Grant Shapps admits he had second job as 'millionaire web marketer' while MP

[muriel_volestrangler]

Grant Shapps, the Tory party chairman, had a second job as a “multimillion-dollar web marketer” under the pseudonym Michael Green for at least year after he first became an MP.
...
Rather than running down his operations it appears that in 2006 Shapps was expanding the company. On a recording made in the summer of that year, the Tory MP says over the next few months he will be running his “mentoring programme” to hire 10 staff, produce software to create websites that “Google prefers” and start selling “Stinking Rich 3” the latest tome in a range of self-help guides that claimed to make customers wealthy and which “sell fantastically well”.
...
Last November the Tory party chairman used legal threats to force a local constituent and ex-Labour councillor to delete an allegedly libellous post on a Facebook group about his use of the pseudonym and replace it with an apology that explicitly states that he was not using the Michael Green pseudonym when he was an MP.
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A visibly annoyed Conservative party chairman – the radio programme is streamed on YouTube – brings the matter to an end by saying: “I thought the discussion here was second jobs whilst people are MPs. To be absolutely clear. I don’t have a second job. And I have never had a second job whilst I being an MP. End of story.”

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/mar/15/grant-shapps-admits-he-had-second-job-as-millioniare-web-marketer-while-mp

I know - 'Tory lies for personal gain' is 'dog bites man' stuff. But the legal threats when he knew the person was telling the truth look pretty bad for a party chairman.

[LeftishBrit]

1. A liar and bully - I suppose that meets the ideal job description of a Tory chairman

If Joe or Jane Bloggs lied about having a job when they were claiming the dole, they'd be in trouble with the police; but rules are more relaxed for MPs.

I think that, even if MPs are permitted to take second jobs, they should not be able to claim their MP's salary if they do. Why should taxpayers pay extra money for someone who's already earning a nice salary?

The content of Shapps' second job is also interesting. 'The Tory MP says over the next few months he will be running his “mentoring programme” to hire 10 staff, produce software to create websites that “Google prefers” and start selling “Stinking Rich 3” the latest tome in a range of self-help guides that claimed to make customers wealthy and which “sell fantastically well”.' In other words, his main clients would be either the rich who want to become even more stinking rich, or the credulous who think that they might become stinking rich if they follow the right formula. Sounds pretty much like much of the post-Thatcher Tory base!

[T_i_B]

2. I may have said this before...

....but Grant Shapps was an abysmally bad housing minister and remains the worst frontbench politician in parliament.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Tim Ireland (who posted a few times here) looked into this

During that incident I became aware of Grant Shapp’s wider use of alter egos, including ‘Michael Green’ of howtocorp.com (and howtobouncebackfromrecession.com, howtostartaforum.com, howtomarketwithtwitter.com, etc.) but today I’d really like to know more about his relationship with ‘Chuck Champion’ of howtopickupwomennow.com:



Perhaps Grant Shapps will inform us that the connection is ‘merely’ that howtopickupwomennow.com was one of the advertisers on the site savemysurgery.com, but the design, code and marketing and copy styles are identical to his* other ‘get results quickly without really trying’ scams, and his past behaviour (re: sock-puppetry denials) will count against him.

(*Yes, yes, yes. The paperwork shows the business is now in his wife’s name. But the advertising sales copy still live on many sites declares products to be the work of ‘Michael Green’, a “Member of Parliament”.)

http://www.bloggerheads.com/archives/2012/09/grant-shapps/

And he points out that Shapps was expanding his 'TrafficPaymaster' product (which plagiarised other websites to attract hits, against Google AdSense's terms of use) in 2007:

This is not the first time that Grant has claimed or implied that certain HowToCorp products pre-date his activity as an MP, and I have no regrets blowing this outright lie out of the water.

The entire site for the ’20/20 challenge’ only came into being in August 2007, two years after Shapps became an MP, and that is evidenced by the original registration date of the relevant domain name; the2020challenge.com

http://www.bloggerheads.com/archives/2012/10/howtocorp-2020-challenge/

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Revealed: Grant Shapps' threat to sue constituent over Michael Green post

Grant Shapps sought “compensation in lieu of damages” from one of his constituents and demanded that he post an apology over claims about the Conservative chairman’s use of the name Michael Green while an MP.

Letters sent last October and November by lawyers acting for the then MP for Welwyn Hatfield to Dean Archer, a chauffeur and former Labour councillor, reveal aggressive demands to retract what was described as a “defamatory allegation” made in a posting on Facebook.
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Archer had noted on Facebook that Shapps had called fellow MP Mark Reckless “a liar” for defecting to Ukip and then went on to question how honest Shapps had been when he had previously appeared as online marketeer “Mr Green”.
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The October letter also says that the damage caused by Archer’s “libellous” posting may not have ended. It quotes former Lord Justice Bingham, who once said, “Defamatory statements are objectionable not least because of their propensity to percolate through underground channels and contaminate hidden springs” – and warns that the law firm will “monitor the spread of any allegation”.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/mar/16/revealed-grant-shapps-threat-to-sue-constituent-over-michael-green-post