Jack Monroe: the face of modern poverty | Guardian UK
'…infuriated by the media's vicious attacks on 'benefit scroungers' and the inability of politicians and policymakers to comprehend the slender margins of breadline life. 'I'm not going to stop championing causes, campaigning and stamping my feet about things that are wrong, just because I may not be in that position any more. Until people realise benefits doesn't mean scrounger, and austerity isn't a fun middle-class way to grow your own vegetables, there's still a lot of work to do.'
Guardian Story here, her blog here.
Not that she is in the clear, financially. When the BBC reported that she would be paid £25,000 for her book deal, the housing benefit office suspended payments until it saw her book contract, nearly causing her to be evicted. She has moved to a cheaper house share to escape the tyranny of housing benefit. “Because I’m in the media quite a lot now, everyone assumes that everything is fine. People forget I sleep on a mattress on the floor with my son in a house I share with five other people. They see me on Sky news and think, ‘Oh, you must be loaded.’” Yet she is now one of the working poor: “I go out to work every day, but I still can’t afford to make ends meet.”
She is an energetic anti-poverty campaigner, infuriated by the media’s vicious attacks on “benefit scroungers” and the inability of politicians and policymakers to comprehend the slender margins of breadline life. “I’m not going to stop championing causes, campaigning and stamping my feet about things that are wrong, just because I may not be in that position any more. Until people realise benefits doesn’t mean scrounger, and austerity isn’t a fun middle-class way to grow your own vegetables, there’s still a lot of work to do.”