Meet the poverty poster girls Jack Monroe: Think a cross between Yvette Cooper and Delia Smith, with tattoos Jack Monroe is a young single mother and Left-wing activist, described as "the modern face of poverty." Sounds about right. When it comes to poverty, it doesn't get much more modern than that. She writes a blog called "A Girl Called Jack," moaning about the "savage" cuts and giving advice on how to prepare a hearty meal for less than £1. Think a cross between Yvette Cooper and Delia Smith, with tattoos. "A Girl Called Jack" calls to mind Johnny Cash's memorable 1969 hit record A Boy Named Sue. In the Cash version, recorded live at San Quentin prison, a boy goes through life lumbered with a girl's name by an absentee father. Well, my daddy left home when I was three, And he didn't leave much to ma and me . . . Coincidentally, Jack's young son is three, too. We don't know how old he was when his daddy left home, or indeed if his daddy was ever around in the first place. Nor do we know whether his daddy has ever contributed a penny in child maintenance to his upkeep. What we do know is that after Jack "fell" pregnant, she resigned from her job in the fire service to look after her new baby full-time. That meant giving up a £27,000-a-year salary in order to live on benefits. Jack says she simply couldn't make ends meet on her fire brigade income. We must take her word for it, but plenty of other people do manage to raise a family on 27 grand, including married men with a wife and more than one child to support. Although perfectly capable of earning her own living, Jack decided, like so many others, that it was her "right" to expect someone else to pay her to bring up her son. That someone else, naturally, being the already hard-pressed British taxpayers, many of them struggling on far less than £27,000 a year. Her case goes to the heart of Iain Duncan Smith's efforts to tackle the welfare monster and cap benefits. Why should people in work, often on relatively low wages, be forced to subsidise those for whom claiming benefits is a "lifestyle" choice? Relieved of the chore of having to turn up for work every day, Jack could concentrate on sitting at her laptop complaining about the "cuts." Those whom the Guardianistas disdain as 'ordinary people' don't eat pasta - they eat spaghetti out of tins. Most of them will have never heard of kale, let alone eaten it It was her blog which brought her to the attention of Left-wing rags such as The Independent and The Guardian, for whom Jack now writes a food column for the welfare classes. In Wednesday's Guardian she could be found giving her recipe for budget Kale Pesto Pasta, a snip at 42p a portion. You couldn't make it up. If I'd set out to compose a spoof Guardian food column aimed at those living in "poverty," I couldn't have done any better. It is beyond parody. This is a typical Guardianista's idea of what "ordinary people" should eat. Do they really think the "poor" are going to sit down in front of The Great British Bake Off on their 52-inch, taxpayer-funded plasma TVs, and tuck into a plate of Kale Pesto Pasta? For a start, those whom the Guardianistas disdain as "ordinary people" don't eat pasta - they eat spaghetti out of tins. Most of them will have never heard of kale, let alone eaten it. And if they are vaguely aware of pesto, they probably think it's some kind of fancy foreign gravy mix. Cait Reilly and Jack Monroe are the Pesto Kids of Welfare Britain Ah, Pesto! To her credit, Jack has now embarked on a media career. But no one makes any money out of blogging and given what The Guardian pays contributors, I shouldn't be surprised if she doesn't still rely on some kind of income support from the state. Jack has come to our attention only because she was chosen by the Labour Party to represent "ordinary people" in a party political broadcast about high energy bills. Mind you, one of the other "ordinary people" in the broadcast was former advertising executive Beresford Casey, who lives in a £1.5 million house near Ed Miliband in Primrose Hill, and runs a chain of upmarket burger bars called Haché, a posh French name for mince. Haché will flog you a "scotch steak burger topped with celebrated Reblochon cheese" for a very reasonable £10.95. Would you like frites with that? Only the trendy metropolitan Lefties who comprise the modern Labour Party could come up with an "ordinary person" called "Beresford." Wasn't he one of the Wombles? Presumably, the lovely Cait Reilly wasn't available, on account of the fact that she was in the High Court complaining that being made to work in Poundland in exchange for claiming benefits was "slave labour." She thought she should choose what kind of work she was out of, while continuing to receive the Jobseekers" Allowance. More