being at a CATLA meeting in London in late 1995 or early 1996 when an account was given of a report that day by telephone from Dushanbe, Tadzhikistan, then the epicentre of a civil war. The report had had to be curtailed because the person on the end of the line had suddenly said “I’m going— a tank has just come round the corner.” End of conversation.
As I recently blogged, 14 British tanks may not be much, but the Zelensky regime is all but demanding that other European states provide 300. Still a small number compared with those in action in 1943 at Kursk (over 8,000 tanks in total); however, in Egypt, Rommel’s initial advance on Alexandria involved about 300 German tanks.
The point is that the war is now getting to the point where, in the absence of a ceasefire or negotiated settlement, the Russians either have to recruit, train and deploy an army vast enough and powerful enough to overwhelm the forces of the Kiev regime in 2023, or go nuclear (whether tactical or even strategic).
The USA and UK (etc) are getting to the point where they might be seen as actual participants in the war.
Leaving the huge forces (mainly American) of NATO aside, there is no way for the Kiev regime to win this. Ukraine is becoming a country without electricity, it has little functioning industry now, 20% of its population has fled to other states, and its population is anyway a fraction of the size of that of Russia.
If the West (NWO/ZOG) does not stop supporting the Kiev regime, we are on and sliding down a slope which might well devastate all of Europe.
I shall believe that when she stops taking people’s money, particularly from those who have little to start with, and/or those who are vulnerable (even if they are utter mugs to send “Jack Monroe” anything at all).
Both my wife and I have stage 4 cancer. I hope Jack is never in a position to properly understand how appalling what she has written this evening is.
Seems that the tweets referred to have been deleted (another habit of the “Bootstrap Cook”).
Hang on in there @BootstrapCook the haters can’t win. More people respect what you do than those who have too much time on their hands and pile vitriol on you. Self care is all. Do what you have to ❤️ https://t.co/nJnUAfwRnI
Another poor and/or financially-struggling “Jack Monroe” fan? Oh, no, wait…a dim-seeming librarian from the University of Bedfordshire (is there such a university? Maybe there is). She has obviously not seen any of the voluminous evidence against her idol.
Because she's lying fantasist. There is zero evidence that she has ever been abused. She just screams that she is being abused to distract from her grifting. She is a predator disguising herself as prey.
A good description. Worthy of a social anthropologist, perhaps a bit —in manner— like David Attenborough, but specializing in Essex “grifters”.
People are entitled to call her out for her criminal scamming, and her Munchausen lies. She plays the victim whenever she'd backed into a corner. Her cancer scare bullshit didn't get sufficient sympathy so now she's dramatically flouncing like a teenager.
Quite funny seeing all these terribly “concerned” and virtue-signalling women (mostly women), who are, unwittingly, simply advertizing their lack of nous.
What she claims is abuse are people calling her out for her Patreon scam, her Kickstarter scam, her repeated charity grifts, her tip jar rattling by insinuating that she's struggling, and profiteering off her fake backstory (she's from a rich family) and lying about her child.
…so tweets a total loony (another “not quite all there” “Jack Monroe” fanatic).
Does this shit all the time. Gets head pat's and sympathy from the codgers and sycophants and then comes back and posts banal bollocks about paint or dogs.. or kittens..
— ThruppenyBit (Eric B. Johns) (@BoredTillSleep) January 21, 2023
That was a beauty as it was so wrong from the get go. It's all good, as far as I'm concerned Jack Monroe stans are just extensions of her, so it's just more proof of what a nasty piece of work she is, who's built a vicious culture around herself to protect her scam.
The irony of this comment, Jack’s the one who has been treating the most vulnerable in this way. She’s lied, ripped us off and disrespected so many people and now it’s caught her up she’s playing the victim for the few people still willing to believe her. #jackmonroelieshttps://t.co/SAjUPGENBx
That whole interview was a pointless fluff piece by a feeble washed up 'journalist' that has no interest in getting to the truth, just sucked down the lies, repeated nonsense and lies and took the pay cheque.
May as well have let the intern wrote it, journalism is dead..
— ThruppenyBit (Eric B. Johns) (@BoredTillSleep) January 21, 2023
Good! Get off Twitter, stop gaslighting those who want refunds, pause Patreon, stop asking for donations, make your Twitter more professional, stop playing a victim and fulfil your promises.
There is no incentive for “Jack Monroe” to pause or stop her Patreon “grift”. After months of criticism and evidence presented, there are, as of today, still 635 utter mugs sending her money, between about £2,500 a month and about £30,000 a month (probably about £6,000 pcm). Why would she stop taking it? Certainly not because a few have threatened a small claim in the County Court. Those few can be paid off easily enough.
If other mugs donate via other channels, then “Jack Monroe” can simply say (or not even bother to say) “thank you very much” and keep the cash, using it for her own purposes, as she has done.
[“Revenge— get down there where you wanted to send me, you unclean spirit!“]
Write it down and pin it to your forehead: no true and sustainable political party/movement threatening J agendas would have granted free pass to exist!
They are all psyops to keep “muh evil ze natzeee” bogeyman alive and keep making laws to constrict us and shut our mouths only
Ha ha! The presumption of the girl there is incredible. Trying to grift a living as an “online influencer” or something, like thousands of others, from “Jack Monroe” and Owen Jones, through Julia Grace Patterson and others of that type, and right down to “who she?” types like the one in that tweet. She should get a job in a bottling plant or something (at least until robots take over completely).
Britain used to be a country that did things, real things, and had people at all levels who, many of them, were solid, even in the House of Commons etc. Now look…
Men (and women) of straw are now around in huge numbers and, if they were just to “disappear”, not only would I not care but in fact would actually applaud their removal.
Just for the record, I have never accidentally set up an off shore trust.
You do not work for some rat cage that is not yours, you should work for land, tools, resources that will going to be yours, not for some .uckin rat farming https://t.co/HGcZamoITh garbage pic.twitter.com/BbR2xnayyg
If you are getting land or property make your own water source a PRIORITY. A well, pump, underground water, forget rainwater collecting. pic.twitter.com/8tRSOuJH6J
For some more human biodiversity, the Bajau people are "sea nomads" from maritime Southeast Asia. These people have about a 50% increase in spleen size, an organ that holds much viscous blood, rich with oxygen. This adaptation allows them to spend significantly longer underwater pic.twitter.com/qU3m0SBRoJ
Simona Kossak was an ecologist & biologist. For 30 years she lived happily with her loved ones without electricity & running water in the ancient Białowieża forest, with a crow, a herd of deer, a boar & even a lynx.
It’s her son that needs checking on, seeing his mum behave like this every time she doesn’t get her own way. Poor kid. She’ll be back later posting as if it never happened and rattling the tip jar to make the most of the attention. Sadly we’re all so familiar with it now
It is truly incredible to see just how gullible so many of these “concerned” women are, the “Jack Monroe” partisans. She has been repeating those behaviours for years— angrily snarling and threatening, then pretending to stomp off from Twitter and/or pretending to have one of a whole host of physical and/or mental conditions, then claiming to have been “bullied” or “forced off Twitter”, after which she returns within a day or two (and counts up her new donations).
Yes, many rather unstable people who somehow imagine that by at least tweeting in support of “Bootstrap Cook”, they are striking a blow against the hated “Tories”. No so. The “Jack Monroe” assertion “I can feed someone on about 61p a day” (literally what she claims, feeding a family of four for £20 a week), plays into the idea that “welfare” (social security) benefits are perfectly adequate, or even too generous.
Don't you understand that the drama and the attention are what keep her on Twitter? She will never leave. I mean, she might leave for 53 minutes, but she'll never not come back. Her life is empty without the attention seeking on Twitter. It's really very sad.
She’s done this so many times. After the cancer ranting backfired on her earlier in the night the suicide breadcrumbing and then the flounce were just inevitable. You get used to it the more you follow her
Genuinely suicidal people don’t behave like this. As someone who lost a close family member to suicide it’s deeply hurtful and genuinely disgusting to see her behave like this. The manipulation is purely for this kind of attention.
“Jack Monroe” now knows that, however outlandish her tall tales are, hundreds if not thousands of utter mugs will believe them all, and will think her a kind of saintly warrior against poverty and injustice, no matter what obvious lies she posts.
She has claimed, ludicrously, to have been involved with fighting the fire at Grenfell Tower, to have been in high-level discussions about Government inflation statistics, to have been so poor that she had to unscrew lightbulbs to save on electricity, and that she boiled down soap to make shower gel (!). All surely, plainly, lies, obviously so to any but the totally deluded, yet her often-mentally afflicted fans lap it up, either believing the lies, or believing that they somehow do not matter.
Jacks Monroe Stans are now asking for welfare checks. So let’s get this straight…. Jack Monroe, scammer of the vulnerable, tax dodger, animal abuser, faux poverty “campaigner” has got her followers so worried due to the latest instalment of “my lies have caught up with me” that
Designed to be sympathy provoking, to then lead to the tip jar being rattled. This is a cycle of behaviour. She’ll be at it again in a couple of weeks. Her parents must be absolutely mortified. Surely, if she’s can’t do this anymore… she’d come off twitter, get a proper job.
Jack Monroe – non binary when it suits, all woman when it suits a different agenda. The autism/ADHD stuff is disgusting; she will never have to worry about her future or how her autism will hold her back or make her parents worry for her safety for the rest of her life.
I suspect Jack spent a short time on benefits after quitting her job but still had the support of her family and baby’s dad. Far more than some other people in abject poverty have. In keeping up this tale she is selling her family down the river. How embarrassing.
Today Jack will wake up smug that the naive fans are worried about her, then gently bring out the tip jar. Unfortunately she still has to wake up as Jack Monroe.
Helping people? I get that some of her Patrons are happy to give her money for nothing but plenty aren’t happy that she has grifted money from them. In addition many people are distinctly uncomfortable that this money has been grifted from vulnerable individuals and families.
The French love massive demonstrations, but such events rarely change anything, not on their own.
When did huge marches in the UK change anything? A million marched against war in Iraq. Result— nothing. A couple of hundred thousand marched against “austerity”. Result— nothing.
So long as “Jack Monroe” has 635 utter mugs sending her a total of anywhere between £2,500 and £30,000 a month, I doubt whether she will feel any pressure to get a job. In any case, it is hard to imagine the kind of job for which she might be qualified, even leaving aside her alleged drug and drink problems, and her peculiar mentality.
Some tweeters are enraged that “Jack Monroe” has (for the umpteenth time) used faked (probably faked, allegedly faked) physical illness or feared illness, and also mental illness including suicide hints, to garner sympathy, deflect from her fraudulent or near-fraudulent “grifting”, and also to collect even more money from naive people on Twitter etc: see below
You have lied to take money from vulnerable people, to pay for addictions and compulsive spending, you have fucked up every opportunity given to you and you have bragged about it in the @guardian. Now you are being abusive and manipulative.
CPTSD, Cancer, all these things are serious. VERY serious. Not shiny badges like your expensive clothes, art and sideboards, so you can wear them on twitter- these are REAL problems. Real illnesses. You are an addict and are not ill. You had too much money. Now you dont.
