About
I am a London-based policy analyst, activist, writer and broadcaster.
Germany’s Focus magazine described me as “a political long-distance runner”. Tory blogger Guido Fawkes once referred to me as “one of early New Labour’s more cerebral types”.
Most of my public policy work today relates to transparency, freedom of information and government accountability, principally through projects that help people to find out how Europe’s farm subsidies and fish subsidies are spent. Both projects have a strong link to food, environment and quality of life policy – and that’s where my greatest personal interest lies.
For my work on farmsubsidy.org I won a Freedom of Information Award from Investigative Reporters and Editors and the website was cited by Politics Online’s Top 10 Who Are Changing the World of Internet and Politics and by WorldChanging.com as “demonstrating the power of geek activism done right”.
I blog about EU agriculture policy at capreform.eu. This website is where the slim pickings of other stuff lives, as well as various articles.
In 2005 I founded EU Transparency, a very small non-profit organisation that runs farmsubsidy.org and fishsubsidy.org and which has (so far) been funded by grants from philanthropic foundations. Previously I have had jobs in Parliament and Whitehall and in think tanks. I’ve a degree in PPE from Oxford University a masters in public policy analysis from UC Berkeley where I was a Fulbright Scholar.
I enjoy listening to the radio and riding a bicycle, though not usually at the same time. I combine passions for both in The Bike Show, a usually weekly radio programme about cycling that I have presented most weeks on London’s experimental art radio station Resonance 104.4 fm since 2004.