Andy's Web      

http://www.roadatvg.org.uk

I was born in Basingstoke on 1st March 1969. I remember loads of stuff which everybody else has forgotten like the hot summer of 1976, the Silver Jubilee of 1977, Star Wars, Blake's 7, England retaining the Ashes, and English teams winning the European Cup every year. Life was pretty good up until 1982, when my mum died. 

Subsequent years at school were pretty poor and I couldn't wait to leave. The 6th form college was much better, but by the time I was 18 I'd had enough of Basingstoke, so in 1987 I left town to go to Loughborough Uni.

It was at Uni that I formed the habits of a lifetime, all of which had a common theme revolving around being bad for you! The most important of these were beer, whisky, curries, dangerous sports, extreme exercise, and charity fundraising. Suffice to say if I keep up my existing regime I can expect to live to at least 40. University was great apart from there being not enough women (27%) at Loughborough, the Poll Tax, student loans, and debt.

I left Uni in the middle of the recession of '91. Lots of my mates wrote off to loads of companies but couldn't get a job. Fortunately for me I had a sponsorship which meant a guaranteed job in Reading. It paid £12,700 a year which I thought was loads of money at the time, until I realised the cost of living in the Thames Valley.

I got into politics after the disastrous 1992 election result. Before then I'd been part of anti-Poll Tax groups, but I joined the Labour Party in '93 to get the Tories out. It was immensely satisfying to see them booted out of Reading and see the town develop from a place that nobody had anything good to say about into the most important centre outside London in the South East. 

Career changes moved me from Reading to Slough and then ironically back to Basingstoke again in 1999. This culminated in May 2002 with my election as a Borough Councillor in the Popley East ward of Basingstoke.

new Labour
new Britain

I got into advanced driving by accident. My house mate had just passed his test and decided to join RoSPA. It was something I'd always toyed with the idea of, but put off because I thought it would be too expensive. I passed my RoSPA advanced test for the first time in 1996. Since then I have been supervising others to pass their test, before joining the committee, and in an unguarded moment I volunteered to set up a web site for them. The rest is history...