Tourists are already among the most hated people in the world. But now there’s a new company in town that is working hard to make them even more unwelcome.
Are you looking to go on holiday purely to gawp at locals as they fumble around in the ashes of their broken existences? Perhaps you’re keen to make an unnecessary burden of yourself in an area with pressing political concerns, such as a stalling revolution or even an apparently imminent war? Well, now you can do exactly that, thanks to Political Tours.
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The company describes itself as “a revolutionary concept for travellers passionate about politics and current affairs”. Basically, it’s a travel agency, but rather than taking you on tours with names like “Romantic Danube” or “Mysteries of the Catacombs”, its recent offerings include a journey through a post-revolutionary Libya still teetering on the brink of chaos (£4,200, excluding flights), Turkey, as it flirts with authoritarianism (£2,500), and Ukraine, as the blood on the Maidan has barely dried (£3,200).
If the downtrodden masses of the world consider having a revolution any time soon, it’s feasible that they’ll soon have an audience of nosy rich people who’ve paid thousands of pounds for a front row seat to their misery.
I also came across the “London and the Financial Crisis – Debt and the City” tour (which appears to be a weird, crap pun on “Sex and the City“). For whatever reason, having the economic mess that precipitated the Tories’ wanton destruction of the welfare state, the prevalence of shitty, insecure jobs and so on turned into a tourist zoo didn’t sit all that well. It costs £400 to walk around the Square Mile for two days. If you need to spend £400 to understand the impact of the financial crash, you’ll probably never really understand it at all.
That said, the description does make it sound pretty great. “We start off in Mile End, East London, one of the poorest areas in Britain despite its proximity to the City – we look at families affected by debt.” What does that involve? Walking around, staring at poor people as they peer mournfully through the front window of Cash4Gold?
The agency also promises prospective tourists the change to, “look at a major construction project that came to a halt following the credit crunch – part of a debt fuelled credit boom”. As I’ve made my way to work over the last few months, I’ve walked past a building site that is gradually being turned into a new gated community of flats that will most likely be bought up by foreign billionaires as investment opportunities.
I often think about how, over roughly a year, I’ve observed a piece of socio-economic history in the making: the selling off of London as we know it and its “regeneration” into a school playground for millionaires. If I knew that other people were ready to pay £400 for that privilege, perhaps I’d stop stressing about being late and take some time to breathe in the experience. Who knows, maybe I should envisage every dull aspect of my existence as living out an enlightening tour package about life in 21st century Britain. The plus side is that I’m getting it completely free of charge. The downside is I’m never allowed to leave.
A slideshow displays the excitement of rubbing shoulders with City workers.
Next in the itinerary is a “crash course in the financial weapons of mass destruction” from a “leading City investment firm”. I guess having a megalomaniac explain where he hid the bodies would be pretty interesting, in a gruesome kind of way. Presumably this would be some City boys, who are inexplicably still employed, attempting to explain how they ruined the economy through a bunch of financial mechanisms that are specifically designed to fuck people and then confuse them so they don’t understand how or why. I wonder what emotion would come first, anger or boredom? Exciting.
Day two is basically the same vibe. Highlights include, “We hear from the politicians who tried to hold the bankers to account, and the regulators – the FSA [Financial Services Authority] and The Bank of England – on how they handled the crisis,” over lunch. Given that the FSA was recently shut down for what Wikipedia politely describes as “perceived regulatory failure of the banks during the financial crisis” and is usually prefixed by financial journalists with the words “the much maligned”, I imagine this would either be very depressing or a revisionist fantasy on a par with Bill And Ted’s Excellent Adventure.
Some more tours on offer.
If walking round London doesn’t tickle your fancy, why not go on the “Scotland Tour – The Road to Independence”. For a mere £2,600 you can, “Meet former Labour supporters at a working men’s club and see how the SNP took a foothold as traditional industry decline [sic.].”
I’m not sure why, in the age of the internet, you couldn’t just find a working men’s club, buy a cheap pint and talk to the people there. But then these are Scottish Nationalists who have been robbed of their traditional industry, so maybe they’d eat anyone with an English accent alive just for sustenance if you didn’t have a tour guide there with his electric cattle prod.
Of all Political Tours’ offerings, perhaps the most egregious example of poverty porn is to be found in the “Greece and the Euro Tour”. For just £2,750, you will be let into the secrets of the “origins, purpose and value” of the Potato Movement, where, “municipalities buy large quantities of agricultural products and sell them to citizens at cost value”. Now I’m no expert on the Greek financial crisis, but my guess is that the “origins, purpose and value” of the Potato Movement are that people couldn’t afford food. There’s also a talk about the economy called “How the Real Economy was Destroyed”, in which, “One economist argues Greece is in need of major structural reform”. Yeah, Greeks, where’s your entrepreneurial spirit? You’ve been flailing around in the shit for years now, haven’t you thought that *perhaps* your economy could do with major structural reform?
Or maybe you could just get yourself a real economy in which cunning entrepreneurs get rich idiots to stump up millions of euros to visit a UK food bank and ask people why they can’t afford to eat.
The crass stupidity of this whole thing is best summed up in the visit to historic Syntagma Square, “where the demonstrations protesting austerity measures have culminated and where many riots have started”. Colleagues of mine have stood in that square dodging Molotov cocktails, reporting as Greeks turn violently on their own, tearing into each other over political differences brought to boiling point because of the dreadful toll austerity has taken on a once proud nation.
It’s an ongoing tragedy and these cunts want to milk it for cheap entertainment value. Who the fuck does that?
More gross insensitivity:
Blowing Up Glasgow’s High Rise-Ghettos for Live TV is Amazingly Crass
