A Girl Called Jack... time for action?
- Thread starter LiamO
- Start date
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
why has blamalalading dong been banned?
goldenecitrone
post tenebras lux
Cos he argued with Fridgemagnet. A bannable offence. Seriously, Fridge should not be allowed to argue on threads if he's just going to ban people who disagree with him. Even Editor doesn't stoop that low. Shame.
ice-is-forming
I was born naked, shameless & fucking outrageous..
ice-is-forming
I was born naked, shameless & fucking outrageous..
A Girl Called Jack available to order at Waterstones
BY JACK MONROE (OURSOUTHEND) on AUGUST 23, 2013 • ( 5 )
Just a quick update from me: I’ve just found out that my forthcoming book, A Girl Called Jack, is available to order at Waterstones. Click this link to place your order. Best wishes – Jack. X
And only 13 quid! you could feed your family for over a week for that jack! sell 52 and you eat well for a year *spits*
Respect for Jack but maybe not for the machine that's started turning. My cynical radar just blew up
i'm all for austerity, we should all be austere. there's too much f*g waste. But seriously this is the tip of an iceberg that is distracting from the true depth of the situation. it may not be her fault that she's being manipulated by the media, I hope I can see that shes trying not to be sucked in to their game but from experience I know its impossible not to be misrepresented. other than to not get out there in the first place. and what does that change? I want her to be real and make a difference but...... i hate being cynical. 10 quid a week for a short while snortok, and teach people to eat cheaper and healthier...nothing wrong with that but to inadvertently end up being the 'go to person with the truth aboutlong term benefits' poverty....nah, i hope it does no harm and causes some people to question, who otherwise wouldn't have, but tbh i'd rather see weepiper telling it how it really is and changing the world (well Scotland) She knows.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
I'm a bit puzzled. This article makes it sound like her budget is a bit more of a choice than I'd thought. Yes, she'd worked out that she only had £10 per week for food, but she sounds fine with that, and it sounds like she's happy to stick to it even with more money coming in.
She describes the father of her kid as a 'fantastic dad' so must still be in touch, yet he's not contributing anything? That would surprise me - to be a fantastic dad, he must be doing some stuff for the kid, and giving him at least the occasional treat. Nobody is that hard up that they can't give their kid something if they are a person who puts their kid first at least some of the time, which I would think any fantastic dad would have to. She's also on perfectly good terms with her parents, who own a chippy, so I'm sure they can give her some things sometimes.
So is it strictly £10 per week, or is it that she spends £10 per week but there are other inputs - from the father and perhaps the parents? Perhaps they are modest inputs, don't know. But she does seem to have calculated to do this, and to enjoy the fact that she does it. Her cooking also appears to involve a rather experienced hand to make it appealing, particularly for a kid.
This is all too sad but familiar for someone on benefits:
I wonder if she had good advice about how she was entitled to pay those debts. The rules are more in favour of the indebted person than many think, and a court ought to order her to pay in total to all her creditors a maximum of around £5 per month. There's a formula they use, and it doesn't take into account the size of the debt, merely the size of the income and outgoings on basics such as rent, bills and food. Ironically if she'd been totally honest and said that she only needed £10 per week for food, that might have harmed her and increased the amount she'd have had to pay towards her debts each month. Courts will allow a person more than £10 per week to feed themselves and their child, and I hope they continue to do this after Jack's example has shown that they possibly don't have to. That's a genuine concern about her example - she is an example that others are unlikely to match but may be measured against anyway. It's like the freelancer who starts in a job - they have to be careful to gauge the working culture: doing loads more work than the permanent staff and showing them up won't win you any friends. You might be the quickest person you know at doing your job. If so, don't work at full speed all the time unless you're on a piece rate.