You are an influencer with half a million followers, many vulnerable, and you are using suicide to get attention because your behaviour is so bad that there is nothing else you can do. You dont care who that harms, triggers or whose suicidal ideation you compound. You should.
EVERYONE now knows @bootstrapcook. You are a dangerous irresponsible cokehead, who has made and spent a fortune from other peoples poverty, and the latest attempts to abuse and manipulate using suicide are irresponsible and dangerous but no surprise to anyone.
Why tweeter “@Calderpeople” thinks that “Jack Monroe” has no money any more, I have no idea. After all, the 635 Patreon mugs are still presumably paying up, and the Thrifty Kitchen book is out, though I suspect not selling well; I believe around 400 copies, including Kindle, per week. I may be slightly out, but think that each sale gets the authoress about £1, though possibly less, possibly more. See https://www.societyofauthors.org/Where-We-Stand/buying-choices/How-do-authors-get-paid.
That is on a price of £9.99 for the hardback, the original cover price of £19.99 having been abandoned, in effect.
I do think that the msm has almost dropped “Jack Monroe” now. I notice that, apart from the Independent, the newspapers have not much covered the release of the book; a few fairly low-circulation magazines have.
I was surprised to see how small she is, even up against the TV people, who are not giants:
Was someone that tiny really trained (for a while), and as she claims, as a firefighter? To me, that seems very doubtful.
“Anthea Rogers” (possibly “Jack Monroe” in disguise) weighs in:
Oh you mean like our ex PM and Chancellor?? The former cannot live off a salary of £100k+ plus speaking fees. The ex CX owes HMRC £4.8 MILLION & you guys are endlessly bitching about JM. Jeez.
Two cheeks of the same arse, Tories and Jack Monroe. If austerity didn't exist, neither would they/she or their grift. She/they've done very well out of it. Shame about those who were taken it and donated. Often poor and vulnerable people.
I love the idea that Jack Monroe is somehow important enough to divert attention from the exPM etc. She's really not 😂. Outside of twitter barely anyone knows who she is. And as you say you can be mad at the Tories and £20/week Jack.
A word about the alleged cocaine abuse by the “Bootstrap Cook”: I find it interesting that (until recently) she was being supported publicly by the Jewish TV cook, Nigella Lawson, and by the (also Jewish) food critic Jay Rayner, as well as by Tom Parker Bowles (food writer, and son of Queen Camilla).
As for Nigella Lawson, she has admitted that she has (“in the past”) abused cocaine and other drugs on a number of occasions (read “regularly“?).
Then we have Tom Parker Bowles. God knows what Brigadier Parker-Bowles, his father (who was Commanding Officer of the Household Cavalry and Silver-Stick-in-Waiting to the late Queen Elizabeth), thinks of his son’s choice of career. Not that it is inherently bad, and it must be lucrative, but I wonder all the same whether there is parental disappointment.
4. To get rid of the groundwater that fills Clive’s well and that Clive uses to grow fruit, vegetables, and flowers, developers installed at least 800 underground well points and pumped the groundwater out of the ground near Clive’s farm. pic.twitter.com/na2mtMkRPg
[houses built by Bloor Homes at “Northstowe”. Could the architect —if any—and builders have made them any uglier? They look more like buildings in some decayed area of local council housing. Where is the space for Nature? Who would actually want to live there?]
Until I am convinced otherwise, I remain of the view that there is some secret or semi-secret plan to move the centre of gravity of England from the London area to a belt broadly stretching from Oxford to Cambridge.
I first became interested in this when on the road rather a lot in the years 2002-2007, going to county courts all over the place. I noticed the amount of roadbuilding and road improvement going on in that Oxford-Cambridge belt north of southern England but south of the Midlands.
I later discovered that railway links were also being created or upgraded: see, eg, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varsity_Line [“There are funded plans for the entire line to be re-established by the “mid 2020s”, partly on a new route and under a new name – East West Rail” —Wikipedia].
There may be a plan, perhaps secret, to create an urbanized belt, or initially a linked series of urbanizations, as a fallback position should London and the southeast suffer damage through war or natural disasters.
Milton Keynes is halfway between Oxford and Cambridge, and has been greatly expanded in recent decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Keynes. I can remember when it was little more than a building site; that was in 1977. I hardly recognized it when staying in the city for a couple of days in 2007 (for a case at Milton Keynes County Court, something that did not exist in 1977 or even, as far as I know, 1987; I first visited the Court in 2002).
Guess who/what is the local councillor (with responsibility for planning the “Northstowe” area)?
[Tumi Hawkins: “LibDem District Councillor for Caldecote Ward, Cabinet Member for Planning at @SouthCambs. Chartered Engineer, Businesswoman. Jazzercise fanatic. Drummer”]
“I then became a property developer and investor, buying, selling and building/renovating property in Cambridgeshire and South Lincolnshire. I then moved on to ecommerce, developing our own range of dog skin care products selling on our website and on sites like amazon and ebay.” [Councillor Tumi Hawkins].
Take a look at the comments underneath her biography, comments by local people.
She seems to be unwilling to address the issues raised by local (English) people:
@CouncillorTumi has refused to meet with us to discuss these issues for the past 4 years.
Perhaps Jack could publicly disown the behaviour of these “fans” who are bullying innocent people who simply want a refund of the money which Jack has dishonestly kept.
This is what happens in (other) frauds such as Ponzi schemes. Any “investor” who makes a loud-enough noise is paid back, but most either do not ask for the money taken from them to be repaid, or the repayment demands are not loud enough.
“Jack Monroe” usually does this— either ignores questions and criticism, and tweets irrelevant rubbish, or snarls, threatening critics with Jew lawyers or “flying monkeys” (mentally-disturbed fans), or —in extremis— makes up a story of how she is suffering from an attack of a physical or mental illness. Who knows? She may actually half-believe that the illnesses are real; a psychosomatic reaction.
How much did you pay her in total, if you don’t mind me asking?
Refund update: It is now 78 days (or 11 weeks & 1 day) since @BootstrapCook Jack Monroe agreed to give me a refund for Patreon fees. I see she yesterday refunded someone else. It appears that small claims court is the way forward. With added statutory interest + my admin fee. pic.twitter.com/tH43ckeVm4
— Nikki Pilkington – non-wanky SEO (@NikkiPilkington) January 17, 2023
Jack Monroe has worked out how to refund people – at the literal last minute before legal action was commenced. Precedent is set – if you want a refund for her failure to deliver as promised, nows the time to hit her with the request & threat of MCOL if she fails to refund you. https://t.co/VE4K0BRJ6d
Jack Monroe has issued one refund. If it was anyone else I’d suggest giving them the benefit of the doubt, and time to get sorted. But she promised a refund 11 weeks ago and it seems it’s a narcissist control thing to keep the money when you clearly have them means to sort it.
One refund out of (presently) 635 utter mugs on Patreon, who are each sending “Jack Monroe” between £3.50 and £44 every month, and not forgetting the unknown number previously cheated by “Jack Monroe”, and who are now no longer sending her money; at one time there were 800 “patrons” —incredibly— largely because the Jewish TV cook, Nigella Lawson, helped to promote the whole “Bootstrap Cook” image. Nigella Lawson’s commendation of “Jack Monroe” is still on the front cover of the latest (and ludicrous) “Jack Monroe” book, Thrifty Kitchen.
Jack Monroe is a liar & scammer. She has been dining out on the promised “VBI” for nearly a year now. It doesn’t exist. She has not helped anyone with it. Also, she did not help the ONS as FOI have proven. Calling out scams and asking for refunds is not trolling or harassment. pic.twitter.com/0bbT4aYQAC
Afghan mother-of-two says living in London hotel ‘like a prison’ amid affordable housing shortage https://t.co/ly3mNtNFJo Another Afghan moaning about the FREE Hotel they have been living in being like a prison. Later on this month she will be in Parliament talking to MPs.
That tweet refers, of course, to Kurdish carpetbagger Nadhim Zahawi.
Of course they are hypocrites – Jesus I am old enough to remember Diane Abbott admitting her son went to a private school – it is always one rule for them and one rule for the rest https://t.co/rYq2HF0uG5
Yvette Cooper, Wes Streeting, Lisa Nandy, Angela Rayner…no wonder they take orders from the Jewish-lobby, aka Israel-lobby. They “need” the money from those slush funds to fuel their lifestyles (the lifestyles they keep hidden from the public gaze)…
Late afternoon music
[Eton College Chapel]
Late tweets seen
Jack Monroe is really trying to portray herself as frail and vulnerable. What she is omitting from this image is that she took money from vulnerable families. Money from disabled families. Deflect all you like Jack, people aren’t forgetting.
Jack Monroe is a well-paid poverty tour-guide exploiting the good nature of the less well-off to fund a frivolous and extravagant lifestyle. F@cking shambles of a person. Well done for calling her out.
Owen Jones, who wailed like a girl for two years that the economy should be trashed, people’s immune systems ruined, frontline care stopped, and everyone injected with poison, now tells us with a heavy heart that the current NHS crisis was avoidable. https://t.co/FVxVtNBdeP
In case some of you haven’t realised: nobody anywhere who hasn’t got this stuff in their body is going to suddenly decide to go out and get their first shot at this point. The damage is done. It’s about truth and justice now.
If you've ever donated to Joyless Moron, for him to lose another case, or that bird Jack Monroe, so she can buy another chair from Wayfair, or Dr JuJu so she can send well-off doctors free coffee…..
Still the most shocking Jack Monroe lie ever, trying to say she was a firefighter and on the scene at Grenfell. She tried to delete this disgusting lie filled blog post, but luckily it was archived so it'll never go away. https://t.co/4NaCG4vUqz
It seems to me that the msm, and its “celebrity” endorsers such as Nigella Lawson, have already moved on from “Jack Monroe” but that, at the same time, a hard-core of loony “LGBTQXYZ” types, would-be “socially-progressive” wishful thinkers, naive mugs and/or “fans”, mostly “of a certain age” will continue to tweet in support of her, and that quite a few “mugs” will continue to send her money via Patreon. After all, no less than 634 utter mugs are (as of today) still signed up to send her between £3.50 and £44 each month, despite the disclosures on Twitter, Tattle, and in the msm.
All this talking about paint colours, covenants and landlords. @bootstrapcook wouldn't be accustomising people to the fact she's buying property, without actually saying so, so that it appears old news when the paper trails emerge, and reduce the difficult questions, surely
It would seem that Jack Monroe is trying to deflect from the issues of the patreon refunds/goods, ❄️ and sideboards debacle and the dangerous book by asking people for paint ideas, not gonna wash Jack. People won’t forget. #JackMonroeLies
But that's the point with JM. She writes blogs claiming she can't afford shampoo or shower gel and loads of people send money believing they are helping her get through a tight spot and afford the basics. Then it turns out to be untrue. It's dishonesty.
I may be wrong, but I have wondered whether “Anthea Rogers” is in fact “Jack Monroe” herself. Maybe, maybe not.
