Student Grant

I knew last night's edition of Question Time would be a humdinger. Left-leaning Medhi Hasan versus the Daily Mail's Quentin Letts days after that paper called Miliband Sr. 'evil' promised fireworks, and we got them.



So that was fun. But for me, the presence of Grant Shapps, MP, Conservative Party Chairman and possible money-launderer, was equally attractive. You see, Grant and I have history. It was me who complained to the Advertising Standards about his shady company's practice of putting together crappy little money-making documents, selling them under the names of 'Michael Green MP' and other pseudonyms, and proclaiming endorsements from large numbers of people who don't exist. As a result, Shapps agreed to withdraw the adverts rather than face an ASA ruling. His companies were also banned from Google's rankings for 'scraping': stealing other sites' copy to attract clicks.

The most amusing bit was when Shapps was asked by the media about my complaint: he dismissed it as 'politically motivated', which seems a bit strange coming from a man who has devoted at least one of his personalities to being an MP and Chairman of Britain's oldest political parties.

So as you can imagine, I look forward to Grant's appearances on shows like QT with considerable relish. For me, the English language developed solely to provide the word 'glib' for application to Mr Shapps. Last night's episode was a true vintage. Smug, sneering, evasive, patronising, facetious and mendacious, good old Grant gave a master-class in modern Conservative manners.

But amongst all the other fun, one sentence Grant uttered caught my attention. While evading any discussion of the economy in favour of another unfounded attack on Keynesianism, he said to Yvette Cooper of the Labour Party 'You can't just magic money from nowhere' (around the 50 minute mark). 'That's funny', I thought. I have a dim memory of Grant Shapps' alter ego Michael Green insisting (for money) that you really can. In fact, isn't that his entire business model?

Two minutes later, I find this delightful document from the Shapps family firm, HowToCorp.

And what a magnificent opus it is:

Michael Green spent 12 years building his conventional offline business before turning his hand to online marketing on a strictly part-time basis.
And from a standing start – as recently as February 2002 – Michael has created his online How To Corp business empire! 

Part-time is right!

And how does one make all this money?

you can make money overnight, you can have success, you can earn a 6 figure income, you can do all of these things 

Easy: sack your staff:

I have been in the printing business for 12 years, you could not find a more traditional, conventional business than printing, you have stock, you have paper, people and management, all those personnel issues and so on....
What attracted me to the internet business model is that I can do away with all of those things and I can make as much money or more money, but it goes directly into my pocket, it doesn't go to anyone else, I don't need staff, I don't need premises. 

The rest of this dismal document is blindingly obvious business tips of the kind you get from 5 minutes' Googling, although I was amused by the suggestion that other internet marketers can't be trusted:

very well known names in internet marketing…sell similar 'How To' products and I think they are very dishonest 

Not like Grant/Michael at all. Interestingly, he also plugs 'Costly Internet Blunders' by one 'Rick Adams', also published by the Shapps company. Is Rick actually Grant? Who can tell? But that particular volume is no longer available. Perhaps it's being updated to include the sorry tale of Grant Shapps.

'Michael Green' is a very honest man. It says so here:

Protect your own success by preventing others from stealing what’s rightfully yours.

I am seeing people in real time trying to steal my products 

And yet here's the Daily Telegraph reporting that his company has been caught plagiarising software. I hope Grant's having a serious word with…himself.

But having read all 24 pages of Michael Green's guide to making a mint, what actually is the secret? Well, here we go! All you need to do is

Click Here And Discover How To Make 'Real' Money Online By Developing & Selling Your Very Own Products.
Find Out About Michael Green's Private System For Creating Wealth - Now Revealed For The First Time In His Amazing New Easy-To-Follow Toolkit. 

That's right. The big secret is that you need to buy another Michael Green business guide.

Ironically, given that 'Michael Green' is actually a senior government politician, you can still get 'How To Bounce Back From Recession', which I presume the rest of the Conservative Party hasn't read, or we'd all be rich again.

Remember, folks: there's an election in 2015.