And here we're back to the point that Orwell made in Road to Wigan Pier. He was clear that if the poor had been more thrifty generally, as he himself thought they could have been if they had wanted or been forced to, the government's response would simply have been to have cut benefits. Even now, the wording is 'the minimum that the law says you need to live on'. There's not supposed to be anything spare after the essentials. But people smoke, people drink, people like eating chocolate... Particularly on the dole - the unemployed smoke more than anyone - more than 50 percent was the figure a few years ago, compared to around 20 percent among those in work. And there we're back to the motivational problem with being on benefits - it can be hard to motivate yourself to do something difficult that shows you are thinking of your future, like giving up smoking, when you can't really see a good future for yourself. There's going to be a 'fuck it' moment among many people, and why not?
Jack, on the other hand, appears to be highly motivated and apparently vice-free. She may have owed some nasty people, too. Either way, the desire to repay her debts led her to sell her stuff. She seems also to be rather law abiding - when I was skint, my advice to someone in her desperate position would quite possibly have been to suggest a bit of shoplifting, which was my solution to lack of money. She could justify that to herself, imo, by saying that her relative poverty wasn't fair on her child. But no, she appears to be law-abiding, and tbh I'm aware that many people find the idea of breaking the law terrifying, the thought of the shame of being caught acting as a strong enough deterrent to stop them ever attempting it. She's also a New Labour type whose cats are called Milliband and Harriet (after Harman).
I don't know whether to laugh or cry about that, but it does tickle my prejudices and make me think that at the very least, she is an extremely conventional person, one who might seriously fall out with someone if they even suggested that she should shoplift, taking a straight 'stealing is wrong under all circumstances' stance.
On balance, I don't hate her, but I don't warm to her much. She does seem a bit preachy about not wasting things, and she also seems very capable of lots of things such as cooking and clothes-making that put her in better stead with little money than someone without those skills, which are hard to acquire on your own. She gave herself the £10 per week food budget initially mostly out of necessity, although also in part at least due to choices she'd made - she doesn't sound like she's entirely been a victim of a heartless world that threw her onto the breadline. She took herself to that breadline in order to spend more time with her child, and I respect her for that - good on her. Perhaps she found it more difficult having NO MONEY than she had imagined it would be. I don't know, but I get the impression that she did at first, which is why she got into debt. But she had her sale and did it with a plan - a plan for a strictly structured thrifty way of life that she wants to continue indefinitely. She's keeping her budget at £10 even though she has a new job and no need to stick to it.
She likes living on her £10 per week food budget. She enjoys the challenge of shopping and making recipes within that now self-imposed discipline. As such, she is a standard-bearer for thrift and dare I say it puritanism - some food and drink tastes great and is expensive, but her kid won't get to try it any time soon. He's stuck with tins of pulses and tomatoes augmented by spices.
Cont.
@self
She describes the father of her kid as a 'fantastic dad' so must still be in touch, yet he's not contributing anything? That would surprise me - to be a fantastic dad, he must be doing some stuff for the kid, and giving him at least the occasional treat. Nobody is that hard up that they can't give their kid something if they are a person who puts their kid first at least some of the time, which I would think any fantastic dad would have to. She's also on perfectly good terms with her parents, who own a chippy, so I'm sure they can give her some things sometimes.
So is it strictly £10 per week, or is it that she spends £10 per week but there are other inputs - from the father and perhaps the parents? Perhaps they are modest inputs, don't know. But she does seem to have calculated to do this, and to enjoy the fact that she does it. Her cooking also appears to involve a rather experienced hand to make it appealing, particularly for a kid.
This is all too sad but familiar for someone on benefits:
I wonder if she had good advice about how she was entitled to pay those debts. The rules are more in favour of the indebted person than many think, and a court ought to order her to pay in total to all her creditors a maximum of around £5 per month. There's a formula they use, and it doesn't take into account the size of the debt, merely the size of the income and outgoings on basics such as rent, bills and food. Ironically if she'd been totally honest and said that she only needed £10 per week for food, that might have harmed her and increased the amount she'd have had to pay towards her debts each month. Courts will allow a person more than £10 per week to feed themselves and their child, and I hope they continue to do this after Jack's example has shown that they possibly don't have to. That's a genuine concern about her example - she is an example that others are unlikely to match but may be measured against anyway. It's like the freelancer who starts in a job - they have to be careful to gauge the working culture: doing loads more work than the permanent staff and showing them up won't win you any friends. You might be the quickest person you know at doing your job. If so, don't work at full speed all the time unless you're on a piece rate.
