3. Enter a summary of your life and career

I was born in Winchester in 1977, and have spent most of my life in the South West.

I have been interested in politics from an early age, probably the influence of my father who was an advocate of the process, and seeded questions in my young mind which I would ponder for days. I was stunned by how confrontational political debates were, how short-term the thinking - and how this meant bigger problems could be avoided, and how they offered more problems to each other, and not more solutions.

I was educated in Winchester, and then Sherborne where I earned 3 A's at A-level in Economics (so that's a no the Euro), Geography (humanity's dependence on environment), and Physics (still no idea what's actually going on with the LHC). During this time I also attended summer school near Boston, USA, where I studied Social Psychology and Speech & Debate.

I have always been interested in working out how to make processes more efficient, looking at how I did things to see if there was an easier or better way; how processes worked together, such as how the bananas got here, then how we eat them, what that does for our bodies, what we throw away, what happens to that, and what cargo does the banana ship take back? Studying social psychology fascinated me because I started to connect this was of thinking with how I understood people: individuals within an ecology of social processes which shape the people we become and the way we behave. This systematic, whole-picture approach was cemented by some inspirational Geography A level teaching, and an attempt to get into Oxford which required a lot of additional reading in philosophy, ecology, psychology, and the history of science and thought.

The Speech & Debate theme was continued in debating societies and competitions.

After a gap year spent working in Salisbury and hitchhiking from Ecuador to San Francisco, I went to Edinburgh University to study Psychology. Finding it an underwhelming experience, and not really believing a degree was going to change anything (it hasn't), I withdrew. I stayed in Edinburgh on account of the inspiring and brilliant friends I made, and started a company producing award-winning films and commercials.

We were one of the first companies to put filmed advertising on the internet, and it quickly became apparent that the internet was going to be a more flexible way of making a living. I taught myself the required skills and started developing web applications for the insurance and risk analysis industry, developing groundbreaking methods to visualise and understand global risk.

I helped one of my clients set up 'CitySafe' where I designed and product-managed a London-wide emergency communications system; and then again in the same role with a larger team, working with EU energy ministers to analyse threats to Europe's critical national infrastructure; followed by a public procurement project to design and deliver the emergency management system which is used today by local authorities, critical national infrastructure operators, and other agencies in the public and private sector.

Thankfully politics has moved on a little as I have grown older, which is a great thing to see, and being more experienced I now have more sympathy for the challenges politicians face. But given the scale and immediacy of some of these challenges, I am still shocked by the recurring misapprehensions behind many of the solutions they propose: aid policies based on the same system which created the need for aid, a war on terror which creates more terrorists, farming methods which create famine -- in the words of Einstein, 'we can not solve problems using the same thinking used when they were created'

Now, especially with Barack Obama showing that the virtues of transparency, collaboration, understanding, and long-term thinking are what voters want in their politicians, I'm optimistic that we'll see coherent thinking take root in the next few years.

So now is the time to add weight to this movement. Now is the time to bring in more people with the same goals for our quality of life, and for our futures. Now is the time to bring in the fresh minds who have grown up in this age where all the graphs have gone exponential, preparing to be the ones who will have to deal with it! Now is the time for sustainable economies and adaptive approaches. Now is the time put in place the people, like me,  who will do the work required to turn the words and hopes into reality.

2. Why would you like to represent this region?

I am committed to improving the quality of life we can build for ourselves and for our children, and want nothing more than to help shape the organisations we have created to help us achieve this goal. The opportunities for an MEP to help the day-to-day activities of our region are limited due to the largely legislative remit of Parliament, however it is at a strategic and goal-setting level where we can make a difference: legislation to minimise the bad and support the good, directing large research budgets, guiding resource use, and so forth.

I have spent the best part of my life in the South West, and also lived in Europe for many years, so I'm an internationalist, yet the South West is where I call home. As my life and career shows (see below), I am in a position to help.

The evidence shows clearly that we have reached a tipping point. From the local to the global, in economics, environment, health, and society, many systems are being stretched to a threshold, beyond which they will cease to work effectively, if at all. How we think and act in the next decade is essential to human happiness in the centuries ahead. We need to become more agile, to aim further, and to act with purpose, immediacy and unity. There is no time to waste.

We have to choose to protect our most precious resource, our environment, providing support for local and green investments, in infrastructure, jobs, sustainable energy, and biodiversity. With a close relationship to the countryside, and the awareness of stewardship this brings, and with our transition towns, we in the South West are ahead of the game.