Anthea, come on. It's here in black and white. Stop the cult-like behaviour and see what's under your nose. Appreciate that you're coming from a good place but you're enabling dishonesty. pic.twitter.com/fZOwqixs9T
Here we go again, Jack Monroe threatening someone (who called her a grifter) yawn. Wonder if she’s feeling nasally today? ❄️ pic.twitter.com/1MP70cZCBa
Once again, a tweeter alleges (by innuendo) that “Jack Monroe” is or was a cocaine abuser. I should not be at all surprised, for several reasons.
@BootstrapCook has a LOT to answer for. This is a comprehensive study of Jack's own posts. Nothing is a fabrication apart from the tales Jack weaves. She is not a class warrior, she is not what you are led to believe. Read the blog and tell me different. https://t.co/HFD1GjE4V0
Import corrupt non-whites to the UK, allow them to become businessmen, MPs, government ministers, and guess what happens? They import, with their selves, their behavioural tendencies.
Why do they always have to come to a European country to succeed? If they're so talented and special, they can do it in their country.
Harsher than would be my judgment, but they have a point— it shows weakness. In any case, though he often —not always— writes sensibly, Hitchens is “conservative”, perhaps, but not “national” or nationalist: see https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/05/19/peter-hitchens-and-his-views/
Only social nationalism can save Europe now.
Never forget what they did to our children.
Girl cries "no, please! no, please! I don't want it, please!" while 5 masked hospital workers stand over her and force the COVID vaccine.
When I was a child of just 12 (late 1968), higher forces impinging on my consciousness probably saved my life.
It happened like this: my family lived at the time on the Cremorne/Mosman border in Sydney, Australia. We decided to go on holiday to Queensland by car, a long journey even now, but longer then, when there were no motorways, only a seemingly endless highway with one lane on each side. No particular destination, but in the end, we washed up in Bundaberg, after 800 miles of motoring in the family Ford Falcon.
[1960s Ford Falcon, Australian version; my family’s one was white, though]
The 2-3 day trip had not been without incident or interest. As said, no motorways or dual-carriageways in Australia then, once outside Sydney. The highway took us north, past small encampments of Aboriginals in Northern New South Wales, and also past the banana groves of the region.
The traffic was light, at times very light. At one point, our car was told by police to drive quickly through a limited area of bushfire on both sides of the highway.
[Gold Coast highway, c.1965, about three years before I saw it]
“The South Coast region was a very popular holiday destination for servicemen returning from World War II. However, inflated prices for real estate and other goods and services led to the nickname of “Gold Coast” from 1950. By the 1960s the Gold Coast’s infrastructure had grown considerably, and the local building industry was able to support the development of high-rise holiday apartments and hotels (the first of which, Kinkabool, was completed in 1959). Surfers Paradise had firmly established itself as the leading destination and the introduction of bikini-clad meter maids in 1965 to feed parking meters by the beach to prevent holidaymakers from getting parking fines was a particularly popular innovation.”
[Queensland State archives]
In fact, I never heard that region called “Gold Coast” then, but only “Surfers’ Paradise” or simply “Surfers’“.
Now, a large city (600,000 pop.) exists there:
[the Gold Coast as it is today]
[Gold Coast panorama, 2015]
We travelled on through long stretches of sugar cane.
The Millard family holiday in fact nearly ended disastrously when, just after the swift near-tropical darkness had fallen, a slow-moving freight train, carrying sugar cane through the night, just missed the car as it crossed the track. The level crossing had neither lights nor barrier, and not even a warning sign.
I say “near-tropical” because this was about 200 miles south of the Tropic of Capricorn.
[central Bundaberg as it now is; the population is now 70,000]
I wandered around under the coconut palms, having a near-miss when a heavy coconut in its fleshy surround crashed down, missing me by inches. A quiet beach on the Coral Sea, with hardly anyone there except a handful of families in tents and, nearby, a small cafe or snack joint of some kind, right by the beach.
The next morning, I felt unwell, and, oddly, told my parents, really insistently (I remember that), that I needed to go to hospital. What prompted that request I have no idea. Guardian angel? Instinct? The pain was (if I recall) not too bad, just a dull ache most of the time.
Anyway, after initial thoughts from my parents that I just needed rest in the heat of the Queensland summer, my mother reluctantly drove me to Bundaberg, where it was soon established at the General Hospital that I needed an emergency appendectomy. Apparently, had the appendix not been extracted, I might well have died.
I was in the hospital for nearly two weeks (that was more common back then), and was then flown back, with my younger brother, to Sydney via Brisbane (where we transferred to a large Boeing jet).
At that time, Bundaberg’s airfield had only a kind of hut as the “terminal”; and I was one of only a very few passengers on the propeller-driven plane, a Fokker Friendship with about a dozen or so people aboard (it had come from other coastal towns first).
My parents and youngest brother drove back to Sydney later; they probably recalled the holiday very differently to me.
[Bundaberg Airport today. It was redeveloped in 1986, and is now a far cry from the short strip and “terminal” hut of 1968, outside which was a flagpole, its flag lifeless in the near-tropical heat]
Anyway, the incident has always stuck in my mind as exemplifying how the overmind, or “higher forces” (?), can sometimes save people from injury or death.
I have had other such, though non-medical, “saving graces”, including one in Ireland in 1979.
More tweets seen
It’s not the first tragedy of this kind. Russia doesn’t target civilian objets. Only dual-use infrastructure to weaken military capacities of Kiev regime. If Ukrainian air defense wasn’t stationed in densely populated areas in breach of intl humanitarian law it wouldn’t happen. https://t.co/G2O1r2agE2
Russia would not have started the provoked SMO and missiles would not be flying over Ukraine today if Ukraine had adhered to the Minsk agreement, which would not have been necessary if the US had not illegally overthrown the Ukrainian govt in 2014.
I heard on the radio yesterday that the UK is getting even deeper into the Ukrainian war by sending the Zelensky regime 12 (it now seems 14) Challenger 2 tanks. Old but certainly serviceable. This gets close to being actually at war with Russia. Madness. I may not much like London and some of the areas around it, but I still would prefer them not to be destroyed by a nuclear attack…
The reaction of the Zelensky regime is that it wants 300 tanks! Their ghetto negotiating style would be funny were it less offensive.
Where would the Kiev regime be without Western aid constantly stoking the war? In Lvov, if not Warsaw, probably. This was a failed state even before the war. Now it may have arms and ammunition funnelled to it by the Western powers, but 20% of the population is outside Ukraine now; the country is largely without electrical power; it has few gas supplies; it cannot manufacture; it cannot export much of its continuing agricultural production.
The only answer (saving Russian occupation of Kiev, Odessa and the territories east of the Dnieper) is for there to be a ceasefire on both sides, pending negotiation of at least an armistice and a freezing of the actual hostilities on both sides.
Well, this week a modest 6/10. Still enough, however, to beat political journalist John Rentoul, who scored 4/10.
I did not know the answers to questions 4, 6, 8, and 10. I should have known question no. 4 too, having been there as a child and I think maybe even having been on that canal.
Pseudo-liberal scribbler wants less freedom of expression online. Was there ever an era in which so many self-describing “journalists”, “creatives” and, indeed, “radicals”, wanted not more free speech but less?
Sic transit gloria mundi… Paul Johnson, almost if not actually obscure to the public of 2023, was a major political, or socio-political, voice in the 1980s, 1970s, and indeed 1960s. I can recall seeing him on TV in the early 1970s, sternly extolling the potential virtue of having a State-controlled or subsidized newspaper which would be such a newspaper of record that it would only print the unvarnished truth of what had happened in the world. As people say, “good luck with that“… That TV chat was, of course, some years before Johnson turned away from socialism, and embraced Thatcherism.
I heard little of Paul Johnson in the 1990s, and his star faded (in the public eye) to the extent that I was actually surprised, some years ago, to discover that he was still alive.
The type of person who thinks his own views terribly important, to the extent that at least some others in the msm or System politics also think him important for a while, more important than he really is. Still, a prolific author, and certainly someone who influenced the uplands of British thought, though not the views of the man-in-the-street, for several decades.
It could be said that the meaning of the words “Simon Danczuk” is “disgraceful“.
Rassenschande…
How much did the freeloading bastard get from the Daily Mail? He was always in the pocket of the Jewish lobby, so I expect that he gets a few crumbs thrown to him.
Incidentally, the bastard is ten years younger than me but looks ten years older. His life and lifestyle have caught up with him.
At least his godawful ex-wife, Karen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Danczuk, is now forced to read about him while sitting on the dole in depressing Manchester. Thank God she failed to follow Danczuk into the Westminster monkeyhouse (which seemed quite likely at one point).
On the facts, certainly murder, not manslaughter. The jury must have been idiots. How was that not “intending to kill or to cause really serious injury [the victim then dying as a result]”?
Incidentally, I was just watching a 1970s episode of Crown Court, the facts of the case revolving around an overworked and slightly disorganized Accident and Emergency department of an NHS hospital. Plus ca change?
I blogged recently about how I refused the “vaccines” for “Covid”, and —despite a now rather unhealthy and sedentary overall lifestyle— am still fine, whereas my two brothers in the UK and Australia, lifelong sports and golf players, were both “vaccinated” and “boosted”, and both (in the same week last year) had to be taken as emergency cases to hospital, having had heart attacks (btw, both now OK after having had heart by-pass operations).
Co-incidence? Karma? Or what? I know what I think.
This is an old Israeli strategy. Hired photo shoots, hot girls playing pretend, young men suddenly interested in signing up.
“The Harry Formerly Known as Prince” and “Meghan Mulatta”. What a bad joke it all is.
I wonder if I spend money in my work's business account and then simply go "oops I'm a chaos" whether my boss would simply ruffle my hair and go duh, what are you like or report me to the police? #jackmonroe#griftykitchenpic.twitter.com/0nIPi81xZe
I see Jack Monroe is off her tits being an absolute wanker on Twitter again. If only she had the time to sort out Patreon or promote her absolutely bombing book #ThriftyKitchen#griftykitchen#jackmonroetips
Whilst your doing that can I politely ask you to process my patreon refund of £50 ( I have emailed you twice , regarding not receiving anything from you . I was a patreon subscriber from Jan 22 to May 22 last email I told I would have to go to the small claims court otherwise ). pic.twitter.com/ZpAzHfuI6b
Here we go again, Jack Monroe threatening someone (who called her a grifter) yawn. Wonder if she’s feeling nasally today? ❄️ pic.twitter.com/1MP70cZCBa
As yet, and as far as I know, the Jew-Zionist self-publicizer and resident of Israel, Mark Lewis, who was her solicitor on a previous occasion years ago, has not come out of his kennel in recent months to defend the “Bootstrap Cook”.
“Jack Monroe” was threatening to sue Con Party MP, Lee Anderson, in May 2022, and all her friends in the newspapers were writing about it, but since then it has transpired that not only has she not taken even the first steps to suing Anderson, but that she launched a crowdfunder in May 2022, and raised money on that basis to sue Anderson (and the commentator Martin Daubney), but has kept those monies for her own use, as far as can be seen.
The police should be investigating “Jack Monroe” on suspicion of having committed fraud.
Another idea struck me.
