I was born in Southport, England, in 1967. Southport was in Lancashire at the time but was dragged kicking and screaming into Merseyside in the early '70s as part of local government reorganisation.
The bulk of this autobiographical note relates to my political involvement, and elections tend to be the critical moments in any political activists life. I'm not sure I even remember every by-election and Council campaign I've helped at so I'll punctuate the story by what I did at each of the General Elections.
In 1979 (long before joining the Party) I successfully put the Liberal case in the mock election held in my Junior School class.
I observed the 1983 election on TV and decided that I still supported the Liberals rather than the new SDP and so joined the Liberal Party nationally shortly thereafter, at the age of 15. The local Membership Secretary noticed I wasn't on the electorall roll, guessed I must be under 18 and so put me in touch with the shadowy anti-establishment cell known as Southport Young Liberals. From this point on, I never really looked back, and was soon involved with the Young Liberals nationally.
By 1987, I was living in St Albans while attending Hatfield Poly, where I was Chair of the Alliance Society. I took copious time from my studies to pound the streets in support of Sandy Walkington's campaign to win St Albans for the Liberal-SDP Alliance. Sadly, that was not to be.
By the time of the 1992 General Election, all had changed again. I had continued with youth politics, ending up as International Officer of the Young Liberal Democrats of England for a year. I was working at Digital in Reading, and had recently moved to Ealing with my then fiancée, Nikki Thomson, whom I had met through the Party's Youth Wing. As I was living in Ealing, relatively close to central London, I volunteered to become part of the Night Team based in the Liberal Democrats' headquarters in Cowley Street, Westminster. This involved receiving the first editions of the next day's papers hot off the presses by courier and going through them cutting out all the election-related stories with a Stanley knife. We then had to Spray-Mount the clippings onto sheets of A3 paper and photocopy enough copies of this hundred-page plus document for all the MPs and key campaign team members to read prior to the early morning press conference. This is how things had to be done in the days before newspapers had websites and MPs had email! Being involved in the central campaign was a mixed blessing - at the same time I felt like I was at the heart of things but also in a way that I was observing the election from afar because I knocked on few electors' doors in '92.
In the 1997 General Election, Nikki, who I married shortly after the '92 General, was selected as the Liberal Democrat candidate for our seat, Ealing Southall and I was the Campaign Manager, with Patrick Mahon as the Agent. Nikki had a very ambitious campaign plan for a 'development seat' such as Ealing Southall, the centrepiece of which was an individually-addressed colour-printed mailing delivered by the Royal Mail to every one of the 70,000 voters in the constituency. There were two versions, so that each household received two different leaflets from us - folded into different shapes. I printed all the labels on an enormous ancient line printer I'd picked up for a tenner, which I've still got. The printer, that is, not the tenner. The main leaflet itself was commerically printed, but I printed additional election FOCUS leaflets for a couple of wards plus flyers on a RISO machine that we borrowed for 24 hours from the manufacturers and set up in the living room. I used it for every minute of that time! When the Count came, the result was gratifying - Nikki got half as many votes again as the previous Lib Dem candidate.
As by this stage I was too old to feasibly continue to be involved in youth politics, I got more involved in various other bits of the Party. I was Chair of Ealing Southall Liberal Democrats. I also got elected to the Lib Dem Federal Conference Committee (for which I'm standing for election again this year), playing a part in setting the agenda for the Conferences I have always enjoyed so much as an ordinary Representative. At this point I also got trained as a Returning Officer for internal Party elections, although I had played that role in some Youth and Student elections earlier. I joined the Party's online conferencing system, CIX, and was a founder member of Liberal Democrats Online (LDO), the Party's e-campaigning arm, and its first Secretary. I seperated from my wife and later divorced, and through LDO I met my next girlfriend. I'm still a member of the LDO Executive. The 2001 election came along, and I decided to concentrate my efforts on helping Adrian Sanders get re-elected in Torbay, as he was the Tories' top target - defending a majority of just 12 - and I had grown to know him socially by this stage and knew we needed to keep him in Parliament! The result was stunning, with Adrian's 12 vote majority turning into a comfortable 6,708. I can't claim all the credit for this as I only played a junior role in his campaign - I'm sure his own appeal to the voters, the local team and a particularly inept Tory opponent had something to do with the result as well.
I continued to be involved in various internal Lib Dem activities, becoming a London Region Lib Dems Rep to English Council and Returning Officer for the Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats. At the time of writing, I'm Chair of Ealing Southall Lib Dems.
