Saturday 14 September 2013

It’s A Funny Old World…

Turn off the fridge, because it's empty anyway. Sell anything you can see lying around that you might get more than a quid for. Walk everywhere in the pouring rain, in your only pair of shoes, with a soaking wet and sobbing toddler trailing behind you. Drag that toddler into every pub and shop in unreasonable walking distance and ask them if they have any job vacancies. Try not to go red as the girl behind the counter appraises your tatty jumper and dirty jeans before telling you that they have no jobs available. "For you", you add in your head, and you drag that toddler home, still soaking, still unemployed, to not-quite dry out in your freezing cold flat.
Put two jumpers on that you'll wear all week, to keep washing to a minimum. You sit at home in your coat anyway, and nobody's there to notice. Drag yourself to the cooker to pour some tinned tomatoes over some cold pasta, and try not to hurl it across the room in frustration when your toddler tells you he doesn't want it. I want something else, Mummy. But there isn't anything else.
You take your toddler around the streets in the pouring rain, then feed it a bowl of cold pasta, and…what? Get reported to Social Services?

No. Get feted by the CiF crowd and the TUC.
Michael Gove blames child poverty and hunger on reckless parenting – with no acknowledgement to the fact that many people using food banks are doing so because of benefit delays, sanctions, low income and unemployment. No acknowledgement that many people who use food banks are in work. What sort of a society do we live in where people who go out to work to support their families need emergency food handouts?
What sort of society do we live in where others - me, for instance - are taxed to the hilt to support you and the child your casual hookup fathered on you one night?
By cutting welfare lifelines, the state is the abusive parent. By casting around to blame anyone else, by ignoring the cold hard face of true poverty in the UK, it is the state that is feckless. By refusing to tackle poverty at its root, it is the government that is being neglectful.
Ahhh, the familiar old socialist refrain! It takes a village (and a shedload of everyone else's taxes) to raise a child, eh?
But until they change housing benefit to monthly payments in line with people's rent and mortgage payments, until they commit to a living wage legislation that is not age discriminatory, until they reinstate the crisis loan, revoke the bedroom tax – we need to carry on talking about it.
You carry on talking, love, if you like. And the rest of us will keep on saying 'No! No more! The money's run out!'...

16 comments:

Twenty_Rothmans said...

Poor Jack "Jackoff" Monroe.

What sort of retard would conceive (snort) of taking a brat around with her to ask for jobs? Why doesn't the father look after it or provide for it? Not around?

After all the meconium she comes out with I guess he didn't want a second round of infantile shit.

Jack Monroe couldn't be more of a parasite even if she jumped into my Y-fronts, wriggled through my browneye and colon, and finally settled to graze in my nutrient-rich small intestine.

Macheath said...

Where are the families?

It's the question no one ever seems to ask when the Guardian et al trot out these baby seals yet again; surely the torn-jeans-and-cold-pasta mother did not spring, fully-formed, into life in her unheated flat.

We should, perhaps, be asking some hard questions about the tax credit system, which makes children a substantial financial asset until they reach 18 or leave education, at which point they become a liability instead.

L fairfax said...

"By cutting welfare lifelines, the state is the abusive parent. By casting around to blame anyone else, by ignoring the cold hard face of true poverty in the UK,"
The abusive parent are those who decide to become single parents hoping that others won't support them.
I have every sympathy for women who get divorced because their husband is unfaithful etc but she never ever tried to live with the kids brat.

Anonymous said...

Jack's a Shelia ?

"So in terms of feckless parenting, it is the state that is sending its children to school, to bed and to work hungry."

So the child's at work but the parent isn't? Run that confused shit by me again ?

Listen Jack love/mate, those aren't the state's kids, they're the parents.

DtP said...

Geez, there should be a health warning on these articles. In the commentard thread 30 odd people had as a near top line cooment that kids aren't parents' responsibility but the state's and no one disabused it. I'm not a parent but if I was and some government official tried to intervene, well, ownership would be established with haste.

The scary thing is these gits gravitate toward state financed jobs and not 1 of them had the self awareness to realise they're totally over stepping rational boundaries. Am really quite disgusted, frankly.

Able said...

What an utter fantasy!

Single mothers get sufficient 'benefits' that they can afford big-screen TVs, games consoles and an active social life (there have been multiple stories where young 'ladies' have let the cat out of the bag. I live near scores in their 'free' housing, most not only with nice outfits, but nice cars too) - all at our expense.

If, and it's a very BIG if, this story is true, then the real question is what is she spending all that money on, if not food and heating?

I'll just bet that if the truth that this is a fantasy does leak out she'll fall back on the usual leftard/grauniad excuse of 'it's an example', 'it could be true', 'it's a cry for (more) help'.

