A county council has announced it will raise local taxes, after it paid an internet prankster almost £500,000 to run its Facebook Covid page.
Simon Harris was paid from 2020-2023 to share information on its Essex coronavirus action page relating to government restrictions, support for vulnerable individuals and volunteering opportunities at vaccination centres.
The comedian, who ran the recently closed parody website Southend News Network, was given 34 separate payments over three years by the Conservative-run Essex County Council totalling £493,000.
Whether half a mil is the right number or not I’ve no idea. I can imagine that running a team – which he was – could cost about that.
But this idea that because he’s a copmedian he shouldn’t have been hired, that’s a bit confected.
Being able to run a social media campaign is being able to run a social media campaign. That one that was run happened to be a pretty good satire site (Southend News) isn’t a disqualification, it’s a proof of ability instead.
That he satirised politicians might be the cause of this outrage from politicians….
He was commissioned by his council employee girlfriend to do the work. There is a lot more to that story that the telewag is reporting.
A pretty clear case of shooting the messenger. As the government choose to dictate overweening and illogical instructions to the citizenry the council (no matter how foolishly) decided they had to be communicated. Mr Harris was hired to provide a social media service snd there is no indication in the article that he failed to do so,
For a couple of years half the nation was paid by Rishi to sit on their arses and get paid for doing nothing. Is it surprising a local authority also completely lost track of the concept of fiscal responsibility?
Mr Harris rose to fame after he led a prank campaign against Nigel Farage to raise money for a new rescue craft for the Royal National Lifeboat Institute called The Flying Farage after the Right-wing presenter blamed the charity for helping migrants cross the Channel.
Soon to be used in a hilarious child molestation caper near you.
“It is important to note the payments covered more than just social media content, and included activity to directly support others doing similar work across the county.
“Such payments were also made through Simon Harris for expediency.”
And now we know why olden days punishments for this kind of thing included having your mouth filled with molten gold. That would be funny.
Is there really a story here? Assuming he was engaged from March 2020 to December 2023 (34 months), then he was paid £14.5k per month for his services. The question then is whether he was doing the job adequately and whether £14.5 k is the going rate for that kind of work.
One could certainly question whether he should have been retained at all or for so long but that’s another question and the “comedian” label isn’t relevant.
TMB – the story is “antisocial woke activist bankrupts council while enriching himself during a scam pandemic”.
If our public life sounds like it’s getting more Africany, that’s just an illusion. Africans would sink the ships.
’Is it surprising a local authority also completely lost track of the concept of fiscal responsibility?’
What would be surprising, John, is if one ever displayed any in the first place…
Remember that council in Sheffield or somewhere that made a Somali “asylum seeker” its lord mayor innit?
Britain is a joke country, run by clowns. The only local government reform that will work involves lions. Don’t worry, Sheba, they’re supposed to taste funny.
@TMB
The question then is whether he was doing the job adequately and whether £14.5 k is the going rate for that kind of work.
Since it was never put out to tender it’s hard to say. But that’s more than a consultant oncologist earns and one might thus have thought it a bit on the rich side.
This is a genuine scandal; the trouble is that we have become so inured to the waste of our precious resources on pet projects, boondoggles, boyfriends of council employees, woke bullshit, lies and propaganda, and so on and so forth that we don’t (or apparently you and Tim don’t) see it when it’s as glaring as could be.
@Steve
Remember that council in Sheffield or somewhere that made a Somali “asylum seeker” its lord mayor innit?
That was Sheffield council, Steve. Magid Magid was his name, and your comment prompted me to google the grifting fucker.
After his term as Lord Mayor he became an MEP (elected for the Greens with 13% of the vote, obviously).
Tragically, that scam was cut short by our Potemkin Brexit (at least it achieved that, if not a great deal else) and (according to wiki) then set up ‘Union of Justice, an organisation dedicated to racial justice and climate justice’ which ‘received initial funding from the European Cultural Foundation’.
He also appeared on the TV show Hunted, of which wiki says ‘he became a fan favourite for taunting the hunters, at one point sending them a letter calling them “mugs” in Somali, which was mistranslated to “cups of tea.” After 19 days on the run, he was caught in the Peak District. Following his capture, Magid announced his frustrations on Twitter over the manipulative nature of the show, saying the producers wanted to create “good TV” rather than a real challenge.’
They should put me in charge of the next series, with Majid and a few of his chums as contestants; I’ll fucking spice it up for them.
His wiki entry ends with the following rather sad note: ‘In May 2022, it was announced that Magid would chair a discussion with former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.’
The Aziz Foundation says of him that he is ‘currently studying for an MA in Arts and Politics at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is the Founder & Director of ‘Union of Justice’, a European wide POC led organisation dedicated to racial and climate justice. He was a member of the European Parliament representing Yorkshire & the Humber, Mayor of Sheffield and an elected councillor on Sheffield City Council. Magid has also been named one of TIME 100 rising stars shaping the future of the world, ‘One Young World’ Politician of the Year 2019 and European Young Leader 2019.’
All sounds a bit Klaus Schwab for my taste.
Anyway, the old Union of Justice is still going.
The Meet our Team page is… interesting. (Admittedly I’d like to know more about Ms Zamzam Ibrahim.)
Its funding is somewhat obscure. Not much on the website (apart from the opportunity to donate – in euros, only, obviously) but a quick google reveals that they received USD 300,000 in 2022 from the Oak Foundation (‘To provide core support to Union of Justice, a European, independent organisation led by people of colour, dedicated to racial and climate justice.)
I’m sure there’s a lot more out there, but I currently have reasonably low blood pressure and I don’t want to give myself a stroke.
Interested – Yarp, I’m obvs an orrible, miserable cunt, but “legally” stealing half a million from council taxpayers with absolutely nothing to show for it except tax increases during a cost of living crisis should annoy us, and make us wonder why the pigs aren’t being fed yet.
Everybody involved was taking the piss, and they know it. This kind of thing keeps happening because there are no consequences for shitting on the British public.
Am I the only one that, on reading POC, always expands that to “Piece Of Crap” and wonders what the author was getting at?
Interested: Since it was never put out to tender it’s hard to say. But that’s more than a consultant oncologist earns and one might thus have thought it a bit on the rich side.
From the article it wasn’t clear whether the work should have been tendered nor whether the man was an individual or part of a team engaged to do this work although he was supposedly the conduit for funds going to others in Essex engaged in the same kind of “messaging”.
Of course, the entire activity was an absurd waste as was everything “pandemic” related and I dare say it’s no accident that you refer to oncologists as a benchmark since these folk are going to be exceedingly busy for more than just the next three years.
From https://www.essexlive.news/news/essex-news/simon-harris-issues-statement-500k-9027259:
Simon Harris told Essex Live the funding was for the Essex Coronavirus Action Facebook page which he said “was set up as a collaboration between Essex County Council, local public health officials and Facebook admins including myself”. The prankster claims “the nature of the work” meant that during the most serious stages of the pandemic, he was providing services seven days a week and at a variety of times of the day and night – as were the team of community managers who supported the project.
So, he ran a Facebook page 24×7 and had a team of community (AKA unpaid) managers supporting it.
Good money for doing all that…
Yes, it seems that there is more to this story than I thought. It seems that everywhere you look there’s another reservoir of human stupidity.