About
Who?
I'm a 31 year old single male originally from the north-east of England now living in Somerset in the south-west. St. Andrews University (Scotland) and the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne are my alma matae, boy, that all feels a long time ago. For the last 2 years I've worked for a small company in rural Somerset as a web programmer / web developer / analyst / SQL programmer / DBA.
I was always the nice and sensible guy at school and college, but having turned the big Three-Oh I want to live more — I guess I finally figured life's too short. Now I'm in deepest darkest Somerset and wondering what my next move is going to be once I get a car. I'm kind of settled-in in a nice little 4-year old house I rent in the centre of Frome. However, I know I can earn a lot more than I do currently and I know Frome is not “home”, though where “home” is I'm not entirely sure. It might be back in the north-east, perhaps in the North-Yorkshire Dales, but so too may be northern Scotland and every-so-often I think about relocating to Inverness, and sometimes to Sweden!
Music That I Like
Groove Armada, Jaga Jazzist, Zero 7, Gorillaz, Air, Karine Polwart, Trash80, Hard-Fi, Guns N'Roses, Phoenix, Paul Simon, Shawn Colvin, Radiohead, Suzanne Vega, Kaiser Chiefs, Lily Allen, The Raconteurs, Andy McKee, CrowdedHouse, Reverend and the Makers, Dire Straits, Edie Brickell, Mike Oldfield, Death Cab for Cutie, Dave Matthews Band, Stereophonics, Pink Floyd, ColdPlay, Paula Cole, Beth Orton.
Films That I Like, In No Particular Order
Lost In Translation, Sideways, American Pie, Anchorman, 2001 A Space Odyssey, Local Hero, Once Upon a Time in the West, Apollo 13
Politics
Someone once complained that I didn't say on this site what I stood for, so here are a few thoughts:
I'm an atheist and I'm liberal. I don't think that belief without evidence is a virtue, quite the contrary. I'm for economic liberalism (free markets, free trade, minimal bureaucracy, trickle-down, migration) with a few checks and balances to protect people's freedom, health and quality of life (national healthcare, basic social security, basic state pensions). I'm for mixed communities and diverse society. I'm for freedom and entrepreneurship. I'm for clean, efficient and integrated public transport. I'm for transparency in government and a minimal government at that. I'm for an empowered United Nations, though we probably need to start-over again with the current one. I'm for a cap on political donations.
I'm against the party system in politics, war, discrimination of peoples. Most problems can't be reduced to black and white so, amongst other things, I don't subscribe to the idea that the answer to increasing crime is to increasingly lock people up and for longer, though that's not to say I'm against incarceration as a deterrent. I'm for the decriminalising of taking drugs, this is a health issue not a crime issue and should be treated as such, whilst illegal supply is the crime, decriminalisation and availability on prescription would collapse the drugs business model. I'm against exams and stressful targets for primary school children and teachers alike. I'm for raising the school leaving age to 18. I'm against most censorship though I think the world is pretty screwed up that extreme violence is OK in films and TV but sex is seen as the greater taboo.
See, this is why I haven't mentioned what I stood for before, because odds are you probably hate me now!
People That I Know That Have Webpages
I'm monumentally crap at keeping in touch with people, I'm particularly bad at keeping in touch by email. Lots of people I've known and would like to stay in touch with have fallen by the wayside because I find email sterile, impersonal and laboured (included in this list of casualties are every friend from every school, college, university and workplace that I've ever attended). What does seem to work is having a website / blog, but either not many folks have them, or I don't know their addresses since I've already lost touch with them.