“Jack Monroe” lives in Essex, in the Southend area. Her father is a rentier who rents out a number of houses there. He was, I read, once a fairly high-ranking member of the fire brigade there, and also holds an MBE. He may (I do not know) be a freemason, as also are so many responsible officers of the police. Is that a factor in “Jack Monroe” not being (as it at least seems) properly investigated? Again, I cannot say, either way.
I'll raise you a retweet of a retweet. Eagerly awaiting a visit from the Essex Celebrity Twitter Police Squad (another proven Jack Monroe lie thanks to Freedom of Information Act queries).
Or maybe “Jack Monroe” is just not a “celebrity” any more, and so the non-existent “Essex Police Celebrity VIP Twitter Squad” can no longer give her special attention (as “victim” of the emerging truth)? (Only taking the joke further…).
I, on the other hand, find it odd how so many of the remaining hardcore “Jack Monroe” supporters are zealous supporters also of the present inflated nonsense around “LGBTQXYZ”.
I still remain interested as to why there are, as it certainly seems, no young or even young-ish (say under-30, under-40) “Jack Monroe” supporters, and no ethnic minority supporters either, with the exception of a handful of Greek Cypriots I have noticed on Twitter (she herself is half-Greek Cypriot, her original name having been Melissa Hadjicostas).
I have previously suggested a couple of reasons why no ethnic minority people seem to support the “Bootstrap Cook”, one being that many of them know real poverty only too well to accept her nonsense, and the other being that few of them would look at the food of “Bootstrap Cook” with anything other than contempt.
There may be other reasons.
Unbelievably, there are, as of today, 634 utter mugs still sending between £3.50 and £44 a month each to “Jack Monroe”. No wonder she can spend money like a drunken sailor! The puzzle is why so many apparently crazed virtue-signallers want to enable it.
As blogged previously, I am all in favour of the NHS principle of “free at point of use”, but the fact is that the NHS, as it is (i.e. not in theory), is simply not working. Not working properly, and scarcely working at all.
It may well be that more money is required, but even now the NHS consumes nearly half the governmental budget (I see 44% as the proportion).
It may well be that nurses should be paid more. What about doctors? I see that GPs are mostly paid over £100,000 a year, some over £200,000, and for a service that is now lamentably poor.
As for hospital doctors, though the most junior (in the first year) receive only about £32,000 p.a., that rises rapidly to over £50,000 and, for consultants and surgeons, well over £100,000.
Ambulancemen (paramedics), (and women), get more than nurses, and do (from what I have seen) a very good job indeed.
As said, nurses and paramedics have a case for wanting more pay, but I cannot see it as morally correct for them to strike, leaving patients without care, even with some kind of skeleton service still running.
As for the NHS generally, it plainly needs to be changed to a service that genuinely puts patients first.
In the past decade, I have seen enough (though not as patient) to convince me that the maladministration in the NHS has to be rooted out. I should say that that is the main problem, not the staff as such, and not money as such.
Few people would want the UK to have an American-style health service, though it also has merits, which I saw when my first wife (an employee of the U.S. Federal Government) needed urgent surgery— and had it within a day or so of being admitted to hospital, and she was admitted the same day that she experienced pain bad enough to seek help. In the UK, that surgery would probably have taken weeks if not months to organize.
Likewise, I recall that my first wife was advised, on another occasion, to get a scan, and was given a choice of five hospitals within a 20-mile radius of home. The same year (1990 or 1991), King’s College Hospital in South London, a major UK teaching hospital, had to have a public appeal to buy a scanning machine, and that appeal ran for several years.
Again, the wife of a friend of mine in New Jersey was paralyzed after a woman driving a car in a supermarket parking lot (at only 5-10 mph) drove into her bicycle. Thanks to being heavily insured, my friend’s wife was able to stay at the Kessler Rehabilitation Center, where the Superman actor, Christopher Reeve, spent time a few years later [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Reeve#Hospitalization]. An excellent “facility”, as Americans say, and in heavily-wooded and peaceful grounds.
Still, the American system, under which about 40%-50% of the population are uninsured or under-insured, is unjust, and not what we in the UK would like to see.
There are, however, alternatives. The French system, for example (which I have also seen a little) seems to be far better than the NHS and, to take just example, has done away with “wards”— patients almost all have their own rooms, or shared rooms, and have done for about 40 years.
A friend in Brittany when I myself lived there (pre-2010) suffered from a heart condition and had already been treated by the NHS. On seeing the French specialist for the first time (taken the 50-mile journey to Brest and 50 miles back by taxi, at State expense, incidentally, rather than having had to drive himself), he was asked what medication he was presently prescribed, and replied. The French consultant raised his eyebrows and said “I think that we can do a little better than that“…
We are often unaware to what extent the NHS rations healthcare; the more advanced techniques and drugs available elsewhere are often not available on the NHS.
What we need is to keep the “free at point of use” principle, but ring-fence an “NHS tax” from income tax, so that those monies are usable solely for and by the NHS, not diverted to “aid” for the Jew Zelensky’s dictatorship, not diverted to other projects or services etc.
Also necessary (to some extent), along with better administration, is attitudinal change in some staff.
If they really received the full ration (call me a cynic…).
'It's the BBC and they're so out of touch with what the audience wants and needs. To do this is expensive stuff… The BBC pays for this out of our taxes.'
What use is SIS/MI6 when it has neither the will nor the capability to bump off Shamima Begum and her sort? Especially when it also failed, inter alia, to predict the fall of the Shah of Iran, failed to predict the Falklands invasion, failed to predict the fall of socialism (inc. the Soviet Union) etc.
SHOCKING! Who would produce and sell poisons for wildlife? The most unimaginable and cruel death for a wild animal. Who would produce and sell poisons for protected species? FABER it seems. DISGUSTING pic.twitter.com/MMfIirTsaE
@BadgerTrust stated that aware, are working with relevant authorities, and are asking that we don't post links to products. Posts elsewhere state that it's a scam.
American. Don’t know if lawful in the UK. If lawful, should not be.
It’s not Faber but FERBER. Read their website blog – lists everything from jays to weasels and pretty much all “insects” as dangerous, disease carrying pests. The hedgehog bait is particularly sickening #Natures_Voice#RSPBEngland#hedgehogsociety#wildlifetrusts
“The NHS has been accused of ‘wanting less and less’ to do with patients after it advertised a series of remote-only GP roles for £85 an hour.
The work from home job offers general practitioners a three-month contract with the chance ‘to provide online digital consultations’ via video or phone calls to patients, with pay of just under £3,000 a week or almost £13,000 a month.
It comes amid mounting evidence that ‘telemedicine’, while convenient for doctors, can be ‘disastrous’ for some patients.”
I wonder why @guardian, having fronted @bootstrapcook on its Saturday magazine, didn't include any of her 'recipes' in the Feast supplement which concentrated on thrifty meals that week? (Although thank god for all mercies)
Probably because the virtue-signalling Guardian readers, while pleased to have a copy of one or two “Jack Monroe” books prominently displayed on a kitchen bookshelf, are certainly not going to actually make, let alone eat, her swill.
One of my favourite things about the growing scrutiny of conwoman Jack Monroe is the screenshots & archives. She might go on deleting sprees to try and hide the truth about her scamming, but the receipts are all there. https://t.co/KyEjmGyU47
Some stuff about the Guardian article on Jack Monroe bugged me. So, spent some time reading what her critics say. @AwfullyMolly has some useful info: https://t.co/HhdjRrMAdn
I shall look forward to that. All the online “grifters” should be rooted out. Ausrotten!
And this is the point that goes under the radar and that the blue tickers don’t check: the recipes often don't work, are time consuming and inappropriate. See @AndyLynes and Tattle for examples.
At @Depheruk it is so important to us that those that get help from us know that there are accessible resources they can turn to AFTER they receive help from us🫶 pic.twitter.com/qtDHP4hK77
— DEPHER Community Plumbing and Heating (@CPH_CIC) January 12, 2023
Late music
[Scottish Highlands: a 19thC baronial-style lodge]
“An obscure company has handed more than £340,000 to three senior Labour figures.
Analysis of political funding has revealed that MPM Connect Ltd has been the third-biggest donor to MPs since the general election.
It has given £183,317 to shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper, £100,000 to former South Yorkshire mayor Dan Jarvis and £60,000 to health spokesman Wes Streeting.“
'People were dying with flu between 2020 and 2021, but they were being labelled as Covid…when are they going to talk about the excess deaths?'@thecoastguy discusses whether the establishment are weaponising common illnesses to try and control us. pic.twitter.com/sxYk9xeNjT
Oxford is now emerging as a UK centre of resistance against draconian schemes (also coming to cities) that would force residents and visitors to obtain council permission / permits to drive along the city's main roads. Hundreds have turned out to start the fightback. pic.twitter.com/5NW6IbEbwT
I have been fighting the corruption of science for years now, starting when I realized that early treatment against C-19 was suppressed globally. Battling the rot at the core of the medical sciences has become my life's work. https://t.co/mB28GwJbbv
How many billions of single use face masks ended up in our oceans and landfill – thrown there by the same people who pretend to care about the environment… 😐😷🐋
Not that I disagree with him about Sunak’s “study maths until age 18” nonsense. The most important thing in that regard is to drill very basic maths (multiplication, subtraction, division) into pupils aged 7 or so. I constantly meet young and not so young cashiers at Waitrose who literally cannot work out how many lottery tickets are necessary for X-number of lines at Y-number per ticket. Some have to use a calculator!
Of course, “@TheFreds” are quite right: changing the colour of the deck chairs on the Titanic changes nothing but the scenery.
Because it's pathological. To see people presented with the lies and still say she's the victim of trolls is absurd. Some people won't accept the truth when it's staring at them, it's sad really that people prop up the lies.
Serious pathological/psychological condition, I think.
I posed the question weeks, and I think even months, ago as to whether “Jack Monroe” sometimes makes up things and rolls out a pack of lies almost daring people to accuse her of lying, as in (to take a few examples only) that she was “on the game” (prostitution) in Essex (by reason of impecuniosity), that she attended the Grenfell Tower fire (60+ miles from where she lives), was “waved through the police cordon” (oh yes, the police would really allow a stray interfering rubbernecker to go through…) and even had plans of the building (why would she? How could she?).
The “Bootstrap Cook” said that she was so poor that she had to sell her small son’s toy dinosaur, that she had to take out lightbulbs in order not to waste electricity, and that she had to boil soap to make shower gel (which does not even stack up logically, when 90p shower gel lasts for 1-3 weeks with daily use, and when boiling soap costs money in itself; and why not just use the soap instead of trying to make gel out of it?). Ludicrous.
On several occasions, I have been certain in my own mind that her lies must amount to her thinking “surely the sad bastards won’t buy this one?!“, and then they (those who defend her to the marrow) do buy whatever absolute crap she comes out with at any given moment; while also (631 utter mugs as of today) each sending her between £3.50 and £44 a month!
In other words, at times she is certainly, in the well-known phrase, “having a laugh”, a laugh at the expense of the mugs subsidizing her and the others promoting her, the latter including Nigella Lawson, at least a couple of Labour MPs, and of course the media rats from the Guardian, Observer, BBC and Channel 4.
