Jack Monroe - The Bootstrap Cook

Murder on Zidanes Floor

You'd better not kill Giroud
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Jun 11, 2015
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Latest blog update made for bleak reading

For those of you who don't know Jack Monroe or "The Bootstrap Cook" is a food writer, campaigner and charity advocate who has created, written and released several books helping people make meals on shoe strong budgets.

She seems to be going through more financial trouble recently and the internet has both supported her and questioned her current plight.

Some people claiming she is a secret millionaire others that she is lying.

I've bought her books and supported her causes, donating to the Trussell Trust etc, but lately and with this recent update, I've started to question what is going on as it doesn't make sense that every couple of months she seems to be in financial difficulty. In her blog she discusses that she buys lavish goods such as a Burberry coat or a giant American fridge when she gets her royalties.

Has anyone else been following this?
 
Murder on Zidane's Floor said:
Latest blog update made for bleak reading

For those of you who don't know Jack Monroe or "The Bootstrap Cook" is a food writer, campaigner and charity advocate who has created, written and released several books helping people make meals on shoe strong budgets.

She seems to be going through more financial trouble recently and the internet has both supported her and questioned her current plight.

Some people claiming she is a secret millionaire others that she is lying.

I've bought her books and supported her causes, donating to the Trussell Trust etc, but lately and with this recent update, I've started to question what is going on as it doesn't make sense that every couple of months she seems to be in financial difficulty. In her blog she discusses that she buys lavish goods her and such as a Burberry coat or a giant American fridge when she gets her royalties.

Has anyone else been following this?
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I’ve not been following it recently. I actually unfollowed her a little while ago.

I absolutely support her cause and believe she’s been nothing but a force for good but I also found there to be a streak of narcissism in her tweets. There’s a lot of clout chasing and after a while it wears a bit thin.

There’s definitely a right wing agenda against her though so I’d be careful what you believe.
 
Pexbo said:
I’ve not been following it recently. I actually unfollowed her a little while ago.

I absolutely support her cause and believe she’s been nothing but a force for good but I also found there to be a streak of narcissism in her tweets. There’s a lot of clout chasing and after a while it wears a bit thin.

There’s definitely a right wing agenda against her though so I’d be careful what you believe.
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Oh I absolutely agree. The right will leap on any incongruent line in her story, the culture war selects targets and then we all have to fall in line. The internet is a horrible place so public personas with the largest platforms get the worst of it.

But from her own blog, so just feels odd. I love her work and she's done so much good. As someone who never had money up until recently, I relate to having to make ends meet.

But I get the idea something is draining her funds or she has an inability to actually budget. She has a patreon, she has book royalties, she has media work, she had a YT channel, she was employing and paying an admin assistant, she just bought a puppy etc. This isn't someone on the poverty line, I get situations change but suddenly she is penning a blog to tell us that she is off to the pawn brokers?

I really want her to be genuine but my bullshit detector is spinning.
 
As an experiment, I looked at the quote tweets and so far on the scrolling 98% have been supportive
 
I have been following it, and done similarly in buying the books and especially supporting The Trussell Trust.

Personally, I don't think that she grifting. Raising a child can be expensive and people put their kids above everything. She is a recovering alcoholic and has autism and ADHD, all of which may mean she may not have been amazing at budgeting.

Low and irregular incomes mean you always are counting pennies and one heavy month can lead to more debts which you don't know when will be paid off, or having to tighten the budget for the next few months.

She may be grifting, I agree, and I understand the scepticism. For me, her posts seem to be what many people on low incomes experience month to month. When you overspend or incur unexpected expenses, the reaction of "it is your fault for not budgeting" seems to be predominant, which takes away from the more important point which is no-one in a country as wealthy as ours should be experiencing that situation
 
Murder on Zidane's Floor said:
Oh I absolutely agree. The right will leap on any incongruent line in her story, the culture war selects targets and then we all have to fall in line. The internet is a horrible place so public personas with the largest platforms get the worst of it.

But from her own blog, so just feels odd. I love her work and she's done so much good. As someone who never had money up until recently, I relate to having to make ends meet.

But I get the idea something is draining her funds or she has an inability to actually budget. She has a patreon, she has book royalties, she has media work, she had a YT channel, she was employing and paying an admin assistant, she just bought a puppy etc. This isn't someone on the poverty line, I get situations change but suddenly she is penning a blog to tell us that she is off to the pawn brokers?

I really want her to be genuine but my bullshit detector is spinning.
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Honestly? I think she’s probably got a bit of money put away and rightly so considering her success - that sort of success makes money and she shouldn’t be ashamed of that. But she’s also got an agent and publishers who will be leaning on her to maintain her image of a lower class girl on the breadline fighting the good fight. I imagine it would be much harder to market if her image was that of a champagne socialist.
 
