Contributors
Gareth Allen
Gareth is editor of The Confidence Interval and is a regular contributor on a wide range of issues. Politically to the left, he ran for parliament as an independent candidate in the 2010 general election, polling over a thousand votes, but ultimately losing to Yvette Cooper. He wrote the book Politically Correct about the experience. Validate him by buying it here.
Gareth is particularly interested in mental health issues. He is a member of the NICE Guideline Development Group on the long term treatment of self harm, and a service-user member of the PLAN Group, assessing Mental Health Liaison departments for the NHS.
Gareth can be followed on Twitter @GarethSolo.
Sport Billy
The Confidence Interval’s sports correspondent watches a lot of television, and was quite good at the high jump a long time ago. He is the only person ever to be disqualified from TV’s We Are The Champions, and is now universally acknowledged as the UK’s best pundit despite the handicap of not being called Alan.
Sport Billy can occasionally be found cycling around the flatter areas of Yorkshire, but spends most of his time watching Alphablocks on CBeebies in the hope that one day the blocks will spell out cock.
Billy can be followed on Twitter @SportingBilly.
Barry Brown
The Confidence Interval’s Australian Correspondent, Barry is a non-voting atheist from Melbourne. He resembles so little the culture from which he was spawned, that he suspects he might have been artificially implanted. His views are not those of Australia, and should be taken with warm milk and caution.
Jacqueline Campbell
Jacqueline is The Confidence Interval’s in-house angry young woman. She is a rationalist who believes that objectivity, evidence and reason are the foundations of every good argument. She believes in social equality and minimising the suffering of animals, and has recently realised that capitalism really doesn’t work. She enjoys reading, swearing, and changing her mind. Her further musings can be found at Twisted System.
Scott Christie
Scott Christie has been a professional actor since moving from his hometown of Aberdeen to the bright lights of London in 1998. He has over 80 professional credits in theatre, film, television and radio, and has worked behind the scenes as well as in the limelight. He is a passionate supporter of new writing, new artists and Aberdeen Football Club. Like most in his profession, his opinions are liberal-left and his office is the pub.
Scott can be followed on Twitter @Scotty_Christie.
Paul Fennell
Dr Fennell heads the Energy Engineering group at Imperial College Chemical Engineering and has published widely on the subject of calcium-looping technology and in the wider field of chemical engineering. He sits on the Institution of Chemical Engineers Energy Conversion subject panel, the International Energy Authority High-Temperature Solid Looping Cycles Network Executive, and has written reports for the UK Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) on future technologies for Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and carbon capture readiness. He is also a deputy director of Imperial College’s Centre for Carbon Capture and Storage. He has published more than 25 papers since 2005. You can read an interview with Paul here.
Dina Johnson
Dina Johnson is a shining liberal diamond in the conservative rough that is the Lone Star State of Texas. A travel agent and survivor of three marriages, she is The Confidence Interval’s Texas correspondent. She tells us how the world looks through the twisted filter of the Texas media and tries, mostly without success, to keep her temper and keep herself off the FBI watch list.
Dougie Kinnear
Our militant Scottish Reporter Dougie Kinnear is doing his best to redress the imbalance he sees in the media and also in his mind. A Liberal at heart, he worries more as he gets older about the world his generation is creating for his son.
A gadget-geek prone to spending too much time Tweeting and Facebooking rather than engaging with people in the same room, Dougie has decided that the best way to save the world is to rant about it semi-coherently on The Confidence Interval.
Dougie can be followed on Twitter @onemorethenhome.
Maleena Pone
Maleena is a freelance presenter, journalist and poet. She currently lives in Southampton but is a citizen of the world, and enjoys meeting like minded people who inspire and evoke action against global injustice. She admires anyone that offers a voice for the voiceless, and supports the struggle of the oppressed people in the UK and all over of the world. She loves homegrown music for the soul, and supports independent artists who continue to flourish and be an example of the alternative. She feels that there are never enough questions to ask the world, and agrees whole heartedly with Lois Lane: “There’s far too much injustice around us to be ignored any longer.”
Maleena can be followed on Twitter @MaleenaPone.
Michael Scanlan
Michael is originally from Glasgow but now, like about half the population of Scotland, finds himself in London. He divides his time between writing press releases, bouncing his son on his knee and holding forth on subjects about which he knows very little. These subjects include theology, historical theory, politics (he worked for the European Parliament when he was young and naive) and Kraftwerk. Although, in fairness, he knows a lot about Kraftwerk.
His crowning glory was saying “cunt” in the presence of the late Cardinal Thomas Winning.
Tim Smillie
Tim Smillie spends his time on the South coast writing poetry to ward off evil spirits, as well as cycling to places that don’t appear on maps. He describes himself as a beligerent socialist, though it is doubtful that he knows what either of those words mean. His areas of interest include AIDS, mental health and local cheeses from the home counties.
Richard Steele
Richard is a philosopher, essayist and accomplished fencer.
Richard Stone
Richard is a former print journalist and newspaper publisher from Central Texas just trying to figure out this brave new digital world. Back in the day, he considered himelf a hairy, wild-eyed bomb-throwing anarchist. He never was all of that but it was cool to think so. He’s mostly interested in (you might even say obsessed with) Texas and US politics, the First Amendment and free expression issues, and other things that could fall under the heading of “social justice.”
He also blogs at The Ragged Edge.
Malcolm Stoney
Photographer Malcolm was born in Germany, and has lived in Skipton since he was 3 years old. He is inspired by the natural landscape and architecture of his hometown and its surroundings. He is self-taught and started taking professional quality photographs in 2007, with a collection depicting the gnarled roots and trees along the Roman Road in Skipton.
Malcolm can be followed on Twitter @malcolmstoney, and more of his work can be found at www.flickr.com/mfsphotography
Josh Strauss
Josh is a freelance journalist/camera operator living and working in London. Issues of forced migration have for a long time been of great interest and concern to him: how a person ‘becomes’ a refugee, the diversity of experiences, as well as the tensions and changing nature of asylum policies and human rights are the themes that stimulate and stir him.
He feels that there is a clear disparity between the diversity of lived experiences and the variety of media voices. In every story there is a silence, a sight concealed, a word unspoken.
Matt Tully
Matt is a hard drinking misanthrope who has long since given up on any hopes of finding a niche within a society for which he has lost all respect. When he isn’t endlessly watching George Carlin and Richard Dawkins videos on Youtube, Matt occupies himself with trying to outlive his parents in order to save them the agony and indignity of witnessing his inevitable demise in a Castleford gutter. He is a keen but fumbling guitarist and lover of women, and has been known to write the odd poem.
Allen Turing
Allen Turing is currently enjoying being the oldest person on his university course, and struggling to carve a niche for himself as an independent filmmaker in Leeds. He spends his days belittling others to compensate for his own inadequacies, and trying to live up to the reputation of his self-appointed nom de plume.
Wendy Uchimura
Wendy is a translator, editor and writer based in Tokyo and Yokohama. She and her husband are currently concerned with increasing the population of Japan and the UK.
Elly Wakeling
Elly is a paracetamol pusher by day, but she also rather likes quite a lot of music, Icelandic things, and making shiny stuff out of silver. Pretty things, funny things, and things that aren’t small-minded are good too. And she really likes asymmetry. And cats. Saying no is rarely an attractive option. Elly can be followed on Twitter @ellyoracle, and has a blog at Oracle Roulette, and writes for various online magazines.