Paul is co-founder and organiser of Leeds Salon, which host public debate around contemporary political, cultural and scientific issues and, hopefully, challenge any orthodoxies along the way.

Paul has worked as a civil servant in Leeds for over 20 years. He’s a graduate of the Open University and is a qualified FE teacher. He is also a judge in the Institute of Ideas sixth-form Debating Matters competition, and is a member of his union’s branch executive committee.

He writes regularly for the online journal Freedom in a Puritan Age, and has also written for Culture Wars, spiked and the Leeds-based magazine Culture Vulture. He took part in the panel-debate Recession Proofing: From Union Militancy to Reskilling at the Battle of Ideas 2009.