And here we're back to the point that Orwell made in Road to Wigan Pier. He was clear that if the poor had been more thrifty generally, as he himself thought they could have been if they had wanted or been forced to, the government's response would simply have been to have cut benefits. Even now, the wording is 'the minimum that the law says you need to live on'. There's not supposed to be anything spare after the essentials. But people smoke, people drink, people like eating chocolate... Particularly on the dole - the unemployed smoke more than anyone - more than 50 percent was the figure a few years ago, compared to around 20 percent among those in work. And there we're back to the motivational problem with being on benefits - it can be hard to motivate yourself to do something difficult that shows you are thinking of your future, like giving up smoking, when you can't really see a good future for yourself. There's going to be a 'fuck it' moment among many people, and why not?
Jack, on the other hand, appears to be highly motivated and apparently vice-free. She may have owed some nasty people, too. Either way, the desire to repay her debts led her to sell her stuff. She seems also to be rather law abiding - when I was skint, my advice to someone in her desperate position would quite possibly have been to suggest a bit of shoplifting, which was my solution to lack of money. She could justify that to herself, imo, by saying that her relative poverty wasn't fair on her child. But no, she appears to be law-abiding, and tbh I'm aware that many people find the idea of breaking the law terrifying, the thought of the shame of being caught acting as a strong enough deterrent to stop them ever attempting it. She's also a New Labour type whose cats are called Milliband and Harriet (after Harman).
I don't know whether to laugh or cry about that, but it does tickle my prejudices and make me think that at the very least, she is an extremely conventional person, one who might seriously fall out with someone if they even suggested that she should shoplift, taking a straight 'stealing is wrong under all circumstances' stance.On balance, I don't hate her, but I don't warm to her much. She does seem a bit preachy about not wasting things, and she also seems very capable of lots of things such as cooking and clothes-making that put her in better stead with little money than someone without those skills, which are hard to acquire on your own. She gave herself the £10 per week food budget initially mostly out of necessity, although also in part at least due to choices she'd made - she doesn't sound like she's entirely been a victim of a heartless world that threw her onto the breadline. She took herself to that breadline in order to spend more time with her child, and I respect her for that - good on her. Perhaps she found it more difficult having NO MONEY than she had imagined it would be. I don't know, but I get the impression that she did at first, which is why she got into debt. But she had her sale and did it with a plan - a plan for a strictly structured thrifty way of life that she wants to continue indefinitely. She's keeping her budget at £10 even though she has a new job and no need to stick to it.
She likes living on her £10 per week food budget. She enjoys the challenge of shopping and making recipes within that now self-imposed discipline. As such, she is a standard-bearer for thrift and dare I say it puritanism - some food and drink tastes great and is expensive, but her kid won't get to try it any time soon. He's stuck with tins of pulses and tomatoes augmented by spices.
Cont.
@self
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Ironically, Jack's diet is exactly the suggestion I made on here a while back on a thread about food deserts, where I suggested that it was possible to live on not too much money and eat healthily more or less wherever you were in the country as long as you were healthy enough to get to the shops, and motivated enough, and had the time to cook. (I also stated very clearly that I didn't expect anyone to do this, that the motivation it would require to sustain such a diet could be hard to come by, and that it might get a bit boring after a while. I said that I didn't blame people at all for getting pizza or chips in occasionally. It's not even that unhealthy to have junk food once a week. You can turn it into a feature of the week,as my dad did with the days or nights my mum worked and he was in charge of food. 
My dad is a good example of a man who didn't learn the first thing about cooking, even how to boil and egg, until my mum went back to work after having us, and it took him quite a while to learn - I think Jack underestimates the skills involved in her meals, which I could cook fine: I wouldn't need the recipes, tbh: I know what to do with an onion, some tomatoes, lentils and spices; but my dad, who's learned to cook a mean Sunday roast and how to TIME everything, would be a bit lost with Jack's recipes. I wouldn't fancy eating his lentil stew - and he wouldn't fancy eating mine either particularly, even though mine would be nice!)
