I am a lover of music, especially the fantastic Dream Theater and my music collection has something everyone loves and something everyone hates. Progressive rock, all kinds of metal, thrash metal, death metal, black metal, goth metal, speed metal, also jazz, anything big band or swing and I have a soft spot for anything 80s.

I am also a lover modernist art, particularly Picasso and Matisse. I have one Matisse print, four Picasso prints and a Pop Art rendering of John Lennon in my house. I would like to add at least two Warhols to that. I am very much an advocate of the aesthetic ideal that Oscar Wilde pioneeered, and Kant's theory of the sublime also is a big influence on how I think and act.

I am no doubt going to get some flak for this, but I am a lover of selected postmodern philosophers. Baudrillard, Foucault. Postmodernity is unfairly treated by many, A lot of it is tosh but there are some brilliant people in there.

Politically I am a Secularist and a Libertarian with Socialist leanings. When I say Libertarian I mean what a libertarian ACTUALLY is rather than the plant pots in America. I border on anarchism but I have a belief that the people must be restrained in some ways. Politically speaking it's fair to say I am full of contradictions. I think anyone who is not occasionally undone by their own ideology simply hasn't thought long enough about it. Ultimately I think the UK parliament is a place where ideas go to die, and therefore I wish we had ten political parties rather than two plus the Lib Dems.

I advocate reason as the sole governing principle by which countries should govern. I do not advocate an atheist state. I believe in the triumph of the best, in that sense I think aristocracy, i.e. the rule of the best, is the way to live and govern. The only limit of liberty should be the liberty of others.