Introduce Yourself

[azrael]

Hi Ian! Welcome!

[Lazarus]

'Sup.

I've spoken to a few of you over the last couple of weeks. Those that I have spoken to will understand why I want absolutely nothing about my name, professional life, etc...mentioned on these boards.

I was heavily involved with another EU Pirate Party for a good year. I am now vaguely active in the UK, but not on a day-to-day basis. I do however have certain specialist skills, which I have offered to the officials/board members I have met.

I look forward to meeting more of you as and when. Especially those who live in London.

Laz

[azrael]

Welcome Laz! Look forward to meeting and working with you.

[Graedient]

Hello.

I am Graeme, I live in South Tyneside.

The pirate party seems to be the only party that actually puts my interests before the nonsense. Let's face it, the tories, labour and the lib dems have failed horribly!

I'm a techy, and I guess that makes me the target market. I don't care, please someone, represent South Tyneside.

Thanks a lot,


Graeme.

[topperfalkon]

Hey Graeme,

Welcome to the forums and PPUK. I'm glad to hear we appeal to you!

[moon]

'Sup.

I've spoken to a few of you over the last couple of weeks. Those that I have spoken to will understand why I want absolutely nothing about my name, professional life, etc...mentioned on these boards.

I was heavily involved with another EU Pirate Party for a good year. I am now vaguely active in the UK, but not on a day-to-day basis. I do however have certain specialist skills, which I have offered to the officials/board members I have met.

I look forward to meeting more of you as and when. Especially those who live in London.

Laz

Hello Laz,
Do your skills extend to the requirements here; ?
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=3966

[GregWild1988]

Hello! I've spoken to a few of you on IRC (StalinsGhost), but I'll introduce myself more on here too.

I'm 24, having recently graduated from the University of Nottingham with an Masters in Social and Global Justice with the school of Politics and International Relations, where I focused my studies on various autonomous movements in the broader left milieu - especially the likes of the Zapatistas in Mexico, the indigenous socialists in Bolivia - and also global security issues. I'm also highly interested in critical political economy, particularly market anarchism and open-Marxism, which ties in heavily with my views on international political theory.

I've joined PPUK because I'm utterly disgusted with the establishment parties whose interests are holding back social development and egalitarian principles which could be fostered by a more open and technologically involved society. The expanding remit of the UK's iGestapo in MI5 and GCHQ is a cause for serious concern which has tipped me over the edge. The last industrial revolution saw a dramatic conflict between workers, the state and business; the current informational industrial revolution is seeing its own battle being waged - the only party which really seems to get this is the PP. So that's why I've joined.

I'm unsure what level of commitment I'm going to provide as of yet, but I'm looking forwards to participating.

Greg.

[martiuk]

Hi everyone,

I'm a 19 .NET Developer in Birmingham.

I joined PPUK because the lack of support for young people in the UK (I was lucky getting my job with no A levels) and the apparent lack of support for technology in the UK. Yes, we've all been on Facebook, but no one in power is really pushing technology and IT as a good thing.

I've noticed the West Midlands hasn't had a lot of activity lately, so hopefully it'll get started up again soon for the 2012 local elections and I'd be glad to help out.

Thanks!

Martin

[topperfalkon]

Hello Greg,

Good to have you here. As you've duly noted, the increasing remit of MI5 and GCHQ is a primary concern of PPUK. Some of us subscribe to the view that if you simply get enough people to shout loud enough, someone will listen. However, obviously we'd be ecstatic if you were willing to help out with campaigning and future demonstrations in the long term!

[topperfalkon]

Hi Martin,

I sympathise greatly with your position, having got into the tech industry as a QA Tester in much the same way (I'm only 21 myself with no uni qualifications). There has been a minor turn-around in the recent budget with the announcement of better tax breaks to the games industry. Obviously they finally got fed up of Canada stealing all our dev talent.
It still appals me how shockingly tech-ignorant a lot of MPs are. Many MPs can relate to the big media industries as something tangible and culturally worthwhile, but when considering legislation like DEAct, that simply doesn't rub off the same way. They believe they can apply legislation to the web in a simple and unilateral way without any consideration for how the Internet actually works.

Obviously our aim is to change that, but we need to improve our position to push technology as a major policy discussion. Hopefully we can make some gains this year that will help us to do that. But there's no use holding our breaths yet, we're just getting started.