I was absolutely flamed from all sides on here for suggesting this, told that I did not know what I was talking about, even though I gave a costed example of a lentil stew. I was very cautious not to sound like I was patronising (that means talking down to
) anyone, but I failed to come across to many as anything other than someone divorced from reality who DOESN'T KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE to be poor, even though I do. Although when I was poor I didn't follow this advice at all - I nicked fillet steaks from the supermarket and ate them. I may even dig the thread out as I'm not exaggerating either about my attempt to be tactful, knowing it was a sensitive subject, nor the reaction I was given - from ymu in particular as I recall, who embarked on a character assassination of me based on the idea that I was arrogant and had a sense of entitlement and was unwilling to listen and learn from what others were telling me.
So it does appear to depend who is saying it what reaction an instruction to be thrifty will get. Mine wasn't even an instruction, merely a suggestion of its existence within the (pretty undesirable) realms of possibility. Jack is saying far more than this, advocating it as a life choice for everyone with a tight budget and also for others who could afford more. She's an evangelist for thrift, and if I'd gone to her blog and taken some quotes from her and posted them up here as my own, I'd have been crucified. It's not just Jamie Oliver who's not allowed to say these things (and he really isn't), but it's also the likes of me, and I would suggest also the likes of Jack. Let's be consistent here. Let her publish her costed budget meals, which aren't all that to me tbh, but I say don't let her get away with promoting it as an entire diet and lifestyle choice. There should be more to eating than that - why deny yourself if you don't have to.
Ultimately, I find that there is less than first meets the eye about Jack, who got herself into a bit of financial trouble (but not terrible by the sounds of it, not made homeless or in emergency housing or hostels - that's far deeper in shit: how do you live on £10 per week if you don't have a kitchen, which can be the position of many single mums in emergency housing waiting to be rehoused - now there's a challenge: some kind of raw fruit and veg diet? The stories a housing officer in Hastings told me about the people he was trying to house were shocking,with whole families stuck in private housing that had been condemned by the environmental health months ago.)
She has learned to cook nice cheap meals while on benefits and shares how she does it with people, but there are no astounding tricks, and a good cook and experienced shopper will already know how to do most if not all of what she writes about. How could there be astounding tricks on a tenner a week? Pulses and tomatoes it is, pretty much every day, livened up with some spices. And always buy the cheapest brand. Well I could have told you that. I did pretty much on here about a year ago,and I had my head bitten off.
So that's her culinary advice sorted. As for her political advice, I'm afraid her cats may have sealed it for her with me, and have shown me a slightly disconcerting future. She sees Milliband as her leader, god help her. I can see a job in the next government in the pipeline if Labour get back in. Tsar of thrift and recycling. Perhaps even a place in the House of Lords? Who knows, but there will be somewhere Milliband can place her to get maximum benefit from her cost-cutting ways. It would be ironic if it were a Labour government that made the cuts in benefits as a result of advice from the Girl called Jack. Watch this space - food prices are set to continue to rise year-on-year: it could happen.
Austerity as a moral good - but only for the poor, clearly. Rationing for the poor in order that the rich can continue to overconsume. That's pretty much been the message of 'austerity' so far. 'Rationing is not just for the poor' could become a theme as 'austerity' continues, and rationing creeps its way up the social scale. But we will be happy in our austerity, as Jack is. We won't even want any more.
Sorry, turned into quite a ramble. Can't sleep.
