Simon Harris #4 He lost 5 stone, and gained 457 thousand pounds

[Pkershaw]

You can stick his name into the GoFundMe website and there are still quite a few of his on there. To be fair, most of them have that little green tick so I think that means he never accesses the money. But not all of them.

Obviously the big ones we know about, McDonald’s and Formula but there are others that picked up a few grand here and there, and who knows where the money went.

To be honest I think the GFM stuff is the least of his worries. My gut is telling me that the bigger fish is the £484k and the dodgy awards of public sector contracts. Almost half a million quid to admin some local Facebook groups where he’s lucky to get 2 likes per post, allegedly awarded by his mate who gave the contract to a company that she owns which is a phoenix from the flames of another company that was struck off for not submitting accounts, 9 days before the new one was formed with basically the same name. The whole thing STINKS and I reckon that’s what has him shitting his pants.

The Twitter account to keep an eye now is his mate Kirsty. Hopefully she gets dragged into the net of the investigation but I wouldn’t be surprised to see her go private or disappear in the same way Harris has.

 

[Jelly Bean]

Gutted the Mail didn't use our other descriptions eg 'fat unfunny cunt'.

 

[Fred Santos]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if anyone reads this who feels like chiming in on doxing his personal address on twitter needs to back down. What's needed here is the slow, uncertain imposition of justice and if there is a case to answer, the consequences, and not just in respect to him but the others that may be involved. More than anything though, it may well engender a degree of sympathy from the rozzers, which will just get in the way of them doing their job properly. Those who have had their eye on this for a long time (years actually) have learned to be patient - we now need to let things take their natural course, but can, of course, talk about it in the meantime.

 

[meredgrave]

From my experience working in marketing/advertising/PR, £500k in the private sector will often give global companies a team of around 5-6 from an agency, who perform 'full-function' activities of social media, press office, thought leadership and event management for a year.

For the same amount to be spent in the public sector on ONE GUY to run some FB groups alone is gob-smacking.

 

[Lazarus]

i ended up watching all 4 episodes of the post office tv thing last night. Mr Laz was out and i was gripped by it so kept watching. i'd loosely followed the story over the past year/18m.
Seeing what those people went through, i simply can't believe he thought the best thing he should do was monetise this for his own publicity by raising funds through him, rather than directing people to the charity.

i am in disbelief at what a poor lack of judgement this was, on his part.

 

[RolandTB-303]

Just occurred to me that that trustee guy clearly has his head screwed on, or has done his due diligence. Because his opening salvo was "don't give him your money, you don't know where it's going"

Nick Wallis is very much a details-oriented journalist, and with good reason. The scandal was all about 'misappropriation of funds' (false accusations, in the case of the subpostmasters). Given that it has taken a long time and a very, very hard struggle for the people involved to get where they are today, everyone involved is going to be HYPERsenstive to details, to paper trails and to full probity.

Harris has dropped a major bollock here. And it makes me wonder what Nick Wallis might have said to him privately in addition to his public disavowal.

 

[RandomFishOils]

And here’s the problem with all of these left wing grifters… As soon as they’re found out, the cry goes up that they must be secret Tories. They aren’t. They’re just left wing grifters. The equation in some stupid people’s heads that being left wing automatically equates to them being the good guys shows why, as an audience, they are so vulnerable to these scams.

 

[Jelly Bean]

Excellent

 

[lilykestrel]

Has written for The Times, used to be part of Money Saving Expert (*), edits a Student Money Saving publication

(*) MARTIIIIIIIIIN

 

[lilykestrel]

It's Teemill and the Trussell Trust all over again!

is it too early for a

Spoiler: spoiler

 

[lilykestrel]

A whole full page spread in the Southend Echo, gutted
---

A Labour councillor from Hampshire

 

[meredgrave]

It's always the slightest random little thing that gets these types in the end.

In this case, 8+ years of 'work' is undone by jumping on publicity from an ITV drama of all things.

Like Capone for tax evasion.

 

[CookieZippy]

Even The Cat from Red Dwarf is asking questions about Si.

