This Blog is not really about me but it may help to know something of my varied background as this will help the reader understand where much of the thinking comes from.

I grew up on a small pig farm but was sent to a Catholic boarding school where I had some difficulty finding my place.  I had good teachers and bad teachers, good friends and bad friends and the years are not remembered  fondly. After three not very good science A levels I left and attended a technical college for a year hoping to convert a combined Physics and Maths paper to two separate A levels.  The freedom of driving, the pub and women won out over mostly bad teaching and my university plans perished.  I returned to farming but couldn’t live with the loneliness and intellectual isolation and went looking for a job.  Got one as a Trainee Car Salesman.  Great to drive lots of cars but realized I was being taken for a ride and being bullied.  Got out and experience registering as unemployed and fighting my ex-employer in an Industrial Tribunal just to get my benefits.

Got a brilliant job working in a factory testing electromechanical components,  had day release to study electronics and thought I was on my way.  Did really well at college but felt I was underpaid compared to what the less bright students were getting.  Recession came, pay-rise didn’t come so I left, partly to protect someone else who might otherwise have been made redundant.

Tried to start my first business but never got started because my intended business partner/supplier was too busy with another job.  Eventually I joined him in his other job and was managing homeworkers for another small business.  Didn’t get on with the owner so left to go to polytechnic to read a business degree specializing in marketing and economic forecasting.  Along the way I got a great foundation in computer systems and had a bit of a flare for it.  It was during my studies of Economics, Sociology and Psychology that I became a supporter of Social Dividend based welfare systems.

On graduation I became a Recruitment Consultant but became frustrated at the lack of IT systems then being used.  After two years I left to set up my own agency in conjunction with another party.  The other party got taken over by a nasty, dirty business tactic and I was on my own.  I was frustrated at the inefficiency of the labour market and sought to improve it by developed software for electronic matching and electronic publishing on Prestel and bulletin boards.  My own money ran out and I tried to raise financial support.  Didn’t get it and was told by a large plc that email would never catch on. My business was wiped out when British Telecom stopped backing Prestel and another promising voice activated teletext technology got bogged down in the High Court.

At this time I married my first wife who I had met during a college holiday job working in Israel.  Through her I learned a lot about kibbutzim and cooperatives. Together we were obtaining and writing articles for my Prestel service.

I then got a fantastic job with the Corporation of London sorting out the the IT systems for a consortium of London borough career services formed when the GLC and ILEA was abolished.  I saw the waste these organisation had been making and slashed costs while improving service. I also came to understand the public sector approach to spending money.  The unit was wiped out when Margaret Thatched decided to privatise the Careers Service; the first step on its ultimate demise.

Meanwhile the family farm had shut down when my father retired and we were letting the units to many small enterprising businesses.  I have since been bogged down for twenty five years in the planning system as an aside.

For my real job I joined a firm of Loss adjusters and was designing a computer system which I then traveled to every town in the land to install.  Got terrified of speed cameras and repressive effect it had on doing my job.  Before satnavs I was always lost and late but lacked the benefit of the locals who knew and could avoid the cameras.  Hated them and joined the Association of British Drivers (now the Alliance). I got bored when the project finished and tried a spell in Operations Management but wasn’t allowed to do what needed to be done so took voluntary redundancy to set up my next business.

Primarily importing and distributing canoes, kayaks and pedal boats from Canada I expanded to importing from France, China and the USA.  I also had a an internet shop. Grew the business but had a problem with suppliers so returned to an IT career in Life Reinsurance and employed someone to carry on the boat business for me from premises in the Midlands.  That didn’t work out well and I ended up shutting the business and fighting the employee through an employment tribunal.  They lost but I was wiped out in so many ways.

My IT work switched to freelance when my mother became ill but I am now back with the same employer still doing systems design and commuting two hours each way by train and tube into London each day.

It is my exposure to electronic and computer systems design with the application of feedback together with my academic understanding of statistics and my exposure to the employment market as an employee, employer and recruiter and my big and small business experience that makes economics solutions seem so obvious to me.  It is very complex but in my mind everything fits so it is just a matter of time and clowning-around until we inevitably get there.