Monday, August 03, 2020

"The value of compassion"

As a riposte to Annunziata Rees-Mogg and anyone else inclined to "lecture [other people] paternalistically about how you would be better at being poor than they would", Jack Monroe's - entitled "You Don't Batch Cook When You're Suicidal" - is pretty good. But then, unlike Rees-Mogg, she has actually had the benefit of experience - not that "benefit" is the right word to use about finding yourself at the mercy of austerity politics and forced to feed yourself and your child on £7 a week.

Monroe's message is simple: "poverty and privilege are largely accidental" but patronising, judging and (in the case of Rees-Mogg and many politicians) depriving the most vulnerable - "those whose lives are entirely beyond your experience and comprehension" - is a deliberate choice. And an unforgivable one.

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