 

[Fred Santos]

This is all just so great

Just a few other titbits of which I am aware:

Simon was paid directly for his "work" by Essex County Council (at which Kirsty O'Callaghan was employed) but "SocialKind" was paid by Suffolk - the "house style" and content is indentical. Paying SH directly for work done for Essex looks like a mechanism to avoid the conflict of interest/procurement rules that should have otherwise applied and, if I was looking at this from a law enforcement perspecitve, I'd be wanting to see transactions/bank accounts etc. (as I would have the power to do so if I was working for the Police) - it may be that "poor old" Simon was not the "sole" beneficiary of the transactions.

Simon has still been doing work for the NHS - at wihich O'Callaghan now works (or was moved to). Some of his high quality videos are still on his youtube account which appear to have been done for that organsation. Their transparency data doesn't show payments below £25,000 so only an FOI would get the root of how much has been paid, to what entity (SH or "social kindness") and for what.

SH was not the only person paid by ECC for moderating or content - meaning their total spend on "community" work using facebook was significantly higher.....there are a list of others too - paid much less individually, but a tight knit group (for how long I wonder) all centered around O'Callaghan.

Social Kindness/Social Kind had nothing to do with D Media (the bounceback loan defaulter) but as a named director of that company with very signiificant resources at his disposal at the time, honouring the loan before shutting the company down would have been the moral and right thing to do. Being the director of a limited company does not protect you entirely from legal and certainly not the moral obligations to your creditors.

A number of his previous GFM campaigns have been run on the basis that money will be passed to certain charities. We are now at the point where those named charities begin to publish their accounts for the periods in question. It might not always be obvious from their accounts but very large donations should be itemised especially if other income was from grants or contracts. They will have taken the donations at the time without necessarily being aware of or having paid attention to the totality of the campaign run by Harris - i.e how much was raised or whether some of it was for them and some if it was to be retained by Harris for him to administer- so if money was not paid accross or some of it was kept, their receipts would be less than that which GFM listed as having been raised. If there is anything to the suspicions around GFM then, as we all know, the internet keeps receipts. There is therefore a plentyful supply of souce material on to which the collective efforts of everyone who is now interested in this can be now be focused - or "crowd sourced" - which is kind of ironic.

I am glad that people's natural cynicsm about online money raisers and (ahem) people from Southend has begun to shine a light on all of this.

 

[SendReceive]

Complete with “blaireau” reference, nice touch.

Simon, as we all know you’re sitting on your fat arse reading this, can I just point out that now would be a perfect time to join the thread and convince Tattlers of your innocence. Jack Monroe did it on her threads early on and since then her threads have been doing great guns on the engagement front.

 

[lilykestrel]

oh no

ETA five minutes later

 

[CookieZippy]

The memes keep coming

 

[lilykestrel]

I NEED garage squig's receipts

 

[Pkershaw]

Even if you just forget all of the GFM stuff. His whole persona and rhetoric on social media was toxic. He gained notoriety by picking a side and being so vitriolic towards anyone who didn’t subscribe to that worldview. He wanted nothing more than to piss off a “baddie” and then gloat about it. He relentlessly bullied the likes of Sophie Corcoran multiple times a day. Think what you like about her politics but a 40 year old bloke tweeting the sort of abuse he constantly doled out to her was just weird.

If I was interviewing someone for any sort of job and found out that they ran Facebook groups like “Are Cuntry” which was a vehicle for smearing and mocking anybody with a different political view, or “U OK Hun” where he just ridiculed working class women all day, I’d just say, no. Fuck off, you’re an imbecile. Let alone give them £500k

 

[gimm3more]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if anyone reads this who feels like chiming in on doxing his personal address on twitter needs to back down. What's needed here is the slow, uncertain imposition of justice and if there is a case to answer, the consequences, and not just in respect to him but the others that may be involved. More than anything though, it may well engender a degree of sympathy from the rozzers, which will just get in the way of them doing their job properly. Those who have had their eye on this for a long time (years actually) have learned to be patient - we now need to let things take their natural course, but can, of course, talk about it in the meantime.

Don’t worry, the unit of the police who look out for high profile internet celebs in Essex will protect him from any doxxers x