Born and and educated locally, I have lived and worked in Birmingham and the Black Country for most of my life. One of six children and the son of an Asphalt Mixer man it would be difficult to suggest I had a privileged upbringing.

After serving an apprenticeship in consumer electronics, I went into management in retail electronics maintenance. My first branch was in Dagenham where I became interested in politics. I arrived in London during the Autumn of 1978 and saw first hand the effects of the ‘winter of discontent’, nurses were on picket lines stopping ambulances and there were serious fears for public health as a result of rubbish collections being boycotted. Like most people I suppose, as a 23 year old committed to building my career,  I hadn’t really thought that much about the impact politics has on our daily lives. My experiences in London changed that forever.

After various moves with the company I worked for, I went to Australia for an extended holiday, spending six months living and working up and down the east coast of the Country. I’m sure this experience contributed greatly to my commitment to giving people the freedom to make their own choices about their future and goes to the heart of my principles.

After coming back to England in 1983, I set up home in Halesowen and started my own business supplying computer systems and software to businesses in the West Midlands. That year I also joined what was then the Halesowen and Stourbridge Conservative Association (which later split into Stourbridge and Halesowen and Rowley Regis after the boundary changes in 1995) and I’ve worked in every local, national and European election campaign throughout that time. In 1991, I went back to “school” at Staffordshire University and earned a Postgraduate Diploma in Business Administration.

In 1996, I moved to Stourbridge with my wife Karen and our three dogs where we immediately felt at home. In 1999 following the retirement of a fine councillor and dear friend Jim Taylor, I stood for election in my home ward of Pedmore and Stourbridge East.

Although it’s unfashionable to say so, I don’t support any particular football team. I learned that lesson from being raised in a household where three of my brothers supported different local teams, all playing in the same division.... Saturdays at home were difficult whenever there was a local derby!

I like to read and have a very varied taste from Dickens to Thrillers and Science Fiction (interspersed with the occasional biographical account, usually politicians, I have to say). I also love to cook, which is a great relief to Karen and I relish nothing more than to be given a pile of ingredients and told to ‘make something out of that!’. Apart from being an armchair follower of Formula one motor racing, the occasional visit to the pub and undertaking significant DIY projects, that’s about my lot as far as recreation is concerned. Oh, and politics, of course, which takes up most of my life as you will see from the ‘What do I do?’ section.