Budvar said...

Except the money hasn't run out has it?
At least not for no end of foreign aid to despots around the world, wars in flyblown shit holes that have nothing culturally, physically or politically anything to do with us, aircraft carriers built by Korean(?) shipyards, Mps expenses claims of over 200% of their salary, Olympic villages, millennium domes, speed/survellence cameras on every fucking street corner, the plethora of county,state and municipal non jobs, and let's not forget bailouts for bastard fucking banks, the last tranche of which would pay the benefits bill for decades.

That's just a list of a few outgoings off the top of my head that could either be scrapped or modified to suit UK plc.
We could also do a tad more to increase the income side of the equation by taxing the likes of Rupert Murdoch on his UK derived income who presently pays less in income tax a year than I pay in beer and fags duty a day.

Still if it wasn't for all those feckless benefit scroungers budoning the poor old tax payer eh?

Furor Teutonicus said...

XX No acknowledgement that many people who use food banks are in work. What sort of a society do we live in where people who go out to work to support their families need emergency food handouts? XX

The kind of "society" that imports millions of third world scum to do the jobs so cheaply, it does not even cover our rent. A society that has immigrant arseholes Hot bunking 15 and 20 to a room in a four bedroom flat, rather than pay a decent wage, for their OWN PEOPLE!

A "Society" formed by that shower of shitbag commy wankers that call themselves "Labour", the same one supported whole-hearedly by the "TUC"!

THAT kind of "Society."

Anonymous said...

"...change housing benefit to monthly payments in line with people's rent and mortgage payments..." Let me get this straight: the government is supposed to make mortgage payments for you...as in eventually owning a home which will be your sole possession...so you can sell it and receive more money?

Budvar said...

Anon, benefits only pay the interest on your mortgage, not the principle. You seem strangely quiet on the subject of the taxpayer funding the buy to let brigade? Or is that a different sort of taxpayer money used to fund them? It obviously is when used to fund MPs 2nd homes though...

John Pickworth said...

Oh! THAT Jack Monroe!

I am now engaged to my best friend and soul mate, and we will be getting married, hopefully in the spring.

Small Boy’s dad is a brilliant father... The arrangements that we have to jointly raise our child are our business – and our business alone.

I work full time as a freelance writer for several national newspapers and websites. I am also writing a book, due for publication in February 2013. I am an ambassador for Child Poverty Action Group and a UK Poverty Ambassador for Oxfam.

I am not living ‘in poverty’

I was an unemployed single mother living in a flat that I couldn’t afford... It has taken almost two years to get back on my feet from giving up my job in the Fire Service in November 2011.


A champagne socialist in the making and just like the rest of them, something of a fraud.

Budvar said...

How much taxpayer money goes towards the "Pretentious twattery concern/research" type fake charities? It's in the £100ks if not £Millions per anum for every single one of them.

Money allocated for this sort of shite could be better spent elsewhere.

JuliaM said...

"Why doesn't the father look after it or provide for it? Not around?"

Well, according to her website, he is. I hope the DWP is reading it...

"Where are the families?

It's the question no one ever seems to ask..."


Actually, several people had in the comments when I was browsing it, though whether the mods left them alone, god only knows.

"Jack's a Shelia ?"

Yup! Strewth, right..? ;)

"The scary thing is these gits gravitate toward state financed jobs and not 1 of them had the self awareness to realise they're totally over stepping rational boundaries."

I think that 'Guardian Automatic Comment Generator' might well be responsible for the worst ones.

JuliaM said...

"If, and it's a very BIG if, this story is true, then the real question is what is she spending all that money on, if not food and heating?"

Tattoos..?

"Except the money hasn't run out has it?

At least not for no end of foreign aid to despots around the world..."


This is very true, and believe me, I resent it being spent on that just as much as on the likes of Ms Monroe, whose poisonous effect on our society is cumulative.

"The kind of "society" that imports millions of third world scum to do the jobs..."

And there's a never-ending supply of them.. :/

"A champagne socialist in the making and just like the rest of them, something of a fraud."

More in the realms of J K Rowling, though her recipes are at least useful works of fiction.

Anonymous said...

How come a father gets chased for maintenance yet mothers get paid by the taxpayer for the bastards they produce? Note that the prime indicator for criminality is to come from a single parent ie mother-only family. The Yanks know this, they fling cash at the Negro single mothers knowing full well that the result will be clients for their private prisons, ie modern slavery.

Furor Teutonicus said...

XX they fling cash at the Negro single mothers knowing full well that the result will be clients for their private prisons,XX

Either that, the "Governments" bessy mates in Columbia get to stay living in the life stayle to which they have become accustomed.