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.
