Of course, when the journal’s publication started it could then describe my times as Chairman and Chief Executive of the Comart Group, a family of companies that I either founded or took over to eventually provide the largest microcomputer company in the UK, with interests in manufacture, hardware and software distribution, Byte Shop and Computerland retail shops, field and head office service and training which turned over £20m per year and employed some 200 people at its height in 1984 when I sold out and retired on the very same day as my youngest daughter, Daniella, was born.
**"Read More" BELOW for the complete story**
At the time I was on advisory computer committees for the National Computing Centre, GCHQ and on the Parliamentary Committee on IT, PITCOM and was a regular participant on conferences, chairing several and was commonly in the national and computer press responding to topical issues. One of 25 UK owned and controlled computer manufacturing companies at the time, unfair competition from US and Japanese competitors led to me forming the BMMG trade association on behalf of which I had led delegations as Chairman to Margaret Thatcher at Downing Street but at a time of huge 17.5% component tariffs, 18.5% base rates and public policies to favour their own products abroad whilst we had a political ethos here to import and favour ‘inward investment’ rather
than home manufacture, we needed the political support but failed to get it. I saw what was coming and sold out and became a multi-millionaire but other friends and colleagues were not so lucky. Now, the nation that invented the computer at Bletchley Park, has no manufacturing capacity, and the car industry and the boating industry now follows this example.