In May 2002, I won a public election for the first time and was elected to represent the Ealing Common ward of the London Borough of Ealing at my third attempt on a campaign based around the themes "Clean Up Ealing, Light Up Ealing and Listen to Ealing", defeating one of the ward's sitting Conservative Councillors in the process. As I was the first Liberal to be elected in any of the Ealing Southall wards since 1948, this was rather a humbling experience! I vowed to try to do my best for all the residents of the ward for the next 4 years. While it was a fantastic victory for me, it was tinged by sadness as the other two members of the Ealing Common FOCUS Team, Becky Harvey and Nigel Bakhai, didn't quite get enough votes to join me despite all the work they'd put in. Becky only missed out by 35 votes.
Despite this, I greatly enjoying life on the Council during my first term. I rapidly became Lib Dem Chief Whip and spokesperson on Housing and Social Services, and was a member of the Ealing Area Committee, the Planning Committee, the Call-In Panel (which reviewed decisions made by the Cabinet) and was appointed vice-chair of a panel looking into the Council's Response project. My maiden speech called for pensions justice for women. I was involved in drafting a Lib Dem motion defining the Council's response to the proposed new third runway at Heathrow and committing it to work with other Councils and pressure groups against the proposal. This motion was passed unamended, and so is now binding on the Council. There was a similar story on Crossrail - with us again setting the policy for the Council. Our relatively small group certainly punched above its weight in the Council chamber.
I wore two hats in the 2005 general election. I was Lib Dem candidate for Hayes and Harlington and agent for Nigel Bakhai, the Lib Dem candidate for Ealing Southall. The latter was more successful - with Nigel sensationally achieving second place in Ealing Southall, knocking the Tories into third.
I was re-elected to the Council in May 2006, when many other Councillors were not so fortunate as this was the year when Ealing Council dramatically and unexpectedly swung from Labour-control to Tory. I'm now a member of the Overview and Scrutiny Panel and Regulatory Committee and remain on the Corporate Parent Committee and Planning. I enjoy Planning the most as it is possible to have real influence and make a difference to people's lives as decisions do not always go along party lines. I'm now the only opposition member on Ealing Area Committee as all the Labour Councillors representing Ealign wards lost their seats, so there are now 17 Tories and me, which makes for interesting meetings!
Being a Councillor in the UK - although it involves a lot of work if you do it properly - does not attract payment at a level that makes it feasible to be one's only income. When I was elected to the Council, I worked as a Software Development Manager.
Following a misspent youth with a Sinclair ZX81 and then a BBC Micro, I obtained a degree in Computer Science from the then Hatfield Polytechnic, which subsequently had to change its name in an effort to regain its tarnished reputation. I used the degree to bluff my way into software development jobs at IBM (now a shadow of its former self), Digital (since taken over by a jumped up PC clone maker) and Transoft (which is suffering so much it had to make me redundant in 2002).
I have always had a passion for making film and video - initially shooting Super 8 film before domestic camcorders were widely available - and I'm now using this opportunity to have a complete career change and establish a company in the film and TV industry with Becky Harvey. The company is called 42 Productions Ltd. Our initial focus was on producing our own small-scale projects - pilots for TV shows and the like. However, I fell into the lighting department and have worked on some great projects in this capacity. I was lighting gaffer on three British feature films - Chicken Tikka Masala, Splinter and Right Hand Drive. All three films were shot on High Definition video for blow-up to 35mm film for theatrical distribution. I've also been gaffer on music promos and corporate stuff and the Channel 4 / MTV music-based interactive TV drama Dubplate Drama. As a sideline, I've been a camera operator on everything from TV comedy pilots to a world music festival, a martial arts tournament and a studio-based Bollywood music show.
I enjoy travelling. In my previous job I was often to be found running through the departure halls of Heathrow or Gatwick with the words, "Will last remaining passenger Ball for flight x please proceed to gate y immediately, as the gate is closing in 30 seconds" hastening my progress.
I tend to be fairly nocturnal. I'm one of those strange people who takes advantage of 24 hour opening of Supermarkets (a relatively recent phenomenon here in England) and curses the Sunday Trading legislation that forces shops above a certain size to only open for 6 hours between midnight Saturday and midnight Sunday.
I live in South Ealing, within the Ealing Common ward that I represent.
Oh, and I forgot to mention my most obvious physical characteristic. I'm unfeasibly tall.