(This is not satire – it’s true)
Believe it or not, the newly-promoted co-chairman of the Tory Party, Grant Shapps, has called the recession ‘an amusement ride’.
Obviously when people are actually struggling to feed their families, he wouldn’t dare say such an outrageous thing under his own name for fear it would affect his party’s electoral prospects – so he didn’t.
He said it under a pseudonym, Michael Green, instead.
Michael Green refers to himself as ‘a successful online marketer’, ‘marketing guru’ and states ‘his wealth is such that he actually flies his very own personal plane and also lives in a fabulous mansion’.
But Grant Shapps, the Tory Party co-chairman, has admitted Michael Green is the pseudonym he uses to separate his business activities (which by the way are having some serious difficulties at the moment) from his political activities.
Mr Green/Shapps has produced what he calls a ‘self-help guide for negotiating your way to better times’ called ‘How To Bounce Back From Recession‘.
It can be downloaded for free from here if you want a copy:
http://www.howtobouncebackfromrecession.com
In this strange document, Shapps likens the recession to an ‘amusement ride’ and offers invaluable tips for the unemployed to survive hard times and feed their families, such as
- Invest in real estate, futures or bonds
- Buy a house or vehicle
- Borrow money from a bank
- Take a skiing holiday (I’m not making this up, really)
- Learn to knit or play guitar
- Treat yourself to an ice-cream
So thanks to Mr Shapps invaluable advice – we as a nation now know where we’re going wrong on the problem of unemployment.
People without jobs are not buying nearly enough houses, going skiing enough or eating enough ice-cream.
Incidentally, the Tory chairman also suggests that the unemployed can use a library ‘for free’ ignoring the fact that under his government hundreds of libraries have closed or are under threat of closure.
Call me old-fashioned, but shouldn’t this be a scandal?
I still remember a time when such insensitive remarks from such a high-ranking member of the government at a time of hardship for so many people would have resulted in scandal, outrage and immediate resignation.
It hardly seems to be even news these days.
Maybe we should try and make it news?
Think Left 
I feel a bit dubious about downloading this, because then he’ll have my name and my e-mail address…and he’ll find out that I’m ‘pretending’ to suffer from severe back pain and asthma. I’m not really a pensioner, either, I’m an actress in a grey wig.
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Once upon a time labour may have screamed no this cannot be right, now of course it’s highly likely Labour feel sorry for him after all he is upper middle class and of course hardish working, the cream of Labour voters.
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@ Robert – I am perplexed by the words ‘highly likely’ because I think that its highly unlikely that grassroots Labour members or even the overwheming majority of Labour MPs would feel sorry for Grant Shapps. `IMO he is an appalling, over-ambitious person who told friends that he wanted to be a Tory cabinet minister at 13y old! This latest statement about the recession being like an amusement ride is merely the last in a long line of insensitive, dubious and right wing statement.
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If you are going to quote him, you might as well do it honestly – instead of deceitfully, as you did.
What is actually said in that document is:
“A recession is anything but amusing – although the recessions we’ve experienced in the last two decades certainly resemble an ‘amusement’ ride. Amusing for whom? Certainly not for you or me.”
Is it too inconvenient for you to quote honestly in context?
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Andrew – How is putting a link to the document for everyone to see for themselves deceitful?
Nice try though.
OK – now justify Shapp’s advice to the unemployed to survive a recession by buying a house or learning to ski.
Go on – I dare you.
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