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

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Fred Santos said:
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.
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This really is so telling. If you’re in Simon’s position and you’re all above board then, as you say, it’s so easy to shut this down and make all your detractors look very silly. That goes for the ECC Facebook grift and the ongoing concerns over the (still unaccounted for) £24k baby formula money.

Instead of doing that, he’s just gone, “Errr I had to work late at night sometimes….
and….errrr…. The police. Stop asking questions because I mentioned the police.”

Still no answer to Essex Live’s request for info on that mysterious police report. Or in other words it’s just a load of bollocks designed to distract everyone.

Looks like we’ve lost LG from Twitter going by his tweets today. Let’s hope the journalists and opposition councillors have enough appetite to keep digging. Still no mention of O’Callaghan in the media. I’m crossing my fingers that they’re all still investigating and planning on dragging this out over 3 or 4 stories.
 
Pkershaw said:
This really is so telling. If you’re in Simon’s position and you’re all above board then, as you say, it’s so easy to shut this down and make all your detractors look very silly. That goes for the ECC Facebook grift and the ongoing concerns over the (still unaccounted for) £24k baby formula money.

Instead of doing that, he’s just gone, “Errr I had to work late at night sometimes….
and….errrr…. The police. Stop asking questions because I mentioned the police.”

Still no answer to Essex Live’s request for info on that mysterious police report. Or in other words it’s just a load of bollocks designed to distract everyone.

Looks like we’ve lost LG from Twitter going by his tweets today. Let’s hope the journalists and opposition councillors have enough appetite to keep digging. Still no mention of O’Callaghan in the media. I’m crossing my fingers that they’re all still investigating and planning on dragging this out over 3 or 4 stories.
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I agree. As small as the opposition is, I'd expect them to want to get their teeth into this. It's certainly what a lot of people are hoping for. The guy quoted in the last Essex Live article is a managing editor of The Daily Mirror so let's hope his journalistic instincts are brought to the fore.

And another development which will be adding to the member/senior officer panic that I hear is running wild at the moment - the Director of Public Health has announced she is moving on to Provide. She joined a couple of years ago whilst O'Callaghan was still there. The job she is taking was advertised in December, so before all of this, but she must have known it was brewing and besides, the kind of political and senior leadership that allowed all of this to happen can't have been easy to deal with. She may have things to say, but I expect not unless compelled to do so.
 
Bit more in the press. And a comments section

www.yourharlow.com

Labour put pressure on Tory-run Essex County Council over £400,000 payment to blogger during Covid-19 pandemic - Your Harlow

MEMBERS of the Essex Labour Group have continued to put the Tory-run Essex County Council over their decision to pay a blogger and internet prankster almost £500,000. Simon Harris received […]
www.yourharlow.com

I expect it to go quiet, before it ramps up again but who knows...

I am sure the journos are reading here - so any thoughts, insights or titbits people - you know what to do....
 
So, things appear to be kicking off:


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oh tit, someone was flagging this 3 years ago??? Independent data analyst as well ....
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glad the Social Kindness stuff has filtered through to the right place too, as that's the real issue at hand. The money is exorbitant, but good that 'what is the usual budget' is being thrown about because that comparison is ultimately what matters in terms of 'value'
 
Subsequent twitter exchange suggests that Matt Lee knows that "atleast £163K" was passed on to other people. If so, still £330K to SH, and would suggest that this might be separate from other payments (way smaller) to Jon Morter and maybe others too? There has been ambiguity about this line from previous statements - I still think there is a chance that Matt Lee may have been deliberately misdirected. But it looks as if we will get to see...
 