We have to choose to create and consume energy more wisely. The South West is well-placed to provide excellent solutions. We have enough offshore power to supply much of the UK to export to the EU, and we are pioneering the transition to post-oil, low energy, high quality lifestyles.

We should choose to support our local economy, and promote its relationship with the global market; introduce sliding-scale regulation to encourage innovation and small business; expanding accounting to include social and environmental capital; encouraging complementary currencies and local trade to raise local incomes, and increase the diversity of local work available.

We are already the most rural region of the UK, and we're soon the be the most elderly, too, so it makes good sense to protect our local communities, since they will protect us. Government services such as schools, doctors and post offices are cornerstones of rural social and economic activity. We need these now more than ever.

I want to represent the South West because it is a progressive yet grounded area, with smart people, doing good things and enjoying their lives, in generally wholesome ways. I want to promote and support the best of what we do within the context of Europe so that we can all help each other enjoy more conscientious, sustainable, and even happier lives.

5. Describe your current paid and / or voluntary roles

I'm currently raising funds for a new company which uses the internet to create local employment opportunities, especially for stay-at-home parents.

6. Describe any previous paid and / or voluntary roles

Much of this is described in the 'Life and Career' section above, so I'll not reiterate, but you can find more about me on Facebook, LinkedIn, my CV, and through my blog.

A few notable themes and high-points are a passion for quality of life, distributing power and information to those who can use it best, and setting a world record for crossing the Channel in a dragon boat!

trying to make the world more open and aware

4. Select an area of interest and describe your reasons and political views
Interest: Local resilience

Reason: A diverse, sustainable, and reasonably self-sufficient local community is a happy and prosperous place to live, and the most suitable structure within a changing world.

Views: Local communities have been in decline for many years as legislation, centralisation, and apparent economies of scale have created unsustainable conditions for local businesses. This trend had come at a tremendous cost to quality of life. We work harder, have fewer strong relationships, feel more distanced from society, and seem to enjoy life less.

The South West is well placed to buck this trend. It is already loved for its environment and the quality of life this affords; it has abundant resources in terms of its friendly and wise people, its agricultural land, its universities; and we have a great history of instigating socially beneficial change, from the Tolpuddle Martyrs to the numerous Transition Towns across our region.

Creating conditions to support communities that can adapt to a changing world is an approach which works when things are going well, and when they're going badly.

More local activity is an elegantly virtuous circle. You’re probably more familiar with the opposite effect when areas decline - frequently due to high level planning decisions - the effects of which are made particularly obvious by post office closures and favourable conditions for out-of-town supermarkets. But with sliding-scale regulation and more coherent thinking, we can have a region with strong and diverse businesses, consuming and producing locally, trading widely, providing employment at all levels, creating a confident society which works together to shape its future.

By thinking globally yet acting locally, we strengthen our communities against the risk of problems both locally and further afield, so that we have a more stable foundation to weather storms: from climate change, economic collapse, pandemic disease, dirty terrorism, or any number of challenges which can seem to suddenly appear.

As people have always shown in times of adversity, we're better when we work together: we accomplish more, feel better, waste less, and still preserve out own self interest. Imagine how much good we can do if we bring that energy and direction into daily life.

Interest: Energy

Reason: Solve the energy problem and every other problem becomes much easier to solve.

Views: We love energy. We love the convenience of it, we love everything it permits us to do, be it reading at night or flying to Portugal. But therein lies the problem: we really can’t get enough of it.

We should and must use it more efficiently, but with an ever-increasing population in a finite world, we need to make more. It needs to be sustainable, and have minimal undesired outputs.

We have already left it very late to develop better sources, but there is no single more worthwhile endeavour than reducing the total cost of energy. The list of benefits is endless: from supplying future generations with sufficient food and clean water, reducing risks and instability from conflict and migration, allowing us to work less and enjoy more; and as mentioned our region is strong here, from the research done by our local businesses and universities to the harnessing of renewables. Europe is able to help a great deal here with subsidies and investment in the green economy and research.

We must ensure that the long-term and hidden costs of energy schemes are properly accounted for and that the best ideas are provided with the investment they require. We should also take steps to limits the effects of our good intentions, for example ensuring that bio-fuels do not adversely affect food prices and agricultural production. We should favour the long term over the short term, investing in the infrastructure which makes possible the better solutions we deserve: macro- and micro-scale energy generation, organic fuel production, coherent and responsible transport methods, efficient housing, and research into still better ways of doing all these.

There is no more noble ambition, or greater challenge, facing humanity today.

