Richard Lawson

Dr Richard Lawson was born in 1946, qualified in medicine in 1969, and became a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 1978. He has been in general practice in Congresbury, North Somerset since 1979, retired in 2006 and now does occasional locums.

He has been a Green Party member since about 1977, holding various national offices including Principal Co-Speaker, and was Health Speaker for the Party for a couple of years. He was elected to Woodspring District Council in 1986, retiring after six years' service. He is the author of " Bills of Health", which shows that about one fifth of NHS effort is wasted in trying to cure illness caused by unemployment, poverty, poor housing and environmental pollution, was published in September 1996 by Radcliffe Medical Press. He is a keen advocate of changes in the benefit system in order to prevent this waste.

Married, with three children, he enjoys gardening, cycling, windsurfing, skating, green woodwork and plays the flute, and is an ex-hanglider pilot, ex-roller hockey player, ex-sand yacht pilot. He is the inventor of a successful double film aerofoil sail, which was successfully tested on sand yachts. He has a well-read blog covering politics, green economics, philosophy and poetry among other things.

Several poems have been published in small magazines, and he reads occasionally at the Acoustic Night in Bristol.

He is the originator of the Index of Human Rights in the UN project.



He blogs on http://greenerblog.blogspot.com/ and his website is at: http://www.greenhealth.org.uk