Man Behaving Dadly – Own Goal, and DMedia
Simon posted a 10,000 word essay on both of his Facebook pages 2 days ago. Long winded as usual. Potentially reaching an audience of 400k.
He was bashing various people and saying that it’s all their fault if anything happens to him. It included me as there was mention of an anonymous blog. Tattle wasn’t mentioned by name but posting anonymously on forums was mentioned.
Talking about Tattle this is a screenshot of a post from there which absolutely nails it. The poster has nailed everything, absolutely spot on, especially referring to my blogs as forensic.
Here is a snippet from a later post when he wants his followers to give him information about the identity of myself and anyone on Tattle.
Your followers did what you wanted and tried to find out information. Firstly they would need to find this blog, and also find Tattle. This blog is 3rd on Google when you use the search term “Simon Harris Essex”. Which is what I can only assume a fair few of your followers did.
I don’t check my stats on here very often because it always scares me a bit. However my blog received a lot of traffic from something that was posted on Twitter a couple of days ago. I don’t tweet anymore, like many people, my account is only still active because I don’t want anyone to grab the username if I deactivated my account. So I searched my blog name on Twitter and found the source.
A shout out for me to contact someone with regards to Simon. I didn’t and I won’t. If anyone finds that post it will be obvious why I didn’t and I won’t. Not that I have any information about Simon that isn’t publicly available so would be of no help anyway.
As soon as Simon posted his posts my blog traffic went through the roof. All coming from google, all of it coming via this post, which is the post which is the third result on Google:
If I had desperately wanted a horde of Simon’s followers to find my blog, and to find the perfect post on which to land, I could never have done it better myself.
I can’t see how many people google and find the Simon Harris Tattle thread, but I can see how many people follow a posted link from there to here. You don’t have to be a member of Tattle to follow a link. I almost had a panic attack seeing the amount of people getting to my blog from there. I can see basic stats from the dashboard of this blog, which I ignore, I saw them going crazy and then checked analytics.
Many of my blog posts have been posted on Tattle, i’ve seen the stats on them before, not all of them, but enough to know what is normal. The amount of traffic i’ve been receiving since the early hours of yesterday was not normal. It’s still going on, though it has died down a lot. The only logical explanation for this is that Simon’s supporters found Tattle and some of them clicked on my link. I guess as a two for one, find the anonymous forum and anonymous blogger with the same google search. Though that likely worked both ways as well as I mention Tattle in every post here.
So his supporters would have read the true version on what is out there, not the lies he told about myself and Tattle on his self harm post. I can’t think of a better time for supporters of Simon to be directed to Tattle than now given their responses to Simon’s self harm post.
DMedia
About the traffic I mentioned at the start of this post that came from Twitter
It involved an ex colleague of Simons calling the police on the person who wanted me to contact them. The person who had the police called on them is also someone Simon has attacked many times on twitter by his own admission in posts he’s made on Facebook in the past. The ex colleague is the one who he was a joint director with on DMedia Ltd, which was tied in to Dodgy Drivers Facebook pages and YouTube. I’ve no idea of the background or what’s been going on. I know nothing about Simon’s ex colleague apart from his link to Dodgy Drivers.
Simon Harris and someone called Ian Robinson were joint directors. Simon keeps mentioning people saying he lives in Thailand, but it’s clear the confusion arises because it’s Ian Robinson who is the one who lives in Thailand. They are ex colleagues
DMedia was registered as a limited company on 8th March 2019. The first years accounts for the first year up until 8th March 2020 were submitted on the 10th September 2020. This is a screenshot from those accounts:
During this period the average number of employees is 3.
This is a screenshot of the amount of tax that was paid by them that year:
No idea if that includes PAYE or if the three employees were paid as sole traders. What it does show is that the company WAS earning money during that year.
The next years accounts should have been submitted a year after the first lot, they weren’t and on the 12th November 2021 an application by both Simon and Ian was made to voluntary strike off the company from the register.
On the 9th December 2021 this voluntary application for striking off was suspended due to an objection from a third party because they owed money.
On the 19th May 2022, given that Simon and Ian couldn’t just dissolve the company because they owed money and their application to silently dissolve the company had been objected to, they made an Extraordinary resolution to wind up.
