The football-obsessed UK who were unable to fly to Brazil to see the 2014 World Cup directed their anger to Tourism minister Helen Grant after the latter tweeted a photo of herself enjoying the tournament festivities in the host nation.
Daily Mail said that earlier this week, Home Secretary Theresa May issued an apology to individuals who had been waiting for their passports, unveiling the Passport Office's struggle to keep up with a massive backlog. May also unveiled the British government's emergency measures to speed up passport applications, of which many of them were surely done to be able to travel to Brazil in time for the World Cup.
When Grant was asked by political magazine The House magazine in an interview about the passport backlog, she said, "I'm in no doubt, I'm very confident that people will get their passports. But if they don't want to go away, we have some fantastic places to visit and holiday not that far from here. I think there's a lot to be said for the "staycation". People need to do what they like. I think we are going to have a great summer, we are certainly going to have a great summer of sport too, there's lots of opportunities to build your holiday around a spoilt-for-choice list of events -- the Tour de France Grand Depart, we've got the golf, we've got the Commonwealth Games, we've got football that we can watch on the TV. It's a wonderful place to have your holiday."
The number of people who had slammed Grant's remarks have significantly increased when she shared on Twitter a photo of her mugging for the cameras at an FA reception in Sao Paulo.
Since being elevated to a ministerial position, Grant had proven at certain points that she was not the right person to be a sports minister, Daily Mail said. The Maidstone MP was recently embarrassed when she had managed to answer incorrectly to questions about sports. She was also criticized for suggesting that girls in the UK consider taking activities that she deemed feminine like cheerleading and ballet.