I think that “Jack Monroe” lies mainly because she enjoys inventing a fake or 90% fake narrative, and because she enjoys making absolute mugs out of those who not only defend her as a supposed —if risible— “champion of the poor” but who also send money to her!
She herself has said recently that her basic lifestyle, inc. rent, utilities, food, adds up to about £4,000 a month. The 631 utter mugs subsidizing her are anyway sending more than that (I am guessing about £6,000 but it may be more) each month.
I have no idea who that particular mug is, nor whether his/her problem is a mental illness or just plain everyday stupidity, but imagine taking money off someone like that on the false promise/threat that Con Party MP, Lee Anderson, was going to be sued for stating, entirely truthfully, something along the lines of the assertion that “Jack Monroe” is basically a fraud (at very least, a “grifter”) “living off the backs of the poor“, which is exactly what she is and does.
It is obvious that “Jack Monroe” is not going to sue Lee Anderson and/or Martin Daubney, though she has hinted at “things going on behind the scenes etc”.
Rubbish. Technically, she has 3-4 months left before the one-year limitation applies, but Lee Anderson has apparently not even received any letter before action.
It’s another “Jack Monroe” lie, in other words.
I think that “Jack Monroe” has one main intent, which is to be the centre of attention. Nothing else. I believe, rightly or wrongly, that even the money she gets from mugs etc. is very secondary to that central narcissism.
Incidentally, the “media folk” are still promoting her— there are a couple of articles even today in the Metro newspaper, giving “tips” and a recipe, and no mention of the scandal(s).
Afternoon music
[Ava Gardner in Pandora and the Flying Dutchman]
Strange to see: I was just reading about Ava Gardner [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ava_Gardner] and saw that she died in 1990, aged 67, at at her home in Ennismore Gardens, Kensington (London), near Kensington Gardens, where she had lived since 1968. I never knew. Had I thought of it at all, I probably would have assumed that she lived in either California or New York City.
I have only been to that exact place once, I think; in the very early 1980s, with someone escorting the then Metropolitan of Kiev (a kind of Russian Orthodox archbishop, the second-highest prelate of that church) who was then visiting London. The Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Dormition is at the end of a kind of hidden-away cul de sac there. We dropped him there, and were invited in (no-one else was around, as far as I can recall). The Metropolitan kindly gave me a bottle of Moskovskaya vodka.
Winner of the first "chinny reckon, that never happened" award of the year goes to Jack Monroe who thinks you get bookings by being unmasked as a fraud, exposed as lying in the press with 6 negative articles in a matter of days, a flopped book launch, and dropped by an agent. pic.twitter.com/zwIdcNORil
In other words, only 1 person out of every 235 is on the side of “Jack Monroe” and her tweet.
Most supporters of the “Bootstrap Cook” effectively say, on the larger scale, “let’s bin the Tories. Once ‘Labour’ are in government, everything will be fine, or start to be fine“…
Does anyone with any sense actually believe that? The migration-invasion (both across the Channel and otherwise) will continue unchanged in numbers, and Rachel Reeves and her fellow Labour Friends of Israel MPs will be even harder on the unemployed, disabled etc than the fake “Conservatives” have been— she said so expressly.
In a binary political system, and one where both main System parties are really almost identical, you cannot change things very much by squashing one party at some election or other, because the other one is thereby strengthened, and the “Deep State” policies continue largely unchanged.
It would appear Tom doesn’t like questions or people pointing out he has deleted tweets. pic.twitter.com/yPbNbPTl9y
That Tom Doorley person is an Irish restaurant critic, who has been oddly biased in favour of the “Bootstrap Cook” for some time; see also https://www.tomdoorley.com/about.
Harry on Rebekah Brooks “an infected pustule on the arse of humanity, plus a shit excuse for a journalist.” Thats a pint in the pump for him. Well said son. pic.twitter.com/RMKnXz4qub
Ha. Well, there it is. For once I have to agree with “The Harry Formerly Known as Prince”!
More tweets
NEW: The far right group Patriotic Alternative Scotland is the subject of a counter-terrorism strategy involving the Scottish Government, The Ferret can reveal. https://t.co/1wpNEnPgkV
Unfortunately, despite being a lecturer, @ItsFreyaVass is only capable of responding to discussion through the medium of Gif. I suspect it's because she doesn't have a strong argument in defence of Jack Monroe's recent admissions.
It’s fine, she clearly thinks she has enough money to never have to feel like this and so is feeling smug. I hope she never has to deal with a sudden and disabling illness that takes away everything she has, like we had.
I just glad the uni I went to had a better class of caring staff and lecturers. I visited yesterday for something and it’s still a very special place to study and be supported.
You’re a very deeply troubled woman, you might want to take your employer off your profile as it really reflects badly on them. Harassing struggling people online isn’t a good look for anyone, let alone someone teaching others.
Even the authorities admit German cities on New Year's Eve were like "civil war". But the best they can do is propose a ban on fireworks. Given the vast amounts of real weapons leaking onto the black market from corrupt Ukraine, worse is to come. #Enochhttps://t.co/nOvhCVjXeZ
I myself am at present disinclined to bother with having my Twitter account reinstated (it having been “suspended” quasi-permanently after a pack of malicious Jews conspired to make a mass complaint in 2018).
“Germany and the US will send armoured fighting vehicles to Ukraine, the White House said, in a move that will deliver a big boost to Kyiv’s offensive capabilities.”
“Joe Biden and his German counterpart Olaf Scholz have agreed to send infantry fighting vehicles to help Ukraine fight Russia, a day after France said it would supply its own armoured vehicles to Kyiv in an attempt to create a breakthrough in the 10-month war.
The joint announcement followed a phone call between Biden and Scholz and amounts to a step change in western military support for Ukraine, which has asked for up to 700 armoured vehicles to help force the Russians out.
Ukraine has repeatedly said it needs 600 to 700 infantry fighting vehicles plus 300 tanks from from the west in order to give its military a chance of breaking through the increasingly fortified Russian positions along the frontline.
Until now, however, the US and Germany have been wary of supplying Ukraine with Nato-standard armour, because they feared it would be interpreted by Russia as escalatory. But the decision to supply western armoured vehicles is significant, even if both countries stopped short of sending tanks.“
[The Guardian].
At what point does Russia decide that it has no choice but to use massive force (nuclear or conventional) to raze Kiev and Kharkov to the ground, so that the area of Ukraine east of the Dnieper (about a third to half of Ukraine) can be later rebuilt, and occupied by Russian settlers?
That may sound almost impossible but is actually similar, arguably,to what happened centuries ago when the Cossacks were formed as a group, or connected groups, around the various rivers in southern Russia and Ukraine— Don Cossacks, Zaporozhye Cossacks, Volga Cossacks, Dnieper Cossacks etc.
Whatever the possibility of the above, there is no doubt that the supply of armoured vehicles, advanced missile systems, and tanks, to the Kiev regime constitutes considerable escalation.
In fact, one need not go back too far in history to find examples of Russian forces all but razing cities to the ground, then rebuilding them and filling them with the troops and civilians of loyal satraps: see Grozny in the 1990s— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grozny#After_the_wars.
“Afterwards, the Russians slowly entered the empty city and on 6 February raised the Russian flag in the centre. Many buildings and even whole areas of the city were systematically destroyed. A month later, it was declared safe to allow the residents to return to their homes, although demolition continued for some time. In 2003 the United Nations called Grozny the most destroyed city on earth.”
I read, re. Ukraine in 2023, that Russia has huge numbers of troops not “in theatre”, i.e. not (yet) in Ukraine. That may be because those troops are not trained enough yet, it may be because there are logistical problems in supplying them. If Russia can train them and supply them by next Spring or early Summer, then a vast offensive might be possible, to take Kharkov and even Kiev itself, though if the latter it would be a bloody battle, akin to Stalingrad in 1942-43.
In the end, Russia needs to take Kiev, Kharkov and, if possible, Odessa, along with surrounding territory. If it can do that, then it can write off Western Ukraine and its cities (chief of which is Lvov). That would mean continuing conflict with a regime which would be based on Lvov, but there would be little the Zelensky regime or its successor could do, with almost all Ukrainian cities of any size in Russian hands.
At this point, Ukraine is not a functioning state.
Those “FBPE” tweeters are nearly always absolutely stupid, and often rather unpleasant as well.
The idea that “Jack Monroe” has “worked tirelessly” on behalf of anyone other than herself is ludicrous.
I agree. Criticism and asking genuine questions is not abuse. The same things being called trolling this last week has now been addressed by the publisher and Trussell Trust. The book doesn't help poor people, it just makes middle class people feel better.
Tweeter “@codfather” is the usual “Jack Monroe” partisan: wilfully blind, a certain age (reading between the lines), reasonably affluent (ditto) and certainly not “poor”. Also, vituperative.
In fact, and as I started to understand some time ago, many of the pro-“Bootstrap Cook” tweets are actually from…”Jack Monroe” herself, pretending to be other people. So-called “sock accounts”. Not all, and I think not “@codfather”, but many others.
Jack Monroe continually claims to be the *only* voice for people living in poverty. Her ego knows no bounds. I'm staggered that she's STILL claiming to have made a significant difference to the lives of people currently experiencing hardship. Where's the evidence? #ThriftyKitchen
The sheer delusion that many “Jack Monroe” partisans seem to live in has to be read to be believed; look, for example, at the tweet belkow, from (supposedly) a “professor emeritus at Bristol [University]”:
What the professor fails to see is that “Jack Monroe” has only one achievement (two if you include persuading large numbers of msm people that her whole story is true) — making a pretty good living for herself mainly by tweeting personal trivia, and recipes which look as dire as they are deficient in nutrient.
As for “measurement of food price inflation“, the ONS has made clear that their one meeting with her (at her request) had no effect on any of their work, and was not even noted or recorded. The “Vimes Boots Index”, supposedly being “worked on” by “Jack Monroe”, does not even exist, in reality. So what is left is the commonplace observation that the cost of basic foods has risen faster than that of luxury items.
Once again, a “Jack Monroe” supporter turns out to be a “woke”, and comfortably-off virtue-signaller, in this case an academic, or retired academic.
As I have blogged before, I have so far seen not one “Jack Monroe” supporter who is under 30, is “poor”, or who has ever been in circumstances of real financial difficulty.
Interestingly, also, I see not one “Jack Monroe” supporter who is black, brown, or Chinese. As someone who wants the UK and all Europe to be European, that in a sense is not a problem for me, but is still an interesting thing to note.
My take on that is that the ethnic minorities are too down to earth (and many also with too recent an experience of actual poverty) to take “Jack Monroe”/”Bootstrap Cook” seriously. Also, many would not look twice at the kind of swill she seems to produce much of the time.
Honestly, this is one of the most shocking reversals of the truth I’ve seen in a while. Our government absolutely hates its own citizens. They despise us. And they use our taxpayers money to remind us of it in public spaces everyday. Shame on you @MinBZK. Shame on you, @MinPres.
Incredible!! As someone who cares about the planet. This is what I want to see. Not the #netzeroscam.. our environmental groups who cared about pollution and micro plastics have been hijacked by net zero fanatics pic.twitter.com/w8EoeLZW8j
The same is true in most areas. Politically too. Lenin was just one of a small number of marginalized exiles; Hitler was just an individual who was told to take a look at a tiny party, then joined it as member (possibly committee member) no.7.