Interest: Transparency and efficiency

Reason: The EU would perform its roles more effectively, and with more support, if it were more open and encouraged greater engagement.

Views: I would aim to bring openness to the EU. One of the best lessons of the internet age is that open engagement creates outstanding progress. It builds trust, and gives people the information they need to help make things better: highlighting where things are going wrong, and giving them to tools to help with the solutions.

It is ridiculous that the EU has never released
 public involvement and accountability to the EU by opening up its processes and accounts to the public. This in itself will generate for reform of the areas most systemically prone to corruption.

TRANSPARENCY IS AN ISSUE THAT WILL WIN YOU VOTES, BUT YOU NEED TO FRAME IT IN A MUCH TOUGHER WAY - POINT OUT THE AMOUNT OF WASTE AND CORRUPTION IN THE EU, THE FACT ITS AUDIT HAS NEVER BEEN RELEASED. BRITS HATE THE IDEA OF ITALIANS AND GREEKS WASTING ALL THEIR MONEY. EG USE A WEBSITE TO NAME AND SHAME MEPS ON THEIR EXPENSES?

Interest: Migration and population

Reason: Well-handled migration is a win-win.

Views:  The South West's population is increasing 50% faster that the rest of the UK. Two-thirds of migrants are of working age, creating competition for jobs and housing. Typically house price is used to limit migration, but we have seen the damage this creates as local residents are priced out of the area and jobs are relocated.

On the other hand, most of these migrants come from within the UK, and create higher levels of demand for products and services, whilst also trading valuable skills.

The problem of migration is not solved by building bigger fences and making others less welcome. People are always going to want to come to the South West, both from within the UK, and from the rest of Europe. Being protectionist is not going to help anyone, not even us. This is a European UNION and we are all on the same planet facing similar problems.

Whilst DELETE we obviously need some BETTER checks on migration, AND TO BETTER balancing rights and responsibilities, and BRING IN contributions TO OFFSET with consumption. AT THE SAME TIME we will solve the problemS WHICH ONES? though working together, not against each other.

We have the ability, and it is in our best interests, to make life better in the migrants’ home countries. This will generate more jobs and better lives back home. There is a reason people come to the South West to learn skills in our universities, schools, and businesses. We can help teach and nurture a younger member of the union so that they become a stable, more contributing participant, and more lucrative trading partner.THIS LAST PARAGRAPH A BIT WAFTY.. TIGHTEN

Interest: A holistic security agenda, and creating a framework for dealing with failed states

Reason: Helping the sick get better is a mark of civilisation. Preventing states from slipping into failure, and helping them recover if they do, is aN efficient way of making the world a better place.

Views: The best Generals are the ones who's names we don't know, since the best way to win a battle is not to fight it. The cost of attacking is becoming ever cheaper, allowing motivated groups to cause the kind of destruction previously only available to armies. The conflicts we fight in the future should not be allowed to escalate into nation state versus nation state. We are smarter than this, and we owe it to ourselves to see wars as only a very small part in a far larger context of peace and development.

There are some states which we can all agree have failed but we do little about. There are excuses, of course. We have little economic motivation, we have limited resources to handle the task, and we don't want to be culturally imperialist, but these objections mask our humane responsibility to help.

It is in failed states where most of the resentment is generated. This rage to act against the countries who don't do enough to help comes either from those directly involved, or from those who perceive that we  profit politically and economically from the instability.

Watching a country kill its citizens, or manage the country so badly that many die, is something we can all agree is a bad thing. We know Zimbabwe, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, and Afghanistan are all failing to fulfill their duty to their citizens, but we don’t have a coherent way to deal with it.

If they were failing economically we would to deal with it through the IMF Sovereign Bankruptcy Plan, but when it fails completely we do not have an agreed approach, which permits us to hide behind our excuses. There are objective requirements for a working state - such as physical security, public order, economic and social security - and the EU should take steps to ensure these exist.

The EU is well suited to balance the war-fighting supremacy of the USA. They're great at waging wars and creating conditions for change very quickly and effectively. We are great at waging peace. As good cop to America's bad cop, we can use diplomacy, and integrationist multi-cultural empathy to avoid conflict, EU battlegroups to quickly and efficiently shut down early stage conflict, and EU peace forces to stabilise and rebuild during and after conflict.

The EU should work more closely with the UN and organisations such as the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe to develop a framework for solving these problems.

And given the potential for conflict as the cost of attacking goes down and the cost of defending goes up, we NEED to wage peace.