Who am I...?

Ok. The longer version - and the first thing I should point out is that I'm a serious individual, until I collapse in helpless laughter at the general absurdity of life...and my seriousness. So, excuse the endless mix of serious and satire.

My name is Gilson, Geoff Gilson. I spent 10 years as an eager Conservative foot-soldier with 'Maggie's Revolution' in the UK in the Eighties. Ran the largest Young Conservative organisation in the country - out of Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire. Raised money - in much the same fashion as Tony Blair did for New Labour. Wrote speeches. Assisted Parliamentary Candidates with PR. Was elected a Councillor. Spoke at a couple of Conservative Party Conferences. Women threw underwear at me. Some boys too. You know the drill.

Then, my good mate, and Margaret Thatcher's favorite speech-writer, Hugh Simmonds CBE, turned up dead in 1988. I poked around. Discovered he was MI6. Spent 18 years on a rollercoaster ride through the strange worlds of covert intel and arms corruption. And lived to write the book about it - Dead Men Don't Eat Lunch. My first taste of getting to the heart of the real story.

Now that I've returned to the land of the living (what the crap happened to our cricket team while I was away!!), I write, blog, compose, make bad satirical points, broadcast, and crusade.

Folks, arms corruption in the UK is the worst blight ever to have befallen the land that gave the world democracy (ok, those parts that Dubya didn't save for himself...). You may think it doesn't affect you, but get this - one in five people in the UK are employed in occupations that support the UK arms trade.

I don't give a rat's fig what people do with their lives. It just eats my craw when they can't manage to do it without f*****g up other peoples' lives. Fair? Actually, I think that's the libertarian credo - makes mental note: see what they'll pay for it...

In the meantime, I use whatever media outlet I can find to poke fun at authority on both sides of the Atlantic, and occasionally ask it pertinent questions that mainstream blogs and the media generally avoid like the plague - in other words, getting to the real story: the one behind the polish and the spin.

Since the mainstream boys (and girls) sometimes ignore me (bless them), I'm working on some media outletting of my own. I'm upgrading from non-profit community radio to commercial radio in North Carolina - more of that soon (ish).

And when I can find the time, I will start adding some posts to this site - a mix of chronicle of my ongoing investigations into arms corruption, and commentary on the political silliness that regularly occurs in both the UK and the US.

Final comment of the day: Having returned from the jungle of 'oops, I'm not really here,' where did the Queen's English go? Why does everyone of any profile in the UK now affect this MetroAtlantic, 'I'm really from South London' accent?

So, stay tuned, for the real story...from your very own real tory...