About me

I had a career as a passionately committed family doctor in the British National Health Service, during which I saw the changes wrought by information technology and managerialism during the 1980s and 90s (which I called ‘The new way of doing things’) at first hand.

An early adopter of IT I saw the danger that computers and modern management techniques might be used to reduce the richness and humanity of life rather than to enhance it. These concerns were expressed in my book, The Paradox of Progress, which was received with great enthusiasm by people working in every walk of life. It is now out of print but freely readable HERE. For a small charge a copy can be downloaded from HERE. (I never wanted to make money from it, I just wanted people to read it)

Following the publication of this book I became a prolific columnist and commentator in medical journals, a role which I continued and expanded after retirement from medical practice. My second book, Friends in Low Places, explored the hidden differences in perspective between people working on the front line of life and those working in ‘high places’, and the reasons why people on the front line find it so difficult to show why their view is just as valid and, in important ways, even more so.

After retirement I studied for an Open University degree in Humanities with Literature, graduating with First Class honours – starting to compensate for an almost exclusively science-based education.

A founder member of the Doctors and Overpopulation Group in the early 1970s I have tended to have an eye on the future throughout my life. In 2005 I wrote one of my regular British Journal of General Practice columns on the subject of organised denial of man-made global warming. In spite of this being the only time I had ever written on this subject,I was asked to give the opening keynote address at the 2006 North European Travel Medicine Conference in Edinburgh . On the day, as it happened, that our youngest grandchild was born. The climate change emergency, and its continuing denial, has seemed more important to me than anything else ever since.

My old website, contains details of my two books and the text of several of my lectures. I am currently moving some of this material onto this WordPress site so that it is more accessible (but actually the old site – which I designed two decades ago using Microsoft’s now-withdrawn program FrontPage – still works well and has advantages, including an index of ideas in The Paradox of Progress.)