My father (now deceased) was a TC and met my mother (still living) in Cyprus in the 50's when she worked for the NAFFI (British army catering core). They left for England and married in England in 58. I was born in London in 66. We lived in a farily rough areas of North and West London (Muswell Hill and Greenford) and I was educated in fairly rough state schools until I was about 9 years old. At this point we seemed as a family to jump from being 'poor' to 'rich' overnight, moving from London to Harpenden in hertfordshire from a small run down house in London in a rough area surrounded by council estates to a (what then seemed) a massive house with a 1/2 acre garden (which seemed to me a field back then) and went from a mini as a family car to a rolls. I was moved from rough London to state school to a posh expensive public school (in UK public school actually means private fee paying school). One of the requirments of this school for me being alowed entry was a condition that I take 'elocution lessons' (lesson to learn how to speak properly) because of the roughness of my north London accent! As a child of 9 I was not happy moving from London and despite enjoying the many benefits of the move and the new family status of 'rich' I remained noody and grumpy about being moved from London as only a 9-16 year old can :)

I did not 'get on' in school and especially in the public (fee paying private) schools that I found myself in after the age of 9. I was /am basically dyslexic - though to a pretty mild degree. The schools I were in saw me a clearly a reasonably bright child and decided that my 'under performing' in my written vs non written work was a function of 'laziness' and not 'dyslexia' which was less understood and accepted in those days than it is today, and acted accordingly. I then reacted to this percived 'injustice' by becomming increasingly detached and disruptive at school.

At 16 I left school with a handfull of O levels (took 13, passed 6) and wanted nothing more to do with 'school' or 'education'. I pretty immediately left for London and the start of my working life. I tried many things work wise over the years in the search to find a 'place in the world'. I list some below and roughly in order.

Initaly took a job as a 'post boy' in an Insurance company and spent a couple of years there and was promoted to 'Junior underwriter'. In this time I discovered that promotion was less to do with abilites and more to do with 'length of time served' and promotion was related to the 'dying off' of older and more senior members of staff.

Decided that there was a 'magic number' for how much I earnt per hour and once I hit this magic number everything else in my life would be perfect. Sought and got a job in a dynamic computer company called comshare, again starting as a 'post boy' (though the actual title was data control but it meant post boy). Over five years I progress from post boy, to junior operator, to MIS (managment information systems) programmer, to sales support execuitve, with my salary increasing to 5 or 6 times what I started on and the addition of a company car (audi coupe - I loved that car). Still in persuit of the 'mythical amount per hour' I then decided to leave the company and become a contract programmer for companies (banks) that used Comshares systems and software. This was at the height of the 80's 'money, me, money' culture in the UK. At the age of around 22 I was earning 'obsene' (to me at least) amounts of money in the region of £25.00 per hour. I did this for a year or so and it forced me to re asses my 'magic amount per hour' theory to life. The simple fact was I was not happy despite the renumeration I was receiveing. Bizzarley rather than making me more 'content' to give up vast portion of my life to something I had no real interest in (helping a massive bank perhaps become slightly more prrofitable) when I was getting £25 ph to do so vs when I was getting £3.50 ph, I actualy resented this 'sacrafice' of my time more and more as my time become quite leteraly more valuable (to tohers and myself). I also felt a strong sense of 'purposelessness' (is that a word?) asking myself if this was really what my life was about - the persuit of personal wealth that did little to actually make me happy.

So having persued vigourously the 'magic amount per hour' theory of life and having found it wanting for me I once again took a change of tack in the persuit of 'finding a place' for myself in the world that I was happy with. I has always been a computer 'enthuisats / hobbyist', back in my schoold days when 'computers' were not a a 'subject' but an 'minority' interest like train spotting or stamp collecting. I had also been a big lover of computer games from their earliest incarnations in the arcades and on early home computers like commodore pet and apple II (my first pc was an atari 400 and my first console machine a mattel intellivision). So I thought - working just to earn as much money as I could did not work for me, lets try working in something I have a personal love and passion for. So I sought and got a job in a computer games company called Domark (now subsumed into the Eidos group) with a role of overseeing all out of house development for them and a salary of about 1/2 what I had been earning as a freelance contract programmer in the banking sector.

I lasted about 1 and half years before I realised that this too was not making me happy either. Whilst there had been frustration and 'emptiness' when working on things I had little care or love for personally I found working on things that I did love and care for but not being able to make them 'as I wanted' due to the restrictions of the 'churn out any old rubbish' nature of the job even more frustrating and sole destroying. The experience was actually eroding my love and passion for computer games an so I decided once again to look elsewhere for a 'place in the world' that I was happy / comfortable with.

I then entered my 'wilderness years'. Basicaly doing 'nothing' for 5,6 or possibly more years (I do not want to calculate exactly how long this went on for even now) - living off the dole and other state handouts and generaly 'dossing about'. Essentialy during this time I was probably more content than previously but still not sufficently so to not look for a better 'place in the world' for myself.

At this stage an 'opportunity' came up in the form of a shop that my father used to own (our family wealth had come from 'Wimpy Bars' and later 'Saucy Chefs') and that had been leased out to a third party reached the end of it's lease and the leasee did not wish to renew the lease. So for want of anything better to do and recognising that I needed to do 'something' I decided to enter the 'family business' that I had strenously avoided till then and try my hand a running a 'wimpy bar' style cafe - essentialy with the 'plan' of returning the cafe to how it was 20 years earlier when my father ran it as one of his seven such shops.

