This week’s Conservative Party Political Broadcast (PPB) featured a builder talking about how his firm is struggling due to the recession. However, it turns out he went bankrupt in 2006, at the height of the building boom:
Shane Prescott starred in the Conservative party broadcast on Thursday, claiming his business had struggled because of the recession.
But Companies House records show the 51-year-old father-of-four’s loft conversion firm actually went into liquidation at the height of the boom in 2006.
It is believed when his business went into liquidation he owed £240,000 to creditors and £174,000 to Revenue and Customs.
He was used in a political video by the Conservatives as the epitome of a Britain betrayed by Gordon Brown and was seen as the British equivalent of Joe the Plumber, who challenged Barack Obama at a campaign rally and became the symbol of recession-hit America.
But the revelations about Mr Prescott’s finances also echo the loss of credibility suffered by Joseph Wurzelbacher – allegedly unlicensed.
The Liverpool Daily Post has more.
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Sounds reminiscent of Jennifer’s Ear.
This post contains very peculiar and misleading assumptions about Samuel “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher and his role in the US election.
In what way was he taken as a symbol of recession?
He became famous for ambushing Obama with a question about raising taxes in those earning over $250 000 pa. Obama’s answer that he believed in ‘spreading the wealth around’ (by raising top rate taxes while cutting taxies for middle and low earners) was taken by American conservatives to show Obama to be a socialist, though there is already a progressive income tax system in the US.
I don’t see that Wurzelbacher’s credibility was undermined by the revelation that he is an unregistered plumber, that is not the same thing as being a bad plumber and might just mean that registration as a plumber in that part of America is an irrational regulation rising the price of of plumbers by limiting the number who can work in that field.
Wurzelbacher’s credibility was undermined by the revelation that he was not correct in assuming that he would be hit by Obama’s proposed tax rise, though he pointed out that he would be hit if he succeeded in his ambition of buying his employer’s plumbing business. He credibility was further hit when he agreed with a Republican rally participant who declared that Obama would mean death for Israel, Wurzelbacher was unable to defend this claim on an Interview with Fox (Fox!) News in which the interviewer openly found him absurd. The other discrediting factor was that Wurzelbacher was originally presented as polically independent when he is a registered Republican.
The whole circus in which Wurzelbacher was promoted as a political hero, despite, or even because of, his ignorance and lack of articulacy, and demented claims that Obama’s views are Marxist and he would cause the death of Israel, was certainly discreditible for the Republican party which in the end only produced a symbol of its retreat into an uneducated blue collar social base.
You would have thought they would have checked with Sefton Tories as this man is ‘known’ in Southport. Mind you our Tories are serially incompetent including Den Dover and his £500,000 he owes Europe and then they took Cameron off to celebrate the ‘saving’ of Southport market (including £1.4m spending) the Council had never approved!
(more on: http://birkdalefocus.blogspot.com/2008/12/we-could-have-predicted-this.html )