Originally Posted by SimonScans

As it stands today, many of you haven't been paid. Within a couple of weeks everyone will be brought up to date.

You are no doubt wondering why so late... Sadly, the real drama isn't any single massive piece of juicey gossip, it's just a lot of real life grindy shit, which I will now bore you with.

The short version is, in 1999 I had a heart attack, recovered, started Simonscans and generally tried not to moan. Everything went just fine until VAT came along in late 2006 and took all my savings, ho hum. VAT = 20% sales tax on about 50% of all surfers. Roll on 2008 when peak porn hit - and my health promptly took a nasty turn for the worse and ended up having a quadruple bypass, which not only burned all my savings, yet again, but I also have to admit, I took my eye off the ball just a little. Just keeping the site going and none of you noticing that I wasn't around was an achievement in itself.

Ever since then we have been playing catch up - it's taken a long time to get back on my feet, and the most annoying thing is we're almost there. An investment property I own will sell very shortly and everyone will get paid. Contracts should have exchanged last week, but lawyers had one more question. It has taken a lot longer than it should have done, but there you go. I was hoping it would be a pension, but never mind. The hope was it would sell, we'd catch up with the affs and no one would notice.

And the straw that broke the camels back and stopped me paying was, of course, the taxman, who this year would not give us any arrangement AT ALL - having been late 2009, 2010, this year we had to pay the lot all at once. Which stung a bit.

And before anyone gloats too much, think on this. I cannot borrow money for the business. My health issues make me about as unbankable as it's possible to be. For the entire life of Simonscans (One S in the middle, by the way) it has had to run on nothing but cash.

Pull your links, don't pull your links. Say nice things or bitch and moan - when this moment is passed I'll not bear any grudges. Everyone will get paid. Simonscans will continue.