Just remember folks this is a motion - I am not sure of the rules but I guess there will need to be some kind of vote on all of this. It's a heavily tory council and lots of opportutnities to obfuscate. But at some point the politicians will find it in their best interests to stop protecting the officers and put it down to "rogue" actors - and at some point the Senior Officers (Chief Executive) will make the same calculation and put it down to people under him as having acted rogue. Remember Gavin "guitar hero" Jones, the Chief Executive, directly line-managed O'Callaghan during much of the period in question
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lilykestrel said:
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little tidbit that I don't think made it into the reporting?
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Yes - I saw that - I think he might have got it wrong on that
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Fred Santos said:
Just remember folks this is a motion - I am not sure of the rules but I guess there will need to be some kind of vote on all of this. It's a heavily tory council and lots of opportutnities to obfuscate. But at some point the politicians will find it in their best interests to stop protecting the officers and put it down to "rogue" actors - and at some point the Senior Officers (Chief Executive) will make the same calculation and put it down to people under him as having acted rogue. Remember Gavin "guitar hero" Jones, the Chief Executive, directly line-managed O'Callaghan during much of the period in question
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Yes - I saw that - I think he might have got it wrong on that
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The plot does kind of thicken though
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And was one of the beneficiaires maybe someone we've been talking about...?
 
www.whatdotheyknow.com

Information on ECC payments to Simon Harris (inc. associated contracts and documentation) - a Freedom of Information request to Essex County Council

I am writing to you to ask for further information about a series of payments totalling £484,000 made to Simon Harris. These payments were disclosed in your quarterly day-to-day spending statements on your website. These payments span the period June 2020-April 2023 and were made initially...
www.whatdotheyknow.com www.whatdotheyknow.com
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hang on the FOIA has been responded to
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oh they've exempted themselves out of responding to anything, stand down
 
lilykestrel said:
www.whatdotheyknow.com

Information on ECC payments to Simon Harris (inc. associated contracts and documentation) - a Freedom of Information request to Essex County Council

I am writing to you to ask for further information about a series of payments totalling £484,000 made to Simon Harris. These payments were disclosed in your quarterly day-to-day spending statements on your website. These payments span the period June 2020-April 2023 and were made initially...
www.whatdotheyknow.com www.whatdotheyknow.com
.

hang on the FOIA has been responded to
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oh they've exempted themselves out of responding to anything, stand down
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Not entirely
 
This is just beyond belief for me. It’s like me knocking out a few Facebook posts with the banana in the lunchbox joke and being awarded nearly £500k from my local council. They may as well just admit there wasn’t any due diligence into his work, if there was it would’ve been clear that £500k would’ve been better spent commissioning Mike Winnett or another great social media marketing agency to run this programme.

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Jonny Searle! That will be the ex olympic rower! I had seen something on Harris's youtube account about that....
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Also, am I reading this correctly, but are they saying they "don't know" where the money went after Harris?
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I'd also be asking if these were originals - and how they came in to their possession. Did they need to ask O'Callaghan afterwards and got sent them? Did they ever "leave" (or not exist) on their systems
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It looks as if Jake Searle is his son.
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Anna Harris

Surely not?
 
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Oh I misread that link when I skimmed - I thought they were just linking to the spending breakdowns!

Spending and Council Tax: Spending on digital community engagement in the pandemic | Essex County Council

Spending on digital community engagement in the pandemic
www.essex.gov.uk www.essex.gov.uk
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So they've paid a duck-ton of money out for a suite of Facebook groups that, in theory, the 'owner' could just walk off with if they chose to?

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WAS THERE NOT?
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I'm just taking a skim of the spreadsheet - there's an awful awful lot of spend approved by Kirsty O'Callaghan. Including one System Approval, which I assume means authorising the purchase order on the actual system.
 
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There's a few of things I'm pondering most from the released docs:

This all has the vibe of some poor sod has had to do a lot of forensic work to piece together wtaf was going on. Not helped by KOC's emails disappearing into the void after she moved on elsewhere.

1) on the contracts they've shared, they've redacted the name of the council representative but not the job role. The ones I looked at were signed by the Head of Strengthening Communities. From the expenditure spreadsheets, it appears there were two people in that role, job-sharing. I wonder who was the signatory.

2)
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This has the potential to be a real sh1tter, I hadn't even thought about the tax implications.
I can't really get my head round this. Sure, it's not a legal requirement, but it's a good practice to ask the main contractor to tell you who they're subcontracting to, and local bodies have a right to do so as far as I'm aware. Because it allows you to not get shafted by sub-contractors who have a record of poor performance.

"Recently" - again, retrospectively piecing together?

3)

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This may be my reading, but it reads like if they had been aware of the size or nature of the payments that they would have raised concerns, no?
 

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