I am Tom Lines. This is my new blog and website.
I started my working life as a journalist reporting on the commodity and financial markets, and later became a lecturer in international business at Edinburgh University and then a freelance consultant specialising in international trade and agricultural markets. I also studied Russian and have worked in all regions of the former Soviet Union as well as many other parts of the world.
Now I live in Brighton, England. I was a candidate for the Green Party in the 2005 general election and I support Watford FC.
On this site you can find new blog articles and, in the Other Papers section, copies of many analytical papers. They are listed under eight headings and can all be downloaded.
Take a look round it!
Here I am nearing the end of the Brighton Marathon in 2011.
The website’s privacy policy
In general this website does not collect personal data from its readers. It is not used for and does not assist with any sort of marketing.
Please read further for the limited amount of data collection that is required to enable the website to function.
- Comments on blog articles
When visitors leave comments I collect the data provided in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection through an automatic spam detection service. The comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely so that I can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically, instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
An anonymised string created from your e-mail address (also called a hash) may also be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service’s privacy policy is available at https://automattic.com/privacy/. - The contact form
If you use the contact form, I will retain what you wrote for my own records and no other purpose than that.
You may opt in to saving your name, e-mail address and website in cookies, so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year. - Embedded content from other websites
Some articles on this site might include embedded content such as images and articles from other websites. This content will behave in exactly the same way as on the other website. That website may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking and monitor your interaction with the embedded content. - Analytics
This website uses a Monster Insights plug-in for its internal analytics. This in turn is based on Google Analytics. You can find out how it operates at https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/cookie-usage and https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2838718. - Your rights over your data
If you leave comments, you can ask for a file of the personal data I hold about you, including any data you have provided on this website. You can also ask me to delete any personal data I hold about you, except data that I need to keep for administrative, legal or security purposes. - Contact information
If you have any concerns about privacy, please use the form on the Contact page to write to me. I am the only person who will see it