[blex_areton]

Hi, I'm Alex, decided to join today.

I'm 17 and read a lot about politics, current affairs, economics etc, mainly as a hobby/distraction from my first passion and future career (if all goes well!), medicine (starting at Oxford in September 2012).

My mother and father are Greek and French respectively (I speak both of those languages fluently, and can converse in German - might be useful to the PP), and I follow current affairs in both of these countries closely. Having witnessed the ongoing spectacular failure of mainstream and 'radical' parties and representative governments in Greece, and the small but rapidly growing Pirate Party there, I decided to look further. I identify strongly with the Pirate Party's views on direct democracy and transparency in government.

Secondly, the PP is the only party that wants to tackle the pharmaceutical industry head-on. Put simply, we need a new covenant between society and the industry. For details, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Heal ... iatrist%29 . It's a very interesting story which I'm sure will be discussed later.

Finally, like all PP members, I view the internet as a wonderful thing, and the PP remains for me the only party that really cherishes civil liberties.

I look forward to getting involved and meeting with other members!

Alex

[azrael]

Hi Alex! It is fantastic to have you on board! You're absolutely right about society needing a new covenant with industry, but also society needs a new covenant with politicians and politics. The mainstream parties increasingly fail to represent 'us' rather than big business, and I hope you help us shake things up and see the Pirate Party get some of the success here that it does in other parts of Europe.

[parkin13]

Hello Everyone,

I'm Mark Parkin, I'm 33 and from York. I'm here because I've looked at many of the other political parties and the Pirate Party appears to be one of the few that views modern technology and science as a way to significantly improve politics and life in the UK. There's a change coming to politics in the world, and I like to think it'll be a change for the better; we have to make sure that the UK government are not standing in the way of a fairer world.

Mark

[tempest3k]

Hi Mark,

Welcome aboard I entirely agree with your points above, our current government seems to be very afraid of how technology can improve life, especially in the form of easy communication! I'm also in York and would be happy to meet up at some point once the current local election campaign out of the way?

Phil

[FatalException]

Hi all.

I'm Richard and I'm a game designer currently residing in the deepest darkest Midlands. After a bit of research I decided to donate to your party as your political views are very similar to mine. You seem like a good bunch of people so I'll stick around and post in these forums too

[topperfalkon]

Great to hear Richard. We're glad that you share our views, and you're more than welcome to discuss them with us whenever you feel like it

[RobertG]

Hello,

I'm Rob, and I am an academic at Oxford University. I'm German, but live in the UK since 2006. I am very interested in the concepts of direct and liquid democracy, as also promoted quite successfully by the German Pirate Party. I am currently working on a related project for a website enabling citizens to actively participate in political decision making processes.

I joined the UK Pirate Party because I felt it would be the best place to connect with a community interested in democratic reform and e-participation. I recently met Sebastian Nerz in Oxford, who is the head of the German Pirate Party, and would also be very interested in learning about possible links between the two parties.

Rob

[blazingskies]

Hello. I'm Blazingskies.

I live in Sheffield and I'm a Network Engineer. I also co-host a podcast and do a lot of creative work online.

I've been watching the various European Pirate parties for a while, generally approving their message and goals. But the main reasons I finally joined up was because of the proposed new legislation regarding snooping on emails. I used to work for an ISP. I know how that would work (as in, I know that it wouldn't in any meaningful fashion)

I even wrote a slightly ranty blog post about my decision, which you can read here if you're interested:
http://blazingskies.livejournal.com/346101.html

So yeah. Hello, hope I can be helpful.

Blaze

[icStatic]

Hey Blaze, welcome and glad to have you with us!

Your blog post reads exactly like my thought process did when I joined, however the trigger for me was the NHS mess!

[topperfalkon]

Hi Blaze.

Great to have you on board. We have the Manchester local elections happening at the moment in your region. If you fancy offering any help for that I can see what help the Campaigns team is after at the moment and get them in touch with you. Other than that, we're keeping an eye on the CCDP, which looks set to be announced in the Queen's Speech, and gearing up to fight that once the Local elections are out of the way. There's not much we can do with CCDP at the moment, simply because we only have speculation on what it will contain until a draft copy is released, which is what is expected for the Queen's Speech.