They then appointed a liquidator, to handle things, which is much cheaper than having one forced on them by Companies House.
For those waiting for me to post anything about Covid Load fraud, it’s not going to happen. There was no fraud, the covid loan was legitimate and legal. They won’t be forced to pay it back, there will be no investigation, they did nothing illegal. There is no information that points to fraud, all the information points to the opposite.
Were the actions of Simon Harris regarding the covid loan and what we can see of the accounts of DMedia morally bankrupt? In my opinion yes. I am not going to speak about the actions of Ian Robinson, all I know is that he is an ex colleague of Simon’s and lives in Thailand. Is Ian Robinson THE ex colleague that Simon keeps yapping about? I don’t know but his self harm rant was written and published a little while after Ian calling the police on someone was posted on Twitter along with my blog.
On 19th May 2022 the statement of affairs for the company was published. It’s basically about what the company owes and if there is any money left. This is where the covid loan information is:
Those are the creditors, they are the ones who are owed money and how much. All of this would have covered the year from 8th March 2020 to 8th March 2021. A year when Simon Harris earned over £96k from Essex County Council.
They owed HMRC £15k in PAYE, during the year in question there were only two employees, Simon Harris and Ian Robinson, both directors of the company.
If they got the full amount of Covid loan they were entitled to their turnover for the first year of business must have been at least £84k. The second year of business is what you see listed above.
The only people they owe money to is HMRC, Nat West for the Covid loan, and themselves for wages. £20,000 in wages each for the year from 8th March 2020 to 8th March 2021. No other operating costs, no other money owed to anyone else for anything. Given they owed £15k in PAYE to HMRC for that year, both Simon and Ian must have received wages high enough in that year that their PAYE deductions would have been £7.5k each for that year if the PAYE had been paid. So that would be wages that were paid, not the £20k that was owed to them during the insolvency. The amount they got in wages for both years could be a lot higher. I have no way of knowing.
It could be that they paid the operating costs first and foremost but given that the nature of business was “Video distribution activities”, and Ian Robinson is sole director of all the Dodgy Drivers stuff, and indeed that forms part of his username on Twitter, i’m going to take a very educated guess that operating costs were negligible given that it’s all online.
Bounce back loans were introduced on the 4th May 2020, my guess would be that they applied for one almost immediately.
It didn’t go to HMRC, given there are no operating costs listed as having money owed to those providing any service to the company, they were either paid or there were no operating costs, I’m going to go with that there were either no operating costs or they were negligible. Dodgy Drivers exists on Facebook and YouTube, both are free to upload to, so no money being paid out. They ask for submissions from the general public, so no money being paid out there.
Is it possible that all the money that went into the company got paid to both of Directors as wages to employees? Did they get the £21,000 and use that money to pay themselves wages? My opinion is that is highly likely. It’s online, they owed nothing to anyone for overheads which is usually one of the biggest creditors when a company goes into liquidation. A company cannot pay their overheads so they have to go the insolvency route.
DMedia went insolvent because the directors couldn’t afford to pay themselves the wages that they themselves decided was what they were worth. They also went insolvent because the directors couldn’t afford to pay HMRC the PAYE that was owed by the directors on the wages that they had already paid themselves.
They also went insolvent because they couldn’t pay back a Covid loan that the Directors likely used to pay themselves wages as employees of the company they were directors of.
This is all legal, so please stop saying they did anything illegal, they did not.
Then of course there is this:
They can only claim for 8 weeks worth of pay, hence the relatively low amount.
They were legally entitled to claim wages and holiday pay as employees of the company the were both directors of.
They would both be legally entitled to apply for, and receive, about £3000 from the Redundancy Payments Service, even Simon with his then £96,000 a year he was earning from Essex County Council contracts.
I’ve just found this which was screenshotted at the time it was posted from Ian’s Twitter account which was then public. People had been unfairly and without any proof saying that he had acted illegally in the insolvency of DMedia Ltd. As i’ve already said, both him and Simon Harris acted legally and fully within the law during the running of, and insolvency of DMedia, so both Ian and Simon were right to protest this and to keep doing so.