My dad is a good example of a man who didn't learn the first thing about cooking, even how to boil and egg, until my mum went back to work after having us, and it took him quite a while to learn - I think Jack underestimates the skills involved in her meals, which I could cook fine: I wouldn't need the recipes, tbh: I know what to do with an onion, some tomatoes, lentils and spices; but my dad, who's learned to cook a mean Sunday roast and how to TIME everything, would be a bit lost with Jack's recipes. I wouldn't fancy eating his lentil stew - and he wouldn't fancy eating mine either particularly, even though mine would be nice!)I was absolutely flamed from all sides on here for suggesting this, told that I did not know what I was talking about, even though I gave a costed example of a lentil stew. I was very cautious not to sound like I was patronising (that means talking down to
) anyone, but I failed to come across to many as anything other than someone divorced from reality who DOESN'T KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE to be poor, even though I do. Although when I was poor I didn't follow this advice at all - I nicked fillet steaks from the supermarket and ate them. I may even dig the thread out as I'm not exaggerating either about my attempt to be tactful, knowing it was a sensitive subject, nor the reaction I was given - from ymu in particular as I recall, who embarked on a character assassination of me based on the idea that I was arrogant and had a sense of entitlement and was unwilling to listen and learn from what others were telling me.So it does appear to depend who is saying it what reaction an instruction to be thrifty will get. Mine wasn't even an instruction, merely a suggestion of its existence within the (pretty undesirable) realms of possibility. Jack is saying far more than this, advocating it as a life choice for everyone with a tight budget and also for others who could afford more. She's an evangelist for thrift, and if I'd gone to her blog and taken some quotes from her and posted them up here as my own, I'd have been crucified. It's not just Jamie Oliver who's not allowed to say these things (and he really isn't), but it's also the likes of me, and I would suggest also the likes of Jack. Let's be consistent here. Let her publish her costed budget meals, which aren't all that to me tbh, but I say don't let her get away with promoting it as an entire diet and lifestyle choice. There should be more to eating than that - why deny yourself if you don't have to.
Ultimately, I find that there is less than first meets the eye about Jack, who got herself into a bit of financial trouble (but not terrible by the sounds of it, not made homeless or in emergency housing or hostels - that's far deeper in shit: how do you live on £10 per week if you don't have a kitchen, which can be the position of many single mums in emergency housing waiting to be rehoused - now there's a challenge: some kind of raw fruit and veg diet? The stories a housing officer in Hastings told me about the people he was trying to house were shocking,with whole families stuck in private housing that had been condemned by the environmental health months ago.)
She has learned to cook nice cheap meals while on benefits and shares how she does it with people, but there are no astounding tricks, and a good cook and experienced shopper will already know how to do most if not all of what she writes about. How could there be astounding tricks on a tenner a week? Pulses and tomatoes it is, pretty much every day, livened up with some spices. And always buy the cheapest brand. Well I could have told you that. I did pretty much on here about a year ago,and I had my head bitten off.
So that's her culinary advice sorted. As for her political advice, I'm afraid her cats may have sealed it for her with me, and have shown me a slightly disconcerting future. She sees Milliband as her leader, god help her. I can see a job in the next government in the pipeline if Labour get back in. Tsar of thrift and recycling. Perhaps even a place in the House of Lords? Who knows, but there will be somewhere Milliband can place her to get maximum benefit from her cost-cutting ways. It would be ironic if it were a Labour government that made the cuts in benefits as a result of advice from the Girl called Jack. Watch this space - food prices are set to continue to rise year-on-year: it could happen.
Austerity as a moral good - but only for the poor, clearly. Rationing for the poor in order that the rich can continue to overconsume. That's pretty much been the message of 'austerity' so far. 'Rationing is not just for the poor' could become a theme as 'austerity' continues, and rationing creeps its way up the social scale. But we will be happy in our austerity, as Jack is. We won't even want any more.
Sorry, turned into quite a ramble. Can't sleep.
ice-is-forming
I was born naked, shameless & fucking outrageous..
sleaterkinney
Well-Known Member
I think her recipes are useful to people on a budget and I'm able to overlook that she knows a few local councillors. She is trying to do a good thing and some people on here need to get a grip.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Smegma in a small can.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Yep. Practical advice isn't one-size-fits-all, and can come across as condescending if it doesn't take that into account.
The Imperial War Museum's website did an excellent "exhibit" a few years ago of the wartime propaganda exhorting housewifely thrift, etc. Read 7 decades later, they too come across as incredibly condescending.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
To be fair, "rock bottom" is relative. For you it might be selling your arse, for her it might be being faced with a socio-economic situation she's never had to contemplate before.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
You're as finicking, nitpicking and obfuscatory as a theologian, Liam.