Acorn—oak etc.
BREAKING: the Ontario College of Psychologists @CPOntario has demanded that I submit myself to mandatory social-media communication retraining with their experts for, among other crimes, retweeting @PierrePoilievre and criticizing @JustinTrudeau and his political allies.
It is an incredible fact that (what is left of) the print newspapers in the UK are still churning out “editorials” or “leaders” which hardly anyone reads and by which even fewer are influenced.
Ha. Back in the early 1980s, I knew a lady, a civil servant, who rented her basement flat near Central London to an actor well-known then in Australia, but obscure in the UK— Bruce Barry. I got to know him slightly.
At some point, maybe in 1984, Bruce auditioned for the part of Crocodile Dundee in the eponymous film. He told my friend, his landlady, that he had been shortlisted. The only other contender was… Paul Hogan. And the rest is history, as they say.
Bruce had spoiled his chance by going to the final meeting with the film people, at the Ritz in London, beautifully dressed (according to the lady I knew) but then enjoying “a liquid lunch“…
Bruce was fussy about food, living off wholefoods, nuts, avocado, and I think the occasional Australian steak, but drank too much. Drink and women were his downfall.
Not a bad fellow, though rather neurotic, and rather intense, in my view. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Barry_(actor). Bruce had come to London at the age of ~46 to try to break into musicals. His divorce in Australia had left his wife (or one of them) and teenage sons in the family home, apparently a palatial house with grounds going down to the waters of Sydney Harbour, while Bruce himself was left with little.
In London, his first part was the male lead in The Biograph Girl [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Biograph_Girl], a musical about Lilian Gish [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillian_Gish], which closed after (I now see from Wikipedia) 57 performances (I had thought, until today, after only a couple of weeks). Bruce had described it in hardnosed Australian fashion to my friend, the Civil Service lady, as “a bum show“, i.e. not much good.
I recall seeing Bruce on stage a couple of times, once at the Adelphi, in the Strand, where he was the second male lead in Marilyn! He played Andre de Dienes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_de_Dienes (though I cannot have been paying attention because until today I had thought he played Arthur Miller).
Bruce had very kindly given me two free tickets; I invited my mother, who lived in Surrey, and she enjoyed it. Musicals are not really my thing.
The other time I saw Bruce Barry in performance was at the Australian High Commission in London. I think that it was called An Evening with Bruce Barry, and was very good. I attended with the Civil Service lady, and met the real Australian Cultural Attache, who perhaps unsurprisingly was a very pleasant diplomatic fellow, and not a bit like “Sir Les Patterson” as portrayed by Barry Humphries [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Les_Patterson].
Bruce had a girlfriend, a tall Australian dancer who had been a member of the Bluebell Girls ensemble in Paris. One day, Bruce returned to his flat to find her in flagrante with a third party. The end of the affair.
Bruce toured a bit around England with well-known stars such as Rula Lenska and Elaine Paige. I believe that that was in Evita. One star he disliked intensely, though, was Barbara Windsor. He was, apparently, not alone in that. Several disliked her tie-ups with gangsters etc.
In the end, Bruce Barry, having not quite broken through in the way he had hoped, returned to Australia, remarried, and had parts in quite a few TV shows, including The Flying Doctors [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flying_Doctors], where he played a landowner, I was told (I myself never saw it, though the series was shown in the UK).
The last I heard of Bruce Barry was that his second (or third) wife had divorced him, taken his home off him (as I heard it), and left him to drink and regrets.
Disgusting. And I'm talking about the craven masses who keep voting in parties and politicians who oversee such amoral cesspits formerly known as societies across the West
Don't you dare lecture me about the hypothetical dangers of political extremism as you tacitly endorse this https://t.co/bG1lK5RCNN
Said Eritreans should have been executed by firing squad in the main square of Stockholm; it would have been a deterrent to other migrant-invaders (prior to their mass deportation). Sweden is even more mad than the UK.
UK charities watchdog ‘assesses concerns’ about Campaign Against Antisemitism – https://t.co/6CaK4ug59y Commission opens ‘regulatory compliance case’ after complaints that the charity is politically partisan
Jack Monroe threatened and crowdfunded to sue Lee Anderson because he claimed she makes a fortune from the poor. Her talent agency today showed £10-£15k fees she charges for appearances etc. Tell me how what Lee Anderson said was libellous. #GriftyKitchen#ThriftyKitchen
In any case, why would “Jack Monroe” even go to the Grenfell Tower fire? She was never in the fire brigade, except as a civilian office bod answering the telephone in Essex (about 50-60 miles from Grenfell Tower) for a year or so, and years before the Grenfell Tower blaze. If she did go to Grenfell Tower (which I doubt), it could only have been as a “rubbernecker”, and the police would certainly not have “waved her through the cordon” as she claimed. She’s a fake, a total fake.
I’ve been reading @AwfullyMolly’s blog and have had my eyes well and truly opened! I feel for those who donated to Jack’s Patreon and didn’t receive anything in return, and refund requests have largely been ignored. #shameful
Someone should make a series on con-men, con-women, “grifters” etc. Hour-long episodes, each covering two or three perpetrators, a bit like the very interesting In Suspicious Circumstances presented by Edward Woodward [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Suspicious_Circumstances]. A favourite series, presently being repeated on satellite TV.
To be fair to Monroe, she does say in the book she adapts other recipes. Other recipe writers also use a similar process. The issue in this case is apparently targeting the book at less well off people and charging them for something they can get for free. pic.twitter.com/4GuXe8yZU2
At a guess, I should say that copies of Thrifty Kitchen will soon be on sale in charity shops for about 20p. At least “the poor” will then be able to read the book, should they be so misguided.
Prince Harry should be ashamed of his sorry self for that book.
Somehow he managed to go from a Prince to a whiny bitch in two years.
Men, watch how you marry. That Meghan girl got him all the way messed up in the brain.
Prince Harry, who constantly complains about the press invading his privacy, releases a book giving details about how he shagged some woman behind a pub, his drug taking, physical fights with his brother, and what his penis looks like. 🥴
Ha ha. Just thinking again about the very idea that “the poor” need to be advised (very negligently) that, if they have a can without a ring-pull, and cannot find a can-opener, that they should use a hammer (or mallet?) and large knife! “Jack Monroe” obviously thinks that “the poor” are all completely brainless, and either cannot think of that on their own, or think of how to get an opener (less than £1 in some places).
She might as well “advise” people to invest in a Swiss Army Knife (mine has a can-opener which does work, though it’s hard work). The worst “investment” is to buy her book, in my opinion.
Bluebird has issued a statement regarding “potentially risky” hacks and tips included in Jack Monroe’s latest book Thrifty Kitchen, confirming that changes are being made post-publication.
Once the book appears for 10p (at a stretch, 20p) in charity shops, which will be soon, I shall probably buy a copy just to give myself a laugh or two before I chuck it away.
That's not what she is saying. Jack Monroe has not been poor for a decade, but sells books full of ridiculous 'thrifty' (not) hacks and recipes that don't save money!! She's not authentic.
Shes admitted a lot of that is lies, eg she withdrew the prostitute story and changed it by several years. It was a fantasy she wrote for Pink News. Even accused Kris if being a client. Vile. Also withdrew the autism diagnosis story. Absolute congenital liar.
No she's from a millionaire family, her dad didn't put her out on the game as she disgustingly insinuates, nor is Kris a deadbeat dad she often libelled him – resulting in a settlement requiring her to print a retraction, which she did with an article praising him.
…and, so far, despite 3-4 months of Twitterstorm and offline criticism, her Jewish lawyer, Mark Lewis, a resident of Israel, and with whose name (by implication) she used to threaten people who called her fraudulent, has not once emerged from his kennel.
How the bloody hell does washing no frills spaghetti hoops make you a celebrity chef 🤦♀️ Jack Monroe still grifting. pic.twitter.com/V9g6GFZIjS
People bashing Jack Monroe for writing about her lived experience, sharing tips for free online, writing some books, fundraising to send 1000s of copies to foodbanks, and earning a few quid (royalties rarely make a living) clearly haven't heard of Michelle Mone.
a. much of her “lived experience” written about has been fantasy or lies; b. her “tips” are mostly worthless, or actually dangerous to health, or are obvious (eg “buy the budget range at the supermarket“); c. her royalties total around £100,000 to date; d. the monies from “fundraising to send thousands of books to foodbanks” seem partly, perhaps largely, to have been diverted into her own pocket; e. then there was the “sue Lee Anderson” crowdfunder scam; and f. the continuing Patreon scam, bringing her maybe £6,000 each month.
In addition to the above, it seems that, last year, “Jack Monroe” did a number of events, and getting, it seems, up to £15,000 each time.
Not exactly “earning a few quid“…
In any case, should a small-time robber get off just because a big-time robber down the road has committed a bigger crime?
She admitted its all a pack of lies years ago by leaking this photo, and others, but then goes back to the lie. Classic Jack. pic.twitter.com/jwNH0qYaDE
Some types of bungalow do have a room upstairs, of course. #MoralHighGround.
She tried to distance herself by the above quote by saying she was manipulated by a journalist into saying it… and then an audio recording of her actually saying it during a speech in Parliament emerged. Lots of forgetfulness.
Yep! There's a literal recording of her saying it. She went quiet after initially going off an a woe is me rant about her young naiviety and cruel journalist manipulation.
Calorific content. I care because there are genuine poor people out there who deserve a voice that is being taken by someone pretending to be poor. I care because if someone is lying they should be called out on it regardless of what they are lying about. I care because…
She keeps being held up as an activist… but what has she actually, genuinely done? There are charities that do amazing work, that deserve the profile being given to JM. I care because, if you are poor and desperate, buying a cookbook is the last thing you’re going to do.
Fine on £20 a week. Which is false, because her recipes never come to £20 a week, that’s also a lie. I care because I have morals. I care because I’ve known people to struggle. I care because even the trussel trust keep distancing themselves from jack monroe ffs.
Truth: Jack Monroe's dad was not just a firefighter, but a senior manager: https://t.co/AJVs5FR7xs Previously, he was in the armed forces and served in the Falklands. As a veteran, he would/will receive a pension for this on top of his salary.
