Journalist, broadcaster, author, researcher, media consultant, copywriter and public speaker.

Paul is The Independent’s ‘financial agony uncle’: compiling its weekly Questions of Cash column, answering reader’s questions and challenging banks and other companies on behalf of readers. Paul is also a specialist in public sector management and finance; accountancy; financial management; and social enterprise.

A well-known commentator on public policy and on UK and European public services, Paul is a regular contributor to leading specialist public sector magazines: Public Finance, Local Government Chronicle, Public Servant, Public Eye and Health Service Review.

Paul has written for most of the leading UK and Irish quality newspapers – The Financial Times, The Independent, The Independent on Sunday, The Times, the Sunday Times, the Irish Times, the Irish Independent, the Irish News, the BelfastTelegraph, the Mail on Sunday and the Express.

He has been extensively published elsewhere, analysing public sector developments, writing for most of the leading specialist public sector press and many business magazines.

Paul writes a fortnightly column for Co-operative News.

Paul is a regular feature writer for The Independent and has written for the paper for nearly 20 years. He provides the news content for Accounting & Business, the main members’ magazine of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants.

A frequent broadcaster, Paul regularly appears on Radio Foyle. He has also appeared on Radio 4’s Today Programme – for whom he wrote a General Election blog – Newsnight, Despatches, the Jeremy Vine Show on Radio 5, on Radio Ulster, on the Laurie Anderson Programme and on various other shows on ITV, BBC TV and commercial radio. He has been a researcher for the Despatches programme and has court reported for Radio Leicester and Leicester Sound.

Commended, Europartner Journalism Award, 2002.

Commended, Housing Journalist of the Year Awards, 1996.

Books: Changing Money, published by Bowerdean, 1999; Government in the Digital Age, published by Bowerdean, 1998; Financial Services in the Digital Age, published by Bowerdean, 1997; Abuse of Trust - Frank Beck and the Leicestershire Children’s Homes Scandal (with Mark D’Arcy), published by Bowerdean, 1998; author of chapter on Algeria in The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to Europe, published by Fontana. Co-author of The Derwent Guide to Managing Intellectual Property, published by Derwent, 1999; and Caught in the Web, a guide to intellectual property and the web, published by Derwent, 2000. Author of Accountability in Public Services and Partners in Progress (a guide to the devolved institutions of Northern Ireland), both published by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants. Author of New Mutualism in Renewed Local Government and Working With the Grain, both published by the United Kingdom Co-operative Council and the Co-operative Party. Author of ‘New technology and banking exclusion’, published in Banking and Social Cohesion (ed. Christophe Guene and Ed Mayo), published by Jon Carpenter, 2001.

Reported on Algeria for The Middle East magazine.

A frequent public speaker.

Copywriter and researcher for many public sector, commercial and trade union clients, producing case studies, research documents, ghostwritten articles, sub-editing client texts and editing newsletters and magazines. Clients include the Audit Commission, the Improvement & Development Agency, government departments, KPMG, Unison, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and the East Midlands Development Agency.

From 1981 to 1989, Paul was a co-operative development worker at the Leicester & County Co-operative Development Agency, advising co-operative businesses and promoting the co-operative business model. He continues on an occasional basis to advise social enterprises. He sat on the Members Relations Committee of the former Leicestershire Co-operative Society.

In a varied career, Paul has also been an occasional lecturer for Leicester Polytechnic (now De Montfort University) and the Co-operative College and from 1987 to 1991 was a Leicester city councillor. He was a founding director of Red Pepper magazine. Paul has also been an accountant, a civil servant and a credit controller.