(Copyright © 1997 T Bruce Tober)
Son of a Conservative mother and a non-political but leftish father, Julian White is author of the UK Politics Web Page, arguably the most comprehensive political web site in the UK. With a little bit (literally) of help from his friends, he has put together a site that is comprised of about 15Mb (700-750 pages) of description of constituencies, a time line of British politics since 1900, articles about the elections in each of those constituencies including all the election results. Also included are links to the web pages of each political party in the UK which has such a page, lists of the various Usenet political newsgroups and a fun and fascinating listing of the major posters on those newsgroups with mini biographies of each poster.
H e began the web site in Nov 1995 as the Keele politics page (an attempt to attract students to the Keele Conservative organisation more than anything else, according to some). That developed into the British Politics page. White believes in the old cliché, "KISS" (Keep it simple, stupid), especially in regard to his web site. It features no glitz and glitter. Rather, it's 99+% text. "I hate having to sit there forever, waiting for a page to load because it's full of pictures and frames and animations."
The most difficult part of putting the site together is gathering the information for the profiles of constituencies "because they change so often". Statistics and election results are relatively easy to find. That's why some of the profiles (of constituencies and of politicians are somewhat short, it's because I want them to be accurate and I can't find the information," rather than because he's giving them short shrift.
"I'm continuing to work on the profiles and the time line isn't nearly as complete as I'd wanted it to be by now. But I'm hoping to finish it fairly soon. On the other hand I'm also working on setting up the General Election 1997 site which launches next week."
The 20-year-old native of Sheringham in Norfolk, graduates from Keele University this year. He will be taking a tax accountancy job with "one of the big six accountancy firms" later this year.
"I first got interested in politics when I looked into my MP's (Sir Ralph Howell) Right to Work scheme. That interest continued to grow at Keele where he's been studying philosophy, politics and economics (though he gave up the philosophy this year). Real life politics, rather than political theory is what turns him on, "that's why I preferred my British politics course last year, rather than the more political theory course I'm taking this year."
He's more a Major Conservative than a Thatcherite, "I'm more interested in people: people helping people, not people helping themselves, which was Thatcher's philosophy." He's not enamoured of her attempts to cut taxes either. "They appear to have been for the sake of cutting taxes" rather than for any more substantive purpose.
With so much political interest and activism, what are his ambitions, are they political, does he want to be Prime Minister? "I'd like to be a local councillor, but I don't plan for the long term. I'm taking the tax accountancy job in September", and for now that's as far ahead as he cares to look.