About the Author

Gerry’s career in international trade and systems thinking shapes his approach to technology, policy, and everyday decision-making. After nearly six decades spent evaluating markets, infrastructure, and incentives, he has developed a reputation for cutting through noise, fear, and fashionable narratives with clear, real-world analysis grounded in lived experience rather than slogans.

His working life spans almost sixty years and mirrors the transformation of British industry and international trade since the late 1960s. He entered exporting at a time when communication relied on telex, telegrams — and often no communication at all. Markets were developed face-to-face, and success depended as much on pragmatism, personal relationships, and cultural understanding as on product or price.

His career took him across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Australasia, the Caribbean, North America, and — on one remarkable occasion — North Korea. A formative period with Hepworth Plastics saw him responsible for developing overseas markets for plastic plumbing systems, working closely with distributors, engineers, contractors, and government bodies. This included licensing agreements, technology transfer, and the establishment of local manufacturing operations in South Korea, Malaysia, and New Zealand.

South Korea became a defining chapter in both his professional and personal life. He lived and worked there for several years, gaining an insider’s understanding of business culture, regulation, and rapid industrialisation. It was also where he met his second wife, whose linguistic and cultural insight later became central to their joint professional work.

After roles in financial services and public-sector export development, Gerry joined the Department of Trade and Industry as one of the original UK Export Promoters, working closely with government ministers, British embassies, and senior civil servants. It was during this period — supporting trade policy, advising on market access, and observing the interaction between Ministers and the Civil Service — that he developed a deep and lasting interest in politics and in how Parliament actually functions in practice, as distinct from how it is often portrayed.

Working at the interface between business, diplomacy, and government gave him first-hand insight into how policy is formed, negotiated, and implemented. That experience continues to inform his writing, particularly where trade, governance, regulatory systems, and political decision-making intersect.

He later founded Korea Connections, a specialist consultancy supporting British companies entering the Korean market.

A lifelong pragmatist and willing technophile, Gerry was using dial-up CompuServe email in the early 1980s and has consistently embraced new technology while remaining sceptical of unexamined claims. Although never formally an engineer, he grew up surrounded by motor engineering and remains closely connected to the trade through family involvement in a local workshop and MOT station.

Now retired from professional practice, he writes independently, drawing on first-hand experience of trade, culture, power, institutional dynamics, and the realities that sit behind official narratives.

Background at a glance