Jack Monroe expertly takes down a new ‘poverty tourism’ show featuring the daughter of a millionaire Tory peer
Jack Monroe has expertly taken down a new ‘poverty tourism’ show featuring daughter of millionaire Tory peer Michelle Mone.
Monroe branded the whole thing “nonsense”:
Stop. Doing. This. Nonsense.https://t.co/LCJVRAitlz
— Jack Monroe (@BootstrapCook) August 14, 2018
Born Famous
The new Channel 4 programme will feature the daughter of millionaire Tory peer Michelle Mone.
Read on...
Bethany Mone will star in the new show Born Famous in order to ‘confront’ her “feelings of privilege”. She’ll stay with a family in Bridgeton, Glasgow – where her mother grew up.
According to the Daily Record, research shows that Bridgeton is one of the poorest areas in Europe:
A child born in the area is three times more likely to suffer heart disease, four times more likely to be hospitalised and 10 times more likely to grow up in a jobless household than a child in Glasgow’s prosperous western suburbs
Michelle Mone, who came from nothing to an estimated net worth of £20m, voted for tax credit cuts in 2015. The cuts subsequently thrust some of the poorest people in the country even further into poverty.
Monroe’s experience
Monroe is a best-selling author and “actual expert in food, poverty and food banks”. They slammed the show, and shared their in-depth article on everything that’s wrong with such exploitive programmes. After relating a powerful personal account of living in poverty with an infant son, Monroe wrote:
Slipping into our scarred and malnourished skins for a day, knowing full well you are heading back to your mansion at the end of it, stuffed to the gills with all the freebies and luxury that most people can only dream of, is insulting, and cruel.
Hundreds of people agreed with Monroe, echoing frustration at the compassionless and exploitative programme:
"Povvo tourism" misses the point. The worst thing about poverty is being one broken cooker, one missed benefit appointment, one pair of school shoes, away from complete destitution. The toll it takes on your wellbeing is cumulative & can't be grasped in a week or month.
— Cobble King of Calderdale (@JohnBaker1975) August 14, 2018
https://twitter.com/that_jodi/status/1029462063775707137
Some are infuriated that Mone will profit from the misery her mother voted for:
Mone has a neck of solid fucking brass.
She literally voted in the Lords to remove working tax credits from the poorest of the working poor.
Chutzpah of the first order.
— 𝕀𝔸𝕋𝔼𝕋 (@IATET) August 14, 2018
Michelle Mone’s daughter, a part time model and Instagram influencer is making a poverty safari type programme about how poor people in Bridgeton live, the same mother who voted to stop tax credits for working people in Bridgeton who do real jobs.
— Linda Seans Trust (@saoirsefanclub) August 12, 2018
Heartless vanity
As Monroe puts it:
Austerity is killing us in our thousands, and it is not a hunger game for the privileged to opt into for a day so they can pretend to have an insight.
Austerity and poverty have fatal consequences, and the depths of suffering and misery cannot be realised within a day or a week or a month of an “ego boosting challenge“.
To many, the programme will come across as another vain publicity stunt – one that will do nothing to help the millions who have to actually live in poverty day in day out thanks to Conservative austerity.
Get Involved!
– Contact your local MP telling them to stop and scrap Universal Credit.
– Support the Living Wage campaign.
– Read more by Jack Monroe.
We know everyone is suffering under the Tories - but the Canary is a vital weapon in our fight back, and we need your support
The Canary Workers’ Co-op knows life is hard. The Tories are waging a class war against us we’re all having to fight. But like trade unions and community organising, truly independent working-class media is a vital weapon in our armoury.
The Canary doesn’t have the budget of the corporate media. In fact, our income is over 1,000 times less than the Guardian’s. What we do have is a radical agenda that disrupts power and amplifies marginalised communities. But we can only do this with our readers’ support.
So please, help us continue to spread messages of resistance and hope. Even the smallest donation would mean the world to us.