Ian Robinson is telling the truth. I did get the amount that they would have gotten from the Redundancy Payment Service wrong though, and i’m guessing Simon would have gotten the exact same amount as both their wage claims in the insolvency were the same. Here is Ian’s proof that there was nothing illegal about the insolvency of DMedia, otherwise they wouldn’t have gotten these payments.
So just over £5000 each.
Just to reiterate, this was during a year when Simon was earning £96,000 from Essex County Council.
I don’t think they would have been working there long enough to qualify for redundancy. If I am correct in that the £5000 would be based off holiday pay plus 8 weeks of pay. The insolvency practitictioner also only states wages and holiday pay.
Per year each of them would be paid in the region of £30k from DMedia, and that would have been based on what they paid themselves the first year.
That would make sense with the covid loan as if they paid themselves £10k wages each from the covid loan, that would leave them owed £20,000 by the company they were employed by who they were directors of if they used the covid loan to pay employee wages.
I can’t say with any certainty how much the directors (Ian Robinson and Simon Harris), paid their 2 employees (Ian Robinson and Simon Harris), so I can only go on the evidence we do have. I obviously don’t have the employee contracts that were written by Ian Robinson and Simon Harris to set wages and everything else for their employees Ian Robinson and Simon Harris.
I can’t even imagine the nerves they had when they both interviewed for the jobs and then the jubilation when they beat all the other candidates. Employee of the month was likely fiercely fought.
If either the two directors of DMedia, or the two former employees of DMedia want to contact me to correct anything to do with my figures, please contact me via the email address on the contact me section of this blog. I don’t post the email address a lot solely because I get enough scam emails where it is located. Comments are off for the same reason. Even having them approved doesn’t work as bots still post and then you have to delete dozens of bot comments.
As the Tattle poster in the screenshot i’ve posted at the top of this blog says, my blog is forensic. I look at the available evidence and form a conclusion based on my investigating the evidence.
My conclusion in the matter of DMedia Ltd is that both Ian Robinson and Simon Harris acted legally throughout every single aspect of their joint directorship of DMedia and during the insolvency including anything they claimed from the Redundancy Payment Service.
Not my opinion, this is fact, it was all totally 100% legal they broke no laws. They are completely innocent of any legal wrongdoings. Add my voice to theirs when they state they did nothing illegal, they are telling the truth.
Is Simon morally bankrupt for his actions during this whole period when you consider his “left wing views” (I actually sat here and did the air quotes for that), in my opinion? Absolutely.
He criticises those who don’t pay their taxes yet a company he was a director of failed to pay HMRC £15k. He could have paid that out of his own pocket. He could have paid the covid loan back out of his own pocket. If he also made a claim to the Redundancy Payment Service and got £5k from them at a time he was earning £96k a year, that doesn’t sit well with me, not at all. He didn’t need the money, that is public money which will most often be given to those who have nothing to fall back on after suddenly finding themselves out of work and owed money by an employer.
I say he was earning £96k, he has his fingers in a lot of pies, and was also likely earning money from his Facebook and Twitter at this time as well along with anything else he was doing.
Though well done on his work ethic. He was doing £96k worth of full time work for ECC, what was being paid as full time work for DMedia Ltd, and then his prolific posting on Facebook and Twitter which would be a full time job in itself I imagine.
Then there were the fundraisers.
So Simon Harris and Ian Robinson aren’t criminals, they did nothing illegal.
I didn’t plan to post about DMedia today, and definitely not in any great depth but I got carried away and that’s now something I don’t have to do in the future. The reason being that I don’t see it as something major given there was nothing illegal going on.
Should the laws be changed so that what they did can’t happen? Should the laws around LTD companies be changed to better protect others unrelated to a company who are owed money?
My answer would be yes because as it stands there laws around limited companies are open to abuse. There are plenty of ways that you can use them to avoid paying as much r tax as you should.
Then you can use insolvency to make all the debts your company has just go away. Even a 5 figure debt to HMRC can be written off.
None of the directors are personally liable for a ltd company’s debt so the debts die with the company’s insolvency.
Then another company can rise in its place, same director or directors, doing the same thing, but free of the debts of the old company.
I’m not going to get into it because i can’t be bothered and it’s anger inducing.
I’ve only got two more blog posts left that i plan to do. May take a while.