Jack Monroe #606 £60k to pick her nose and scratch her pumble

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Winning title by @CrackingOwlSanctuary, nominated by @Lazarus. We don't have £60k to give you in thanks. Maybe Southend Council does?

Recap:



CHAOS TIME, NINNIES
  • An anonymous Twitter account posted evidence that guest, who's now changed her name to Jack Hadjicostas, is employed as a Policy Advisor to the Leader of Southend Council (Cllr Daniel Cowan)
  • Local squigs began asking how she got this job, what was the selection process, etc. and saying they will submit FOI requests
  • At a meeting of the Council to decide the budget, Cllr Tony Cox of the Reform Party put forward an amendment to delete guest's position. It was confirmed that she's a permanent employee on a salary package worth £60k. He suggested that she is not performing the job she was hired to do, and questioned why the job was created despite the Council having rejected a proposal to hire taxpayer-funded assistants. He has reported this to the Head of Fraud and Internal Audit. Fellow Reform Councillor Darryl Jones stated on Twitter that guest's job was advertised and then changes were made to the position after she was hired. Guest allegedly threatened to have Cllr Cox fired from his day job, so evidently she is confident she holds considerable influence!
  • Cllr MattmatethankyouverymuchMatt Dent denies having anything to do with hiring her, and got into some very guest-like sniping with squigs. But he's also backing off a bit and says he "knows" her ... despite their long-documented friendship on some social media and some suspicious tweets about fumbling pumbles!
  • Cllr Cox shared evidence on Twitter of a suspicious email exchange between guest and a local resident who emailed Cllr Cowan, Leader of the Council. First, guest responded to the person as if she IS Cllr Cowan and put her name on the email (although the header showed she was responding on his behalf.) Then, when the recipient had evidently replied asking who the hell she is, she replied saying she "should have introduced (herself)" and is a Policy Advisor to the Leader. This was all late at night when she shouldn't even have been working
  • This of course raises data protection concerns, and the question of what job she actually does. Guest says she's (and the Council's system shows her as) a Policy Advisor to the Leader ... but "officially" she's on record as a Senior Policy Advisor, i.e. non-partisan, supposed to advise all members of the Council. She can't be hired for one job but then do the other. And neither role involves answering a Councillor's emails, which should be the job of an EA/personal assistant/administrator. They also can't hire her for one role and then, when she proves completely incompetent at it, give her a completely different job to do just to keep her employed
  • This, by the way, is guest's official job description. You decide if you think she got it fair and square
  • Reform will keep on this as part of a "Labour corruption at Southend Council!" angle - there are other elements, including allegations that a trade union rep hired by the Council does nothing. Cllr Cox also suggests that whistleblowers are involved. And squigs have been trying to bring it to the attention of the press and get Private Eye to cover it in "Rotten Boroughs"
In summary:



(courtesy of @SweetTransvestite)

And the Patreon is still up even though this leaves her open to accusations of bribery now that she's a public servant. There remain no featu.

Wiki up on the pink button!
 
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My biggest gripe with guest at present is that she’s made me read the words of a Reform guy and go ‘christ he has a point’
 
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I feel like a puppy-brained scamp: I have no idea what's going on but I'm dead excited about it. Tbh I was quite hoping for some slop but this will do 😌
 
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Kudos to dear frau @witchofwestbyfleet for that very informative and fully sourced recap. Extremely helpful for those of us who were dino napping in a different time zone while all of this went down :sleep:
 
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So, they've used a technical, specialist job description - with ZERO qualification requirements, not even a GCSE when most LA jobs want a degree to get beyond the front reception - to justify spending sixty grand a year on a jumped up PA with no actual secretarial or PA experience (beyond the 'volunteering in the office' for the duration of the election)? And more to the point, one who has longstanding personal relationships and family connections with the people in a position to be doing the recruiting?


Still hold my earlier point that the Patreon makes it technically possible for the entire decisionmaking process to be circumvented via a 'donation' - what somebody might term a 'bung' - especially when the names are different.

Wonder how many actual PAs at the council weren't deemed suitable to apply for the role? And, as a second line of wondering, how many of those aren't white and middleclass with Daddies that are pillars of the community?
 
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I've made it to the front of the field again. It feels like olden times. The page numbers keep flicking away from me but the depth of detail just keeps rising.
It's the quality and potential fall out of this chaos that makes me genuinely think that she has run out of road to gallumph along.

The Job Description was written with How not to be Jack Monroe specifically in mind. All those qualification and personal qualities they are looking for in a candidate are most singularly unavailable in the charachter and life experiences of Jack Monroe, which is no crime, I'd not be fit to do that job but at least I'd admit it and be on my way. The stress of doing a job your not qualified for must be awful.

In my own circle of friends and family (including the cat and a quite feckless cockerpoo) I cannot find a person less qualified than her. Love to know who interviewed her or if that even happened. There are more questions than answers at the moment but I reckon the council will be trying to find out. I'm sure they'd rather show her the door and call it quits but she's brought too much baggage with her.
Oh dear.
 
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So going back a bit, how does the creepy poo-fetish man fit into all this? Is he any of the council peeps named so far? 🤔
 
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Winning title by @CrackingOwlSanctuary, nominated by @Lazarus. We don't have £60k to give you in thanks. Maybe Southend Council does?

