Simon Harris #5 Mr Harris, who was a popular figure on the internet

[lilykestrel]

Well, it's all been kicking off hasn't it? Recaps please.

Congratulations @Jelly Bean (nominator) and @mchops (quoting Essex Live), you both win a low-engagement Facebook page and a GoFundMe of your choice.

ETA: Wiki here

 

[byefeliciax]

Hello. I’ve not been following this one very closely. What’s the latest?

Here for the recap

 

[lilykestrel]

Recap:

Well, we were all just puttering along in the doldrums of the New Year, when Mr Bates vs the Post Office aired on ITV. And Simon, in his infinite wisdom, decided what better opportunity to start a new GoFundMe, for the Horizon Scandal Fund (which provides grants to those affected by the Horizon Scandal (post office accounting system Kafkaesque nightmare)). Thing is, the Horizon Scandal Fund aren't registered as a charity on GoFundMe, so Simon got together with the folks at GoFundMe UK and decided that they would have the fundraiser for the GoFundMe UK Charity, who would then give the Horizon Scandal Fund a 'grant' (inverted commas Simon's own).

But the Horizon Scandal Fund do have a fully functioning website with donation function (GiftAid included).

When questioned about this, Simon said it was preferable because his high profile would mean it got promoted further by GoFundMe.

Enter the investigative journalist who wrote the book and numerous articles about the Horizon scandal, who is a trustee of the charity. (January 5th)

This rippled out into the corners of the Internet. Simon then promptly closed the fundraiser 'because it reached a £1000" (the original target was set to 10k).

Then the talk of the £500,000 payments from Essex County Council to run Facebook pages (possibly authorised by someone who is possibly Simon's mate and/or business partner) rippled out into the corners of the Internet.

On the night of the 5th, Simon deleted everything. Man Behaving Dadly Twitter, Man Behaving Dadly Facebook page, Southend News Network. Gone. Locked down his personal Facebook account which is used to run the Essex Council Facebook pages.

Oh and it hit the nationals, and Lee Anderson got to stick the boot in.

https://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2024-01-12/concerns-over-500k-council-payments-for-comedian-to-run-facebook-page

Council paid social media prankster £500k to run Facebook group during pandemic

Social media star Simon Harris, 40, was paid a whopping six-figure sum to help Essex County Council run their Facebook page, among other duties, during the coronavirus pandemic

www.mirror.co.uk

Essex County Council and then Simon released statements which only muddied the waters further, the key point being "payments were made to Simon Harris for expediency".

Oh and Jackie Weaver defended him on TalkTV, mysteriously without mentioning that she was one of the 'very famous people' that provided content for the ECC groups.

ETA oh and there's 24k sitting unaccounted for in the baby formula GoFundMe.

 

[Fred Santos]

Recap:

Well, we were all just puttering along in the doldrums of the New Year, when Mr Bates vs the Post Office aired on ITV. And Simon, in his infinite wisdom, decided what better opportunity to start a new GoFundMe, for the Horizon Scandal Fund (which provides grants to those affected by the Horizon Scandal (post office accounting system Kafkaesque nightmare)). Thing is, the Horizon Scandal Fund aren't registered as a charity on GoFundMe, so Simon got together with the folks at GoFundMe UK and decided that they would have the fundraiser for the GoFundMe UK Charity, who would then give the Horizon Scandal Fund a 'grant' (inverted commas Simon's own).

But the Horizon Scandal Fund do have a fully functioning website with donation function (GiftAid included).

When questioned about this, Simon said it was preferable because his high profile would mean it got promoted further by GoFundMe.

Enter the investigative journalist who wrote the book and numerous articles about the Horizon scandal, who is a trustee of the charity. (January 5th)

View attachment 2695886

This rippled out into the corners of the Internet. Simon then promptly closed the fundraiser 'because it reached a £1000" (the original target was set to 10k).

Then the talk of the £500,000 payments from Essex County Council to run Facebook pages (possibly authorised by someone who is possibly Simon's mate and/or business partner) rippled out into the corners of the Internet.