Pexbo said:
Honestly? I think she’s probably got a bit of money put away and rightly so considering her success - that sort of success makes money and she shouldn’t be ashamed of that. But she’s also got an agent and publishers who will be leaning on her to maintain her image of a lower class girl on the breadline fighting the good fight. I imagine it would be much harder to market if her image was that of a champagne socialist.
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This is the thing which annoys me.

Someone who is dirt poor and betters their life and is right-wing/centre-right = an amazing British success story

Someone who is dirt poor and betters their life and is left wing = a massive hypocrite who should remain poor to be authentic
 
Frosty said:
This is the thing which annoys me.

Someone who is dirt poor and betters their life and is right-wing/centre-right = an amazing British success story

Someone who is dirt poor and betters their life and is left wing = a massive hypocrite who should remain poor to be authentic
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I see this too, it's like you have to tell people.you did it by your own moxie and enterprise, perpetuating the myth.

I do also think that people don't like liars or those who are dishonest about their station, on both sides.

Take a right wing example, someone who runs a business but claims taxes are bankrupting them so cannot offer staff pay increases. People hate that shit because they know the person is lying.
 
Pexbo said:
Honestly? I think she’s probably got a bit of money put away and rightly so considering her success - that sort of success makes money and she shouldn’t be ashamed of that. But she’s also got an agent and publishers who will be leaning on her to maintain her image of a lower class girl on the breadline fighting the good fight. I imagine it would be much harder to market if her image was that of a champagne socialist.
Click to expand...
You make a good point but these personal blog posts saying she will take her Vivienne Westwood dress to the pawn shop and that she melts soap for cleaning herself (shower gel is available at 30p) then linking her PayPal is just so jarring.

I just get the sense she either has a load of hangers on or she consistently makes bad decisions.
 
Bill Clinton in 2012:

One of our greatest Democratic Chairmen, Bob Strauss, used to say that every politician wants you to believe he was born in a log cabin he built himself, but it ain’t so.
 
Frosty said:
This is the thing which annoys me.

Someone who is dirt poor and betters their life and is right-wing/centre-right = an amazing British success story

Someone who is dirt poor and betters their life and is left wing = a massive hypocrite who should remain poor to be authentic
Click to expand...

Yup. It’s annoying. Especially when the people piling on and destroying the left winger are more than likely fellow left wingers. The right looks for converts and the left looks for traitors an all that...
 
She’s left Twitter apparently. I’ve seen a lot of people who have subscribed to her via patreon over the last week or so who are complaining that despite spending as much a £15 a month, she has not put out any content for years. The service she advertises for higher tiers is signed books, personalised recipe cards and the like. She’s not even updated her blog for 4 years despite it being for her members.

It’s getting harder and harder to deny she’s running a scam alongside the good work she does do.

I stopped following her a couple of months ago because the narcissistic streak was evident and wore thin quickly. Constant fishing for compliments, a new story every day about the death threats and abuse she received and yet she would never share any evidence of any of it.
 
Pexbo said:
She’s left Twitter apparently. I’ve seen a lot of people who have subscribed to her via patreon over the last week or so who are complaining that despite spending as much a £15 a month, she has not put out any content for years. The service she advertises for higher tiers is signed books, personalised recipe cards and the like. She’s not even updated her blog for 4 years despite it being for her members.

It’s getting harder and harder to deny she’s running a scam alongside the good work she does do.

I stopped following her a couple of months ago because the narcissistic streak was evident and wore thin quickly. Constant fishing for compliments, a new story every day about the death threats and abuse she received and yet she would never share any evidence of any of it.
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Hasn’t she done that umpteen times already?
 
Wow. So much of a shock. She was so authentic xx
 
Pexbo said:
She’s left Twitter apparently. I’ve seen a lot of people who have subscribed to her via patreon over the last week or so who are complaining that despite spending as much a £15 a month, she has not put out any content for years. The service she advertises for higher tiers is signed books, personalised recipe cards and the like. She’s not even updated her blog for 4 years despite it being for her members.

It’s getting harder and harder to deny she’s running a scam alongside the good work she does do.

I stopped following her a couple of months ago because the narcissistic streak was evident and wore thin quickly. Constant fishing for compliments, a new story every day about the death threats and abuse she received and yet she would never share any evidence of any of it.
Click to expand...

Your post at the beginning of this thread was spot on. Initially done some good work but become an absolute narcissist. Calling herself “Dr Monroe,” after she got an honorary degree was the final straw for me.
 
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