Just looking again at the Twitter profiles of those who are the angry supporters of “Jack Monroe”: “professor emeritus” (ie retired academic), “noise consultant“, “retired HR lady“, “small businessman“, “writer“, “writer and photographer“, “part of brilliant Marketing Team“, “Pagan…therapeutic counsellor“, “#ACAB #BLM, Rape/Cop apologists blocked, TERFs blocked“, “novelist“, “High Profile hard left twitterer“, “Mother of Mayhem, Psychology student, Not Jack Monroe, Maybe“, “I’m a doctor but not working clinically” [i.e. another “grifter”], “fandom old, makes various media“, “BSc Psychology. History MA. Labour Party Member. MA Creative Non Fiction“, “Widower, autistic, stroke survivor. Tofu eating, Woke Corbynista“, “Labour & Co-operative MP for Oldham West & Royton | Chair, Co-operative Party | Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs” [n.b. if he cannot see through the “Jack Monroe” nonsense, Jim McMahon is unsuitable as MP and possible government minister], “Academic, political theorist, educationalist, former Pro-Director Education at LSE, HoD Department of Government LSE. ‘Woke Realist’ in a good way. Grandfather“, “Writing, blogging married mum of two boisterous boys..Tweets powered by Diet Coke, Earl Grey and wine“, “Educator/Writer/Student“, “Bristol based Graphic Designer. Gets giddy over lovely paper and buttons“, “*Producer|Cam|Editor *PhD #VR@ExeterDoctoral (yr 3, on hold) *Support Worker (#autism)“, “Nature, landscape, holloways, streams, printmaking. Wild swimmer & pluviophile“, “Founder & M.D of the Rabble Chorus, a lovely crowd of 350 community singers, open to all who fancy a bit of music on the side. Environmental activist, musician“, “Books. Music. Language. Science. Theology. Family. Talk. Think. Opinions my own. Pilot and PhD researcher (human factors and linguistics)“.
And so on.
Taken in a line. Just look at them. Not a steel worker, nurse, bus driver, train driver, cleaner, carpenter, plumber or the like among them. The “working class” seems to be absent.
Certainly not absent are the Guardian-readers, small business owners, suburban housewives (who prefer some other designation), well-paid freelancers, retired people (who used to be academics or working in reasonably-paid office jobs etc).
Also well-represented are various species of “Looney Tunes”.
Also absent is anyone likely to be “poor”.
As blogged previously, all her partisans are pseudo-socialists and/or “poverty tourists”, most if not all rather comfortably-off, many either retired or otherwise economically inactive (though not short of money); and quite a few with obvious mental health “issues” and/or problems with rational thinking. Also, various loony “trans” supporters.
Disturbing to see a Labour MP in there too, one Jim McMahon [Lab. and Co-op; Oldham West and Royton].
This savage and unforgiving conflict will probably see huge escalation in 2023, especially in view of the refusal of the Kiev side to negotiate even a ceasefire unless Russian forces withdraw from all areas of mainland Ukraine and Crimea.
The Kiev side probably hopes that Putin will be deposed, and the war thus (?) ended. It may not work out that way, even if Putin does leave the scene.
The “Jack Monroe” Twitterstorm (etc) continues
Jack Monroe is a complete and utter scam artist. You know she’s forever begging her Twitter followers for donations? As if her royalties aren’t enough! Disgusting woman
A not atypical “Jack Monroe” supporter tweets. “Screenwriter and novelist” (unpublished?), and of a certain age. I have yet to see a Twitter pro-“Jack Monroe” defender who is either “young” (under 30) or in any way “poor”.
This comment is staggering. 'A desperate mum given a glimpse of hope' by a book of nonsense, by a grifter, and advised to do something dangerously stupid? No. They dont exist. @bootstrapcook is for giving the MC what they need, nothing else. https://t.co/c1dGTz0COt
I have covered the Monty Python-esque “Jack Monroe” “advice” previously, in several blog posts, so do not want to repeat it all today, but the sheer nonsense of it is incredible (e.g. make a dinner for 11p per head; e.g. open cans using a knife and a mallet or hammer; e.g. make a curry by mixing a tin of peaches and one of chickpeas with some curry powder, and heat in a microwave, etc).
The many tweets below are worth considering:
Hi Chris (or Chris's like minded followers)
Please answer this question asked in good faith.
Why is there so much anger directed at this person?
Is it not worthy of respect that they are at least trying to do something practical to help, whatever you think of them politically?
If JM was 100% transparent in regards to valid questions people have asked JM in respect of certain financial issues that are unresolved. I will give you two concrete examples out of 6 different ones that I recall 2/n
She promised her Patreon subscribers regular posts, regular recipes, essays, postcards, signed content etc all dependent on the value of your monthly subscription amount. There has been consistently over 600 subscribers 4/n
This alone, taking a baseline of all subscribers paying the lowest tier at £1 a month, that’s a minimum of £600 per month, multiply that amount by 24 months (TWO years of no content) that equals £14,400 over the two years or £7200 per year. 6/n
Very modest— I doubt that “Jack Monroe” is pulling in less than £6,000 a month from Patreon alone.
People just really haven’t pushed this issue for the last two years because of a combination of JM citing her ‘various different mental health issues’ on Twitter as well as other ‘issues’ and subscribers 8/n
Thought it would be or sound petty, for the remaining subscribers, they saw that others who did ask and challenge it on Twitter then JM would reply with a nasty comment & all of JM’s twitter followers would 10/n
One particular person who I am sure won’t mind me tagging them and I am sorry if you get piled on again is @frugally_minded who JM vilified and tweeted personal DMs where they explained that their partner 12/n
Didn’t want you to be piled on again like before because of JM but I really think that doubters need to see real people (victims) to realise that genuine people have been affected & treated appallingly before they see through the ‘they are all trolls & smears’ narrative
Having been “down there” in the pit of actual poverty a few times in my life (thankfully never for longer than a few months at a time), I am well-qualified to advise people how to really survive and even somewhat thrive in such circumstances, but I prefer not to publish openly my very valuable and learned/experienced advice. ‘Nuff said!
Many areas have started Food Pantries instead of food banks. These enable you to pay a small amount and access a variety of food on a weekly basis. Local churches often host these so ask your local one if they know of one.#realthriftykitchentips
Lol she tells people to rinse spaghetti hoops and reuse tumble dryer lint. As an actual poor person, I can’t say I’ve ever found a single tip of hers that was actually useful. It’s just drivel that impresses middle class people who imagine that’s how we live
Bcos she lies about being poor, being physically ill & mentally unwell to grift money from people who feel sorry for her. Cos playing as a poor person hurts real poor people bcos we’re told we should be able to feed a family for £20 /wk
She’s constantly pretending she’s been “driven off twitter” by bullies but she’ll be back in less than 48 hrs. As someone who does have ongoing physical & mental health problems, as well as autism & adhd, her BS is glaringly obvious to me. And it’s insulting
I notice that the number of “mugs” sending “Jack Monroe” between £3.50 and £44 each month via Patreon has now fallen to 623, as of time of writing; that’s about 25 fewer than yesterday. 25 mugs woke up (at last).
Stray idea
If you take as a notional starting-point the idea that there are about 40 million people of or over the age of 21 in the UK, and if you consider that the UK has an area of about 92,000 sq. miles, which is about 60 million acres, then that works out at, very roughly, 1.5 acres per person.
Now let us assume that the State took ownership over about 4%-5% of that land, in other words less than a tenth of an acre per person, allotted to any applicant such a plot, and let such people use the land allotted to them in a manner akin to an “allotment” (or, if they want, to do nothing with “their” land, which would help wildlife at least). It might have a huge effect, as well as helping poor people to feed themselves.
The details might need refining, and the concept would need organization, but I think that the basic idea would work.
Incidentally, if any object that the idea involves “expropriation”, I reply that that is so, but it would merely redress a small part of the balance from the time of the “Enclosures” of common land, and/or the “Highland Clearances”. The aim is, however, not backward-looking “revenge” but forward-looking policy.
“Santander is changing its degree requirements in an attempt to increase socioeconomic diversity in the workplace.
The bank will no longer require a 2:1 degree for graduates as recruiters try to find the ‘best candidates from a wide range of backgrounds’ – meaning those with third class degrees will now be able to apply.“
These are the type of backward bastards flooding into the UK with the acquiescence and/or connivance of the (((occupied))) “British” Government.
Maybe Santander will offer some of them a job.
More tweets
Careful. JM's got her lawyer @MLewisLawyer on speed dial. He advised me (via email) on a cival case. He "implored" me to pursue a bent predator cop – Civil lawyer advice that resulted in me getting sexually abused by another predator officer. https://t.co/zcVeTkJwUI
Ha. Not the only time the egregious and self-publicizing Jewish lawyer, Mark Lewis (now an Israeli resident and citizen), gave what at least some of his clients (as reported on Twitter and in the Press, and seen by me) regarded as duff advice.
A former Labour Party politician who resigned his cabinet position at Rotherham Council in 2015 amid reports that he 'pushed back' discussions on the ethnicity of grooming gangs now works as a senior diversity and inclusion manager in the NHS.
Incredibly, seems that that Twitter account is not a parody-account.
…and any parent who (as that one claims) forces his child to be the only one in his school to wear a facemask is not only stupid but cruel and/or crazy, and should face some kind of intervention by the school or others.
More tweets
Cary, the working class are irrelevant in all this, Jack Monroe is mostly a product for middle class consumption. She makes Josh and Tamara from Crouch End look and feel like they're 'street' and care about the poor without any real effort.
That has been my impression. Apart from which, this whole idea that “poor people” —or others— need books of recipes is rather odd in the age of the Internet, when thousands of recipes of all types can be accessed in seconds and without payment.
I see from Twitter that, in face of the continuing and indeed increasing Twitterstorm, “Jack Monroe” has, once more, tried two of her favourite tactics— feigning illness, and withdrawing from Twitter interaction until the hue and cry dies down. She has done that (combination) frequently before, the last time only a few weeks ago. She always returns quite swiftly, ready to ignore the many cries of “will you refund the money you took?“.
Cookery books are bestsellers, quite often, but I wonder how many people (I presume mainly women) buy them but then never actually use them to make things? Not a rhetorical question. I actually do not know.
I do recall seeing, as a child of 10 (in 1967), several massive coffee-table-size books in the kitchen of my aunt-by-marriage, in Mosman, Sydney. I still recall the title of one: Larousse Gastronomique [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larousse_Gastronomique]. A huge and thick hardback book.
I have no idea whether my uncle’s wife ever actually cooked anything. I certainly never saw her make anything there, and that kitchen was as pristine as the rest of her large house on the side of a bay (Middle Harbour). There again, she had a cleaning lady and no less than three Norwegian au pairs (there to “assist” with her two adopted children— a baby and a small child), so perhaps the lack of mess or detritus was not surprising.
There was in fact one time I when I saw the said relative make something; in a holiday beach house at Palm Beach (in the area now called the Northern Beaches, the very northmost part of the Sydney area, but it was not called that then). The food in question was lobster with home-made (I think) mayonnaise, the first time I had eaten either; consumed outside. I do not recall having either lobster or proper mayonnaise again until I was in my twenties.
She ignores & blocks anyone who asks for their Patreon rewards. She isn’t transparent with her charity contributions or her Patreon earnings and PayPal requests for legal action which doesn’t happen. And that’s without the wildly varying backstory.
Rishi Sunak and his band of merry men/women like Boris Johnson and the short-lived Liz Truss are a complete JOKE for this country! Yawn. I love this country and they have destroyed it.
Sunak is actually proud of having participated in the lockdown/shutdown of the “panicdemic”, and proud of having sprayed money around like a drunken sailor!
Meanwhile, sick people are not being adequately helped, migrant-invaders continue to be ferried across the Channel, many are suffering financially very much, and the UK’s environment is being degraded.