from Richard Littlejohn... The court didn't agree, but did decide that the Government's initial measures to encourage people into work were legally flawed. The rules have since been changed. Her taxpayer-funded legal action is estimated to have cost £50,000. Her lawyers, Phil Shiner's Public Image Limited, are now considering an appeal to Europe. Cait and Jack are certainly poster girls for poverty, but not in the way the Left would have you believe. They both think they are entitled to benefits on their own terms. In Jack's case, she may have had more money for food and heating if she hadn't spent so much on tattoos. Her arms look like your average professional footballer. Tattooists typically charge £60 an hour and Jack's bill for "body art" must run into several hundred quid as a basis for negotiation. Older readers will remember the "Bisto Kids" advert, which featured two street urchins salivating over the smell of gravy. Cait and Jack want the gravy, too, but without having to work for it. They are the Pesto Kids of Welfare Britain. Incidentally, you may recall Cait Reilly initially claimed that working in a supermarket was an affront to her dignity. So you will be amused to learn she has now got a job - on the check-out in Morrisons. It would appear that Duncan Smith's welfare reforms are working, after all. The money programme Mishal Husain is very much seen as the future of the BBC's news and current affairs output A month ago, Mishal Husain was acclaimed as the new voice of Radio 4"s Today Programme. Since then she's co-hosted the show a couple of times a week. Miss Husain is an excellent broadcaster, very much seen as the future of the BBC's news and current affairs output. Her appointment to Today comes at a time the BBC is trying to force all star names to accept staff contracts and cut down on the amount of freelance work they undertake, particularly lucrative corporate engagements. There have been concerns that if BBC presenters take the shilling from private companies, it could compromise their impartiality. When Miss Husain joined the Radio 4 flagship show, there was speculation that her rate for taking part in "corporates" would rocket from £2,000 a day to £10,000. Nice work if you can get it. This week she turned up in Qatar at a conference bankrolled by a number of multinational businesses, including a couple of oil companies and the banking group Santander. Her attendance only became public knowledge after she chided another delegate, Gordon Brown, for describing himself as an "ex-politician." The BBC won't say how much she was paid, but in her prominent new role, was it wise for her to accept the gig, given that banks and oil companies are high on everyone's hate list right now? On Tuesday, I brought you news that Professor Hugh Pennington, emeritus professor of bacteriology at the University of Aberdeen, had warned that bags-for-life pose a serious danger to public health. His department tested an assortment of reusable bags and pronounced them "highly contaminated" with bacteria, which could cause serious food poisoning. A number of readers wondered if this could be the same Professor Pennington who predicted a few years ago that "hundreds of thousands of people" would be killed by bovine CJD. Yes, it could. I think you can safely carry on using those bags-for-life for the time being. Two High Court judges took just 15 minutes to reject an application by newspaper and magazine publishers to prevent politicians forcing the Queen to sign away 300 years of Press freedom in Britain. After a quarter of an hour's deliberation they came back with a nine-page, 3,000-word ruling, raising suspicions that it may have been prepared in advance. At full lick, I can write at only about 500 words an hour. And that doesn't include the work I have to do off the ball before I sit down at the wordface. So the speed at which Lord Justice Richards and Mr Justice Sales delivered their detailed verdict was impressive. Their rapid judgment was like one of those TV cooking shows in which a celebrity chef assembles the ingredients, stirs them around for a few moments and then pops the dish into the oven on a medium heat. Seconds later, he pulls out the perfect finished article, and exclaims: "Here's one I made earlier." Wildlife experts are warning that 'thousands' of hedgehogs may perish on Guy Fawkes' Night Wildlife experts are warning that "thousands" of hedgehogs may perish on Guy Fawkes" Night after crawling into bonfires to make a nest. Thousands? That many? Still, there's a silver lining. They could always distribute the remains to vulnerable members of the travelling community, who consider hedgehogs a great delicacy, especially when baked in mud. One man's hedgehog is another man's meat pie.