Mike, nuclear campaigner

Mike, 39 and a quarter, which is worryingly close to 40. I'm emphatically Scottish, although my friends take great delight in pointing out that I don't have even a little finger full of Scottish blood.

I live in Amsterdam on the rare occasions that Greenpeace doesn't take me some other place in the world.

Having studied actuarial math at University I quickly decided against a life of gin and tonics at the '18th hole' and instead embarked on a path of journalism, which eventually led me from reporting the news to making the news with Greenpeace.

Why go to Iraq when there are so many good reasons not to go? To see for ourselves and to show others. "Bearing witness" is a powerful way to communicate and bring about change and that is what we want to see In Iraq.

I hope we can make a difference. In the contaminated communities around the Tuwaitha nuclear complex, the complacency of the occupying powers in dismissing the possible health effects is truly staggering. In claiming that they have liberated the Iraqi people from the tyranny of Saddam could be laudable, but why then did they not prepare properly for the aftermath to minimise civil unrest, why did they not secure known nuclear sites? Why are they preventing the international community from full participation in the reconstruction?