The “Jack Monroe”/”Bootstrap Cook” situation continues
People like this, thinking they're doing the best for the 'wonderful desperate people' at breakfast club. Now they'll be armed with thrifty tips and some extra smugness. pic.twitter.com/F4pyHKanJB
“@frugally_minded” is a woman who was cheated by “Jack Monroe”, and who, despite being now in a parlous financial state, has been refused a refund by the so-called “Bootstrap Cook”.
Yeah, it's vile. She's also sneered at social housing in other tweets, and said she was so relieved that she didn't have to apply for it. As well as being a habitual liar, she's a snob. Sadly, her fan base are mostly middle class people like her, and so they can't see through her
No, she regularly claims that she is working class – she isn't, she even describes herself as middle class. You don't suddenly become working class just because you signed on for a few months. She was never a single mum either – she's a co parent, and has supportive parents
She blocks anyone who asks reasonable questions about her patreon including those who've requested a refund, charity money, PayPal, backstory, and anyone who questions any of her provable lies.
I saw an interesting allegation, which may or may not be true, to the effect that “Jack Monroe” is now subscribing to her own Patreon donation appeal, in order to keep the numbers up and prevent the perception that she is being abandoned by her real donors (hundreds of utter mugs).
— ♥️ never Tory 🚫😡Toxic & Cruel. (@Politics1951) January 3, 2023
Quite. There are a number of recognized defences to an action in defamation, one of which is “Truth” (formerly called “Justification”).
Apart from that, as that tweet implies, many potential claimants (“plaintiffs”, as was) will not want their business and life generally, exposed to public view. That of course applies a fortiori to those who may have unethical, or even criminal, matters to hide.
There is a further matter, which is that a claimant claiming that he/she has been defamed will have to spend much money bringing the matter to court, money which can only be recouped (and it may not be) from a wealthy, or affluent, or at least solvent defendant, or one who at least owns valuable real property.
We hear much (mainly on Twitter) about how people can sue others using litigation insurance etc, or “pro bono” lawyers. It’s not as easy as that.
Firstly, litigation insurance will only be available where it is thought that a claim is not only well founded in law and fact but also where the putative defendant has assets, or income, that might satisfy any claim.
You can see where that leaves the “Bootstrap Cook”— up a gum tree. The last thing she wants is forensic and/or judicial examination of her allegedly dishonest and/or near-fraudulent “grifting” cottage industry.
In any event, most of those criticizing her probably have next to nothing, certainly not enough to satisfy the legal costs (and award of damages) flowing from a successful defamation action.
The house owned by Katie Hopkins had to be sold to cover both the actual award to “Jack Monroe” (£24,000) and the costs of the claimant (£300,000), most of which went to her lawyers, meaning to her solicitor and —I think, two— Counsel.
Incidentally, “pro bono” properly refers to cases taken by a lawyer for no fee, not the “no win, no fee” speculative type; as when one of my tutors at degree level, who was an Old Etonian, appeared pro bono for Eton College in a 1980s High Court matter involving, I believe, land and trusts.
Someone like me, without real property, valuable assets, or much of an income, is effectively “unsueable”, unless the claimant were willing to accept that any award made, and costs which might top half a million pounds (bearing in mind appeals etc) would be irrecoverable. Of course, what at least used to be called a “prohibitory injunction”, and/or a “mandatory injunction” (those being orders to prevent a repeat of any alleged libel, and/or to order the taking down of the libel complained of) might be ordered, true, but at what cost!
All those tips are good – nothing unsafe about them. My mum used to have a glass rolling pin to fill with cold water. We are so far removed from making things for ourselves, that it seems alien to us.
Because she's not helping only herself. She is patronising & adds to the narrative that the poor are stupid, when she calls herself a working class woman & takes up that space she takes it from actual working class women
So tweeter “@sarahcam3ron”, apparently one Sarah Cameron, thinks that “Jack Monroe’s” suggestion of using a mallet and a chisel or knife to open a can (when you can get a new basic tin can-opener for a little as £1 in a cheap supermarket, or a used one for 20p in a charity shop) is good advice for “the poor” (seen as a “huddled mass” yearning to be preached to). These “Jack Monroe” fans and partisans believe what they want to believe.
In fact, the same tweeter seems to think that the bad behaviour of “Jack Monroe” is de minimis in the face of larger injustices in society: see below.
Extraordinary unjustified cruelty against her, especially when so many people in power enable the deaths & suffering of 1000s. Tories prevent hungry children being fed, destroy the NHS, 1000s die from austerity & Covid. Jack writes a book, & she’s the villain. Ffs.
“Jack writes a book“? Try “Jack fleeces hundreds, indeed thousands, of people out of money most cannot really afford“. In any event her ‘recipes’ are largely carb-heavy slush that must be hard to stomach for many, from what I have seen.
Does anyone not totally loony think that a nutritious feed can be had for (as “Jack Monroe” claims) 11p per person? Even hardcore Con MP Lee Anderson only claims he can make such for 30p, and I (admittedly no cook) doubt whether anyone can make a decent lunch/dinner for less than about £1. I suppose a slice of toast with a Burford Brown very large egg on it— that would cost about 70p.
Frankly, I should rather have a peanut-butter and lettuce sandwich or two (cost? maybe 40p, if that) than any of the stuff I have seen from the “Bootstrap Cook”— and it would also remind me of when I was 10-11 years old and had that (with some slices of rock melon) every day at Middle Harbour School in Mosman, Sydney, in 1967, sitting outside in the warm sun.
Other tweets seen
Melibe viridis is a carnivorous sea slug with a gelatinous vacuum cleaner for a head. 😮 pic.twitter.com/STJbC1e2c4
.@seosquinn. Nobody has to take my advice. Hardly anybody ever does But the idea that a battle is now raging for the soul of Britain, which we cannot desert, is just piffle. What struggle there was ( not much) ended many years ago . People should stop dramatising themselves. https://t.co/ZhtW9RmgWv
It would not matter were a kind of mundane Ragnarok to take place, so long as the 1% —or 10%, so be it— of the population left at the end were relatively cultured, reasonably capable, and European.
What "disabilities", what "disadvantages"? It's not about envy, it's about morals and her lack of them.
Using disabilities as an excuse from reprehensible behaviour is vile. But many have come to expect that from Jack Monroe.
She even tried to make #Grenfell all about herself.
Her ‘alcoholism’ back story is riddled with so many elements that just don’t add up. 200 units of alcohol a week? Then stopping completely. I word in healthcare and this would literally kill her.
There are bigger issues facing the UK than “Jack Monroe” allegedly scamming a few thousand well-meaning or virtue-signalling “mugs” out of a total of maybe (?) £6,000 a month. Yes. No argument.
There are bigger issues facing the UK than “Jack Monroe” (to use the Essex argot) “blagging” her way to a mass media semi-“celebrity” profile in the Guardian or on TV. Yes. No argument.
Having conceded the above, I just find it absolutely infuriating both that that person seems to have cheated all those people, some genuinely “poor”, out of money, and also that the msm scribblers and talking heads in this country are so dim and negligent that they accept many poseurs and/or frauds at face value, without checking them out; and that applies not only to the “Bootstrap Cook”, but to many many others, from “Boris” Johnson and Iain Dunce Duncan Smith, Liz Truss and Woollyhead Trussbanger (Kwasi Kwarteng), to relatively obscure individuals such as Aisha Ali-Khan (featured on yesterday’s blog: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2023/01/02/diary-blog-2-january-2022-2/).
More tweets seen
@TrussellTrust having looked at the “tips” from @bootstrapcook in the book you’re planning to distribute to foodbank users I’m both concerned and deeply insulted. These tips are dangerous and patronising, as a food bank user myself I’d be insulted by this book.#thriftykitchenhttps://t.co/IMbrxeTfsa
No, you don't need to break your paring knife to open a tin: just buy a tin-opener—cheaper. You don't need to buy tins of spaghetti hoops & rinse them; just use dried spaghetti. Nor do you need to boil down soap to make shower gel; just wash with soap (which is no cheaper anyway)
As someone whose income is low & who has in the past been pretty skint (I was a dance teacher, guys), I empathise with poor people. But I also recognise that this has become another form of victimhood culture.
Awful too. Essentially saying that hopefully a book urging poor to budget better/embrace hideous 'tips' – supposedly purchased by those in poverty – will secure Monroe, from a middle class background with limited experience of poverty, a home. Mercenary! https://t.co/y5LDvlB73T
They are steeped in a long history of condescension and poverty tourism. Wealthy imagining poverty they'll never understand, judging behind thin veneer of helping, providing tips of no value because they write about an existence they've never had. It's harmful because rather than
challenge poverty it ultimately accepts it. Claims Italian meals can be had by poor from spaghetti hoops – ignoring lack of money to buy good ingredients, to travel, go to restaurants, even get a take away. It's a lie! Masks horrors of poverty to satisfy fantasies of wealthy.
“Jack Monroe” has surely descended into the realms of Monty Python now. Nutritious lunches made for only 11p a head, opening cans using a knife and a hammer, or mallet (the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, ROSPA, must love that one), and her various weird and not very wonderful “tips” reading like a dystopian Blue Peter charade.
I think that it is no accident that most of her supporters on Twitter seem to have mental problems of one sort or another. Many seem pretty stupid as well. Example? See below:
I spent about a month using my lads pen knife (that hook like blade similar to the bottle opener) to open cans when my can opener broke. I had the money to get one but just kept forgetting and I don't open that many cans without ring-pulls these days.
Ffs, of all the things to get angry about. It goes to show that those fuckers have never struggled…and to be honest neither have I to that extent but it doesn’t stop me imagining or empathising. Happy new year Jack Monroe x
People are angry about “Jack Monroe”, and the reason is that she has been making a good living by pretending to care about “the poor”, while taking money from, in some cases, genuinely poor people, and not even giving them what she promised, and because her food looks to many like “Mahashma Gandhi”, a dog’s dinner of beans and noodles mixed with curry powder etc.
Below, someone with more sense:
I've been poor and even homeless for a while so I saw straight through Jack Monroe immediately and I can't understand why so many people on my timeline fell for it. Does it have something to do with her being a middle-class person's idea of what a person giving advice would be?
The only poverty she campaigns against is that of her own "faux poverty".
Jack Monroe is a scammer and fraudster – why not ask her how many copies of the cookbook actually made it to foodbanks after this little cash grabbing stunt?
Day by day more evidence emerges that lockdowns were a catastrophe. When will those responsible admit they got it horribly wrong? You know who you are!
She is right, just as I and others were. People, many of them, don’t want to hear that. No, our national economic problems, they say, are caused by “Covid”, by Putin, by the war in Ukraine, by “climate change”, by anything other than the 2020-2021 ridiculous lockdown shutdown(s) of the UK for up to 2 years.
Enjoy your 11p “Jack Monroe” dinner in the dark and cold, once you get that can of ASDA cheapo spaghetti hoops open with a mallet and knife! And don’t forget to bring a couple of forks to the feast!
Late tweets
MFA spox #Zakharova: Ukraine, with its fertile lands & rich natural resources, through efforts of current #Kievregime pursuing a nationalistic Russophobic policy, has become one of the poorest European economies and is on its way to becoming a new colony of the #collectiveWest. pic.twitter.com/t6tCrXwx8Y
Ian Robert Millard 