And that isn't a compliment.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
TBF, some people do still retain the delusion that grammars are somehow "posh". Frankly, IME "grammar" merely tends to mean "the staff have a bit of an attitude problem".
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
One should never start a peroration with "I'm reminded of Primo Levi" unless one is wearing carpet slippers and smoking a pipe in one's study.
Maurice Picarda
Actually, might as well flounce.
There's still an 11 plus in quite a lot of places. Kent and Bucks for a start. And as expensive tuition helps enormously in passing these, grammar kids are often posher on average than the secondary modern ones.
Maurice Picarda
Actually, might as well flounce.
How does one only have 12 kids in a class?
Maurice Picarda
Actually, might as well flounce.
Hmm. It sounds as if he suffered from dysmetropolia.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Many shopping streets are already dead or dying, and that isn't due to Sainsburys' locals or tesco metros, it's down to demographic and economic shifts that started to take place more than 30 years ago. As I tried explaining elsewhere, local markets took a bullet in the head when the large supermarkets started making direct-with-producer agreements and cutting the produce wholesalers out of the supply chain. This narrowed the wholesalers' customer base to mostly independent traders, and lowered the volume sales so that the same economies-of-scale as were previously obtained were no longer available. The result was that your market stalls and independent traders were no longer as competitive on price as they were before.
So, even if you've still got a greengrocer, a baker and a butcher on your high street, they're often effectively viewed as sellers of "premium goods", as opposed to the heart of the local community, unfortunately.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Of course she'll still be dining out for a tenner a week once she's minister for the DWP. She'll have access to the Parliamentary canteen!
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
There's no such thing as a "secondary modern". There hasn't been since I was a kid, you goatcock.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Village school, probably.
Maurice Picarda
Actually, might as well flounce.
There's no such thing as a "secondary modern". There hasn't been since I was a kid, you goatcock.
I'd missed that. Yes, they seem to call themselves "specialist upper schools" or something these days, but the intake is exactly the same.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
In the transition phase (late '70s until the mid to late '90s) between "secondary modern" schools and "specialist upper schools" or "specialist academies" etc, they were known as....Comprehensives, which they'd been progressively amalgamated with/rolled into since the early to mid '70s.
As for the intake being "exactly the same", I'd disagree. The demographics are different/broader, even allowing for "white flight" and cachement-cruising by some people drawing potential intake away.
Thora
Differently Ethical
I've checked and there were 30 in his class, 12 in his year.
Maurice Picarda
Actually, might as well flounce.
Fair enough. I know the systems in Bucks and in North London best and both of those are probably anomalous, the former having a universal 11 plus still and the latter having lots of selective provision.
you can't live for ten pounds a week with a child, even a toddler, her weekly menus added up to about 300 calories per day each.
if you were forced to live off a tenner by circumstances, which happens often, then that week would probably involve a lot of blagging, borrowing, stealing and a foodbank. and why didn't her labour councillor friends help whilst her child was starving?
if you were forced to live off a tenner by circumstances, which happens often, then that week would probably involve a lot of blagging, borrowing, stealing and a foodbank. and why didn't her labour councillor friends help whilst her child was starving?
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Yes, that's the point I was making in an earlier post about supermarkets monopolising the supply chains, and so stifling local markets and shops.
And now the 'local' Sainsbury's and Tescos are moving in - taking advantage of the process that they themselves started with their large stores. And they are often rather shit, particularly the smaller ones, and also rather expensive. They kill the competition and move in to take over from that competition when it can no longer compete - because the whole system is run by the supermarkets.
There clearly are wholesalers in some parts of the country who have remained in business - in London, for instance, where street markets sell fruit and veg far far more cheaply than the supermarkets. I would guess that the Turkish supermarkets in North London must also have their own separate supply chain. And there are also clearly other parts of the country where there are few or none. There are still some butchers with direct links to farmers in some parts of the country, not necessarily rich parts either - in Hastings, this is true, and again the meat in the butchers is cheaper than meat in the supermarkets.
Ever get the feeling you've been ripped off?
Similar threads