On the night of the 5th, Simon deleted everything. Man Behaving Dadly Twitter, Man Behaving Dadly Facebook page, Southend News Network. Gone. Locked down his personal Facebook account which is used to run the Essex Council Facebook pages.

Oh and it hit the nationals, and Lee Anderson got to stick the boot in.

https://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2024-01-12/concerns-over-500k-council-payments-for-comedian-to-run-facebook-page

Council paid social media prankster £500k to run Facebook group during pandemic

Social media star Simon Harris, 40, was paid a whopping six-figure sum to help Essex County Council run their Facebook page, among other duties, during the coronavirus pandemic

www.mirror.co.uk

Essex County Council and then Simon released statements which only muddied the waters further, the key point being "payments were made to Simon Harris for expediency".

Oh and Jackie Weaver defended him on TalkTV, mysteriously without mentioning that she was one of the 'very famous people' that provided content for the ECC groups.

ETA oh and there's 24k sitting unaccounted for in the baby formula GoFundMe.

You forgot about the insolvent company and the bounceback loan and also the likelihood of Simon also getting paid for work by Mid and South Essex ICS (where the aforementioned business partner and former ECC employee) went.

God, there's so much....

 

[lilykestrel]

You forgot about the insolvent company and the bounceback loan and also the likelihood of Simon also getting paid for work by Mid and South Essex ICS (where the aforementioned business partner and former ECC employee) went.

God, there's so much....

Oh god I did. We should all just defer to this section of the wiki

 

[Pkershaw]

And Suffolk County Council, who have also shelled out a significant wedge of cash (nowhere near as much as Essex) for their own crappy Facebook group with turgid engagement statistics, courtesy of Simon/Social Kindness. Simon just copies and pastes posts from Essex into the Suffolk page and raises an invoice. If he’s lucky it’ll get 2 likes. Most posts are complete airshots with no engagement whatsoever.

The monies for the Suffolk work is paid to Social Kindness (where Simon is content director) as opposed to paying Simon direct, which Essex have done. We suspect that was done in Essex to circumvent conflict of interest rules because the person who likely awarded the contract (or at least had significant influence in where it went), owns Social Kindness.

It’s the very definition of a can of worms 🪱

 

[Yer_wha?!]

I'd honestly love to be a fly on the wall in his house, I want to know how he's been occupying his time probably haranguing his kids for their pocket money and constantly telling them Towwies Are Bad. I bet he's got mannequins with masks of Vorders, Martin and Gary Lineker sat at his dinner table to mimic talking at them on twitter

 

[Fred Santos]

Well, I don't know about you folks but I am really looking forwards to this one:

https://www.alliancembs.manchester.ac.uk/media/ambs/content-assets/documents/events/ncsr-conference-2024-day-1-programme.pdf

A rivetting 20 minute overview of the topic "Leading local transformation of societal resilience" from whoever but Kirsty O'Callghan
---

Well, I don't know about you folks but I am really looking forwards to this one:

https://www.alliancembs.manchester.ac.uk/media/ambs/content-assets/documents/events/ncsr-conference-2024-day-1-programme.pdf

A rivetting 20 minute overview of the topic "Leading local transformation of societal resilience" from whoever but Kirsty O'Callghan

Unless, of course, there is a last minute change to the programme

 

[Droosie123]

I heard Kirsty give a talk at a conference I attended last year, she was very good and very
passionate about her topic to be fair.
Still does not excuse her if she was taking back handlers though.

 

[Fred Santos]

I heard Kirsty give a talk at a conference I attended last year, she was very good and very
passionate about her topic to be fair.
Still does not excuse her if she was taking back handlers though.

...and impressing people at conferences is the very same skill as persuading the Chief Executive, that it was a good idea to give £500k to Simon Harris

 

[VielleFemme]

I heard Kirsty give a talk at a conference I attended last year, she was very good and very
passionate about her topic to be fair.
Still does not excuse her if she was taking back handlers though.

I'm bored of people being passionate about things. I'd like them to be honest and competent instead.

 

[Pkershaw]

If only she was passionate about delivering tangible value to tax payers when she was handing out vast amounts of their money to her mates.

