UPDATE: Well it seems that someones cage is well and truly rattled....
Nothing to hide, nothing to fear?
You decide dear reader:
Or perhaps Lincolnshire County Council have set up a secret committee for helping Barclays sponsored businesses get BDUK funding?
Anyway, with council elections only a few months away this May, perhaps local voters will be able to have their say about the conduct of Bauer, which demonstrates at the very least a profound conflict of interest if what he said to Barclays is accurate as regards "being one of the County Councillors directly involved I am well aware of the internal decisions behind these national and regional plans and this is a one-off opportunity"
Whilst commercially competing with BT is to be expected and the annoyance of BDUK's ineptitude is an occupational hazard, when it turns out that directors of a business have been deliberately seeking to undermine its activities as a not-for-profit social enterprise then matters take a far more serious turn, particularly for the residents and businesses that are adversely affected by this outrageous behaviour.
Introducing two former directors of NextGenUs businesses, pictured above Simon Davison (behind) and Craig Brass (bending over in front)
In the above recording both are engaged in a telephone call concerned with how their plan to undermine the business (hardly actions compatible with them being directors of any business let alone a CIC!) is progressing and how between them over 100 radios otherwise destined for customer installations were secretly squirreled away instead, with the help of Michael Davison, brother of Simon Davison!
This missing stock, amounting to thousands of pounds in value remains unaccounted for.
Suffice to say that the above conversation was instrumental in the dismissal of Simon Davison for gross misconduct from company employment.
Both individuals have since resigned from NextGenUs as directors.
The case of the character with the squeeky voice, Craig Brass, was superficially inexplicable:
For a year until November 2011 everything in Cumbria seemed to be progressing fine, feed ordered, phase 1 network all ready to enter into service for the 200 guaranteed signups lined up for installation before the year's end that turned into 28 actual customers - hmm?!
It was whilst meeting Craig Brass in January 2012 to understand what was going wrong that the phone call above took place and a wider collusion began to be revealed...
Behind the scenes lurking is none other than Lincolnshire County Councillor Eran Bauer,
who on 9th January 2012 advised Barclays Bank that he was working with Simon Davison, then a serving director of several NextGenUs businesses, to somehow capitalise on inside knowledge of government broadband procurement, worth £14Million in Lincolnshire alone:
"The aim of this email is to introduce you to this proposal and ask if you can meet up with Simon with the aim of Barclays becoming 'our' bank and talk through his ideas and plans backed with technical and commercial files supporting this new venture. If you see the BDUK funding allocations at
http://www.culture.gov.uk/images/publications/BDUK-Funding-Allocation-16-08-11.pdf you will see that Cumbria and Lincolnshire are to receive some of the largest rural broadband support in the UK and we are well placed to dominate those two schemes. Simon will explain more.
It is interesting to note that the lead-agency in BDUK Lincolnshire is Lincolnshire County Council - see
http://www.onlincolnshire.org/websitefiles/bduk_bid_summary_revised.pdf and being one of the County
Councillors directly involved I am well aware of the internal decisions behind these national and regional plans and this is a one-off opportunity to capitalise on huge potential funding and long-term client sign-ups both commercial and private"
Very interesting choice of words from a serving county councillor...
