LETTER FROM LONDON
Authentic, imaginative and unafraid to talk about even the most trivial everyday: Jack Monroe is probably the UK’s best-known single mother. This native of the south-east of England, having left school at 16, without a diploma, has long pulled the devil by the tail, chaining the galleys and periods of unemployment. But, at 33, she has gained national media recognition, thanks to a blog launched in the early 2010s (“A girl called Jack”, renamed “Cooking on a bootstrap”), on which she posts delicious recipes on a tiny budget, proving that with patience and ideas, you can eat healthy for a few tens of cents. His banana-blueberry cake at 17 pence (20 euro cents) a share or his peanut butter frozen yoghurt at 20 pence are must-haves.
Jack Monroe is also a regular in awareness campaigns: this activist (considering herself as non-binary, neither male nor female) has been campaigning for more than ten years against the poverty in which millions of British households live (14 .5 million people lived on less than 60% of the median income in 2020, i.e. 22% of the population), barely supported by a minimalist welfare system (between 80 and 100 pounds sterling per week per person – between 96 and 120 euro). It is committed alongside the NGOs Oxfam, Child Poverty Action Group or Trussell Trust, has multiplied to raise awareness of the daily policies of poor workers, subscribers to precarious contracts (the famous “zero hour” contracts). She was even tempted – briefly – by politics (in the Labor Party) and journalism (she wrote a column in the daily Tea Guardian and worked for a local newspaper, The Echo).
On January 22, three days after the British Office for National Statistics (ONS) published its latest monthly inflation index (a record, at 5.4% increase in consumer prices in December 2021, a highest in thirty years), the activist with 437,000 Twitter followers has embarked on a new fight: to raise awareness that this percentage does not at all reflect the daily lives of the most needy Britons, who, like her, count their pennies before going shopping – at Asda or Lidl, the cheapest brands in the country.
Taking up the pen in the weekly The Observerthe activist explains: “In 2012, Sainsbury’s Basics ten-pack of bouillon cubes [les produits d’entrée de gamme de l’enseigne Sainsbury’s] cost 10 pence. In 2022 the same packet was 39p, but only tasted chicken or beef. The cheapest of the vegetarian bouillon cubes was £1 for ten. » Another basic product, another observation: “Last year the entry-level pasta at Asda next to me was 29 pence for 500g. Today they are no longer listed and the cheapest pack in the store costs 70 pence. That’s a 141% increase for the same product, in more colorful packaging! A few years ago, there were still 400 first price references, now there are only 87.”
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