Recap:



CHAOS TIME, NINNIES
  • An anonymous Twitter account posted evidence that guest, who's now changed her name to Jack Hadjicostas, is employed as a Policy Advisor to the Leader of Southend Council (Cllr Daniel Cowan)
  • Local squigs began asking how she got this job, what was the selection process, etc. and saying they will submit FOI requests
  • At a meeting of the Council to decide the budget, Cllr Tony Cox of the Reform Party put forward an amendment to delete guest's position. It was confirmed that she's a permanent employee on a salary package worth £60k. He suggested that she is not performing the job she was hired to do, and questioned why the job was created despite the Council having rejected a proposal to hire taxpayer-funded assistants. He has reported this to the Head of Fraud and Internal Audit. Fellow Reform Councillor Darryl Jones stated on Twitter that guest's job was advertised and then changes were made to the position after she was hired. Guest allegedly threatened to have Cllr Cox fired from his day job, so evidently she is confident she holds considerable influence!
  • Cllr MattmatethankyouverymuchMatt Dent denies having anything to do with hiring her, and got into some very guest-like sniping with squigs. But he's also backing off a bit and says he "knows" her ... despite their long-documented friendship on some social media and some suspicious tweets about fumbling pumbles!
  • Cllr Cox shared evidence on Twitter of a suspicious email exchange between guest and a local resident who emailed Cllr Cowan, Leader of the Council. First, guest responded to the person as if she IS Cllr Cowan and put her name on the email (although the header showed she was responding on his behalf.) Then, when the recipient had evidently replied asking who the hell she is, she replied saying she "should have introduced (herself)" and is a Policy Advisor to the Leader. This was all late at night when she shouldn't even have been working
  • This of course raises data protection concerns, and the question of what job she actually does. Guest says she's (and the Council's system shows her as) a Policy Advisor to the Leader ... but "officially" she's on record as a Senior Policy Advisor, i.e. non-partisan, supposed to advise all members of the Council. She can't be hired for one job but then do the other. And neither role involves answering a Councillor's emails, which should be the job of an EA/personal assistant/administrator. They also can't hire her for one role and then, when she proves completely incompetent at it, give her a completely different job to do just to keep her employed
  • This, by the way, is guest's official job description. You decide if you think she got it fair and square
  • Reform will keep on this as part of a "Labour corruption at Southend Council!" angle - there are other elements, including allegations that a trade union rep hired by the Council does nothing. Cllr Cox also suggests that whistleblowers are involved. And squigs have been trying to bring it to the attention of the press and get Private Eye to cover it in "Rotten Boroughs"
In summary:



(courtesy of @SweetTransvestite)

And the Patreon is still up even though this leaves her open to accusations of bribery now that she's a public servant. There remain no featu.

Wiki up on the pink button!
Thank you for the new thread and the fabulous forensic recap (guest could never).
 
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After some forensic analysis of all the evidence I think I’ve identified how Guest secured the Council job.

MattMate furnished her with the names of all the cleaners in THE OFFICE
 
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Has anyone mentioned the "it's all beyond a joke now" and then the "Boooooo" when Cllr Cox finished his speech? Terrible (SMOTF, 2020)
 
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Going back to Hotes comment about seeing their WhatsApp group messages, would we be able to ask for them under FOI?
 
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Has anyone mentioned the "it's all beyond a joke now" and then the "Boooooo" when Cllr Cox finished his speech? Terrible (SMOTF, 2020)
It fitted in perfectly with the rest of the meeting, unprofessional and childish.

They think they are in the House of Commons, rather than a two bit council chamber. Full of their own importance, playing at politics. They are nowhere near good enough to be MPs, and that's a low bar.
 
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Going back to Hotes comment about seeing their WhatsApp group messages, would we be able to ask for them under FOI?
I think you could ask to see all communications between them. You could stipulate that this should include all emails, teams and whatsapp messages. Whether you’d get them is another thing, plus it might exceed cost limits too.
 
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After some forensic analysis of all the evidence I think I’ve identified how Guest secured the Council job.

MattMate furnished her with the names of all the cleaners in THE OFFICE
Thats it. She had the entire list memorised. She's been cornering these people in their houses for weeks. Made flashcards. Mental maps and menomics.
Whole thing done and out in 10 minutes wiyh a standing ovation as she sauntered, scampered out the door and down the stairs only to tumble horribly to the bottom.
 
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Jack is going to get away with this, isn't she? I just hope, for Southend council's sake, that it is for a contracted period. Otherwise they're stuck with her until she #&%@ up in such a way they can get rid.
 
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Jack is going to get away with this, isn't she? I just hope, for Southend council's sake, that it is for a contracted period. Otherwise they're stuck with her until she #&%@ up in such a way they can get rid.
I dunno.
There seems to be very real questions about how she got a job she was utterly unqualified for. And the comment about having the Cllr.s "day job taken off him" or whatever sumptuous little Napoleon remark she was heard to make. The wagon that she is
 
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On the previous thread @Foxvint made a comment which I'd also been mithering over -

Screenshot_20250221_205838_Samsung Internet.jpg


I wondered if he'd advised her that volunteering and turning up to endless meetings seemingly to pick her nose would mean she was eligible for an internal trawl when jobs came up :unsure:
 
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