 

[Droosie123]

Yep I can only like and agree with the comments. The annoying thing is that with cuts to services as they are, we are reliant on community groups and support to pick up the slack. The money they spent here on Simon (allegedly agreed by Kirsty with or without some kind of kickback) could have gone into so many areas . The local community voluntary services in any area do great work at a fraction of the cost.
I spend half my life trying to find support services for people, I disappear down many rabbit holes to find them. This money could have given them a bigger profile and made life easier

 

[Fred Santos]

Well, well, well - I am not sure this provides the exoneration Simon might have been looking for and doesn't appear to have been written with his participation?

Essex taxpayer cash believed to have paid for videos from celebs

Carole Baskin was one of several public figures who filmed personalised video messages for the Essex Coronavirus Action Facebook page

www.essexlive.news

As I said before, it would be relatively easy to simply say - of the £500K I recieved, this much went to "contractors" - and then maybe spent a bit of money having an accountant examine or audit his accounts. This would make things much less opaque and help him considerably in dealing with his tax affairs.

 

[lilykestrel]

Carole Baskin was charging 149 USD for a Cameo according to the Wayback archive of her page on July 1st 2020. (No offence, but come on Matt, that was an easy look-up!)

According to Exchangerates.org.uk - on 7 July 2020, $1 was £0.79

So Simon would have paid around £117.

Just because I was curious. It's still ridiculous he did that essentially for lols and Internet clout. I doubt social media managers working for the council would have been allowed to do that, because is it really the best spend of public money?

 

[Fred Santos]

Carole Baskin was charging 149 USD for a Cameo according to the Wayback archive of her page on July 1st 2020. (No offence, but come on Matt, that was an easy look-up!)

According to Exchangerates.org.uk - on 7 July 2020, $1 was £0.79

So Simon would have paid around £117.

Just because I was curious. It's still ridiculous he did that essentially for lols and Internet clout. I doubt social media managers working for the council would have been allowed to do that, because is it really the best spend of public money?

I suspect it was for free... If so, the real issue is the "day rate" he charged for sorting it out - based on income of £192K in one year (minus disbursements of course - whatever they might be!) he could have been charging £1000 a day - which is nice work if you can get it.

 

[lilykestrel]

I suspect it was for free... If so, the real issue is the "day rate" he charged for sorting it out - based on income of £192K in one year (minus disbursements of course - whatever they might be!) he could have been charging £1000 a day - which is nice work if you can get it.

Yes, the Labour councillor quoted in the article does make a good point - if it was for free, or even if it was 'just' 117 quid, then what was the rest of the money spent on?
---

 

[gimm3more]

Carole Baskin was charging 149 USD for a Cameo according to the Wayback archive of her page on July 1st 2020. (No offence, but come on Matt, that was an easy look-up!)

According to Exchangerates.org.uk - on 7 July 2020, $1 was £0.79

So Simon would have paid around £117.

Just because I was curious. It's still ridiculous he did that essentially for lols and Internet clout. I doubt social media managers working for the council would have been allowed to do that, because is it really the best spend of public money?

Covid gave us the worst financial crisis in post war history, which every single person in the UK has been hit by, and the council were chucking out money like this as if it was nothing.

 

[Fred Santos]

Something from the archive.... we were keeping watch

I suspect he would be able to answer that question now

---
about 2 months before this tweet was sent - he had received, in a 12 day period (30th July to 11th August), £135,000. So "brag" and "procurement" are perhaps in retrospect, not the wisest things to put in a tweet. But he never thought it would come to this. This is what happens when people at Essex County Council - or their associates - believe themselves to be untouchable.

 

[Cucumberthunder]

I suspect it was for free... If so, the real issue is the "day rate" he charged for sorting it out - based on income of £192K in one year (minus disbursements of course - whatever they might be!) he could have been charging £1000 a day - which is nice work if you can get it.

According to the page at the time the council didn't pay for it (although I wonder if they said that because Simon/whoever paid for it and they knew that people would (quite rightly) kick up a stink about the council paying for something like that?)