Meet Nick Boles

Hello. My name's Nick Boles. I live in a small cottage in Wyville near Grantham.

Family and farming

I grew up as the youngest in a large family and have fourteen nephews and nieces so I know all about competing for attention! With a bit of luck, this will come in handy if I am elected as your MP.

My parents live on the family sheep farm in Devon. 300 hundred acres of heavy clay soil divided into small fields by high banks with hedges on top. It's a far cry from big fields of Lincolnshire silt that are a modern tractor driver's dream. But, like so much of the English countryside, it owes its preservation to the dedication and commitment of generations of English farmers.

Zimbabwe

After school, I spent nearly a year teaching English and Bible Studies in a small Methodist secondary school in the middle of the bush in Zimbabwe. It is heart-breaking to see what Robert Mugabe's brutal leadership has done to a country that I remember as beautiful, fertile and full of potential.

University

Before starting work, I spent 3 years at Oxford studying politics, philosophy and economics and was awarded a first class degree. I then won a Kennedy Scholarship and spent 2 years at Harvard University in the US studying the practical application of public policy.

Work

Unlike so many MPs today, I didn't go straight into a job in politics. I worked for a few years in Germany, Russia and Eastern Europe, helping state-owned industries prepare for private ownership. I then set up my own business with a friend and spent over 5 years running one of the UK's leading suppliers of paint brushes, rollers and decorating tools to the DIY industry.

Doing business was hard. We were caught between powerful customers like B&Q on the one side and cut-throat competition from Chinese importers on the other. But we survived and the business is now part of a larger European group.

My business career did not make me rich. But I learned a huge amount about managing people, dealing with suppliers and keeping control of the company's finances. I also saw how small interventions by government can handicap British businesses' ability to compete in a global market.

Politics and Policy

In 1998, I made my first venture into the political world and was elected as local councillor in London. There I was appointed the chairman of the housing committee and succeeded in bringing down the number of people housed at huge cost in B&Bs because of the lack of permanent accommodation.

My biggest achievement in politics so far has been to set up and run Policy Exchange, which is now the largest and most influential policy research institute on the centre right. While I was its director, Policy Exchange devised policies to make police forces more accountable to local people, to expand the number of places in good schools and to give local communities incentives to build more houses. We also exposed the activities of Islamic extremists in some mosques in the UK and their effect on the attitudes of young British Muslims. Many of our ideas have been adopted by the Conservative Party under David Cameron.

Since my selection as the Conservative candidate for Grantham and Stamford, I have been dividing my time between my day job working for David Cameron in London and Lincolnshire. I work four days a week in Westminster helping shadow ministers draw up detailed plans to implement Conservative policies in government. Fridays and weekends I spend in Lincolnshire, visiting local businesses, schools and farms - and trying to meet as many people as possible. If you would like to arrange for me to call on you, please call Janice or Andrea on 01778 421498. Or if you have any other questions, please call the same number or email me on nick@nickboles.com


Nick Boles

07 JAN 2010

Let the voters have their say

While most people in the country have been worrying about how to get to work through the snow and ice and who's going to look after their children while their school is closed, everyone in Westminster has spent the last two days talking about the latest Labour plot to get rid of Gordon Brown.  I don't know about you but I am heartily sick of these stories.  Gordon Brown has been Prime Minister for the last two years.  The British people had no say in his election to that office.   At the very least, they deserve an opportunity to pass their own verdict on his tenure of it.  And a general election is the way to let them do it.

05 JAN 2010

My NHS, your NHS, our NHS

David Cameron has kicked off the Conservatives' campaign for change with a billboard promising cuts in the budget deficit and not the NHS.  Our opponents doubt the depth and sincerity of the Conservatives' commitment to the NHS.  But I hope that no-one will doubt David Cameron's - or mine.  David has talked of the huge debt he and his family owe the NHS for the way doctors and nurses looked after Ivan and helped make his short life a more bearable one.  What some of you may not know is that I have my own personal reason to thank the NHS.  In the spring of 2007, before I moved to Lincolnshire, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Disease,  a cancer of the lymph system.  Although I had private health insurance at the time, I relied on the NHS for every aspect of my treatment.  And the care I received throughout several months of chemotherapy and radiotherapy was superb.  Can the NHS be reformed and improved?  Of course it can.  But can I countenance a Britain without it?  Over my dead body.