Stephen Douglas was born, and spent his early years, in Yorkshire, before moving with his parents to South Australia where he grew up playing the guitar, racing rally cars across the desert, protesting about the rise of industrial pollution, campaigning for an end to apartheid, demanding the release of Nelson Mandela, and writing computer progams on punch cards while studying electronic engineering and working in a factory making handles for buckets.
Returning to the United Kingdom and settling in Oxford when he was 20, he took a job in the computer deparment of the – now ill-reputed – Maxwell publishing empire Pergamon Press[1], writing business systems and repairing computer equipment. On its demise[2] he moved into industrial and technical equipment design, working all over the world on aircraft systems to reduce fuel consumption, monitoring the quantities of nitrogen and phosphorous in processed manure to prevent eutrophication (the damage caused by over-fertilization), programming data monitoring devices for electrical power distribution grids, and developing lithium-ion battery controllers for Land Rover safari vehicles[3] and for the Rolls Royce experimental electric Phantom – the 102EX[4].
When the covid pandemic struck his consultancy work vanished so he enrolled in the Open University, where he graduated in 2023 with a degree in Environmental Science, and is a member of the Institution of Environmental Sciences.
He now enjoys life on the east coast of Scotland with three little dogs, runs an engineering workshop, and tries to keep out of trouble.