We were very pleased to host a visit from local Member of Parliament Dr Kwasi Kwarteng in May. Kwasi and his assistant Marc Morrison, were interested in seeing a smaller company which manufactured high tech products and was able to market worldwide. The picture shows him with MD Paul Lakra in our incubator manufacturing unit.

Kwasi Kwarteng, a Conservative politician, was elected as MP for Spelthorne in 2010, winning with a majority of 10,000. His parents had migrated to the UK as students in the 1960s from Ghana where his father was an economist and his mother a barrister. Kwasi, born in 1975, was educated at Eton and Cambridge. He was a member of the winning University Challenge team on television in 1995, then attended Harvard University and completed his PhD in History at Cambridge.

Before becoming an MP, he worked as a financial analyst and wrote occasionally for the Daily Telegraph but politics were the main attraction. He has also written one book, Ghosts of Empire, about the legacy of the British Empire as well as co-authoring others: one on the causes and solutions to traffic congestion in Britain - the problem of which staff and visitors to Planer are well aware. Kwasi is a member of the transport select committee and believes in market rather than integrated planning and suggests that road pricing may be the only way to cope with upkeep on currently tax-funded free roads.

The Guardian quotes “ .. his reputation was as a rather personable swot, enjoying arguments over the dinner table, combining charm with the impression of being better read than everybody else.”