There were aspects of running the cafe that I liked a lot. I 'understood' the 'point' of doing it - people were hungry, I fed them and they left not hungry - in a way I never really understood the 'point' of possibly making huge banks more profitable. I also took a lot of satisfaction in the building and working with a 'team' of people that I believe I treated as well as I could and with respect. On the down side the work was harder than anything I had ever done before, both physically and mentaly. It was relentless and hard and with no releif. When I was not in the shop I was worrying about it and doing tax and vat returns and other paperwork. I was also loosing money hand over fist though progresseivly less so as time went on.

Just before this period I also got involved in 'lobbying' for change in UK telecoms. At that time the only internet access there was in the UK was dial up and the only financial model for its provison, was a 'pay per minute' model. Along with a handful of others and after a meeting in a pub (previously having linked up online) we decided to set up CUT (the campiagn for unmetered telecoms) on the basic premise that the cost of provision of such dial up access was not related to time but was in fact a fixed cost and therefore there should be fixed cost access options for end users and the only reason there was not was historical lethargy and a desire by the dominant former state owned telco (BT) to continue 'milking' revenues for as long as it could.

This was a heady time for me and the other founders of CUT. When we started the campaign none of us really expected to have any impact but figured there was little to lose in 'having a go'. We turned out to have been in the 'right place at the right time'. We started the campaign just before internet access really became a 'big' political and media issue. Within a year / year and half of starting the campaign we were being described in a Times editorial as a 'powerful alliance of industry influences' (when we were in fact six guys who met down the pub) and being contacted by corporate entites like AOL and Intel seeking ways they could work with us to forward the agenda, having regular meetings with BT and Oftel and other 'players' in the industry. As 'spokesperson' for the campaign I was being invited to appear on TV and radio news and printed media of the national press and more besides. I recall a 'mad' day when I had to rush upstairs from the cafe having been 'on the grill' to shower and change to be wipped away by a BBC chaufered car to do a piece to camera for Newsnight to return to the cafe to finish mopping out the shop, that was a 'condition' of me being allowed to shoot off in the first place.

Whilst undoubtedly this campaiging brought me much satisfaction from an 'ego' point of view - appearing on TV and being asked to speak at conferences and the like, it sloe brought me a snese of satisfaction that I had found in no other 'job' ('job' in inverted commas because it took time and effort but accrued no income) I had had before. It felt like I was doing something 'worthwhile' and that brough me great personal satisfaction. I had found a 'place in the world' that I was happy with. The only problem being it was one that did not provide me with any income.

So about 2 years into running the cafe and about 3 after the start of CUT, I sold the cafe as a 'going concern' (by this time it was just about reaching 'break even' point). I had an income from the shop in the form of rent but the reality of this income was that it did not even cover my own rent for accomodation in London. I knew what I wanted to do but was not sure how I would support myself doing it. I took an appraoch that if I continued to 'add value' - as people and orgnanisations kept assuring me I was through my CUT activties, then eventualy some of that value would accrue back to me. So I looked for ways of making money to support my lobbying activites that did not stop them (like taking a full time job would have) doing part time work here and there and making a small amount by writting a few 'paid for' articles for the likes of the Telegraph on 'consumer internet issues' and the like.

After about 6 years of CUT's existance and follwing the mandating by Oftel that BT had to offer a flat rate wholesale service to ISPs (the core problem in achieving flat rate acess to end users. Some ISPs had tried to 'juggle' offering flat rate access to end users whilst paying BT per minute wholsale access rates - most of which went bust) CUT declared 'victory' and decided to shut itself down. The strength of CUT had always been it's 'tight focus'. For me however it was always about wider issues of how telecoms should operate in a digital age (who should own, it who should build it and how end users should be billed for it etc etc).

I wanted to carry on 'lobbying' in telecoms issues. I had by then a 'voice' (contacts and allies in industry, entry points to the regulator, a place on government bodies like the BB stakeholders group etc) and I wanted to continue to use this 'voice' to push radical agendas from the 'end users' perspective about how telecoms should be funded and who should control them and how we could get as much value from them as a 'society' as quickly as possible. The only problem being that I was slipping futher and futher into debt doing this.

And so we come up to date. About 3 years ago I decided to move to Cyprus. I had a house here through inheritance that previously had sat empty and was deteriorating (shared with my brother). The imcome from the shop rent, whilst not enough to cover my own rent in London, was just about enough to survive on living in Cyprus. So basically I came to Cyprus to be able to 'afford' to carry on my unpaid lobbying activites in the UK. We (me and a handful of like minded people) have a 'new' (after cut) 'vehical' for our lobbying efforts - ABC (access to Broadband campaign). Whilst ABC is much less focused that CUT was and it is generally a much less 'glamourous' and 'heady' day to day exstance (gone are the TV appearances and the like) it what I want to do with my time / life currently. We have managed to raised some funds by organising and running and 'fronting' conferences and these funds help cover my expenses inccurred in my lobbying work (flights to UK, USA EU and hotel accomodation and the like) they do not provide me with any salary. So here I am in Cyprus today. Still 'lobbying' on telcoms issues in the UK though in all hinesty with much less profile and effectiveness than we previously achieved with CUT. I consider this to be my main 'work' though it does not provide my living.

And finally just a few more details about myslef.

I have one elder brother (3 years older) who is married and has two kids - a girl and a boy. My partner is a New Zealand national that I met in the UK just as I was moving from from contractor to computer games manager and who stuck with me through my wilderness years the hard work and financial costs of the cafe episode and our move to Cyprus. She was formerly a pastry chef in the UK and is now heavily involved in the charity 'Kyrenia animal rescue' here in North Cyprus. We have no children and are both happy with this 'life decision' and show no signs of creating any.

So that's pretty much me, where I come from and where I am currently.