(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:

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?

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By the way, just in case Mr Shapps decides to take down his document for download, I’ve kept a copy on my computer for safekeeping.

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