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I am a former candidate (2011-2012) to be deputy general secretary of the NUJ. During that election the NUJ, of which I remain an active member with no plans or need to resign, chose to redact part of my CV in election material sent to voters for DGS NUJ. I reinstated the words. My words were not libellous. The NUJ's redactions were libellous, primarily of me, but also of third parties, and damagingly so. The NUJ should have known better, and it wilfully behaved in a manner precluding it from hearing in what way it was wrong.

Discharged from bankruptcy without restriction orders or undertakings on the anniversary of bankruptcy. Bankruptcy order made in response to my petition: Case 362, Halifax County Court, 8th November, 2006. Early discharge proceedings had begun but were halted when I wrote to the Official Receiver to say I thought further investigation was needed of the causes. I do not blame my creditors, who mainly were: Lloyds TSB, NatWest, RBS and Alliance and Leicester. Bankruptcy does not happen overnight, and in my case was not a result of any incompetence, illness or criminality by me.

Beats covered as a journalist and editor, and monitored as an editor up to and including now, and which I have the competence to pick up quickly: energy, technology, aspects of environment, biomedical research policy, biological sciences, aspects of physics, space and aerospace and aspects of defence, and their science policy, tech, politics, business and legal environment.

CURRENTLY|| FOR CONTINUED CAREER UPSKILLING SEE THE FINAL PART OF THE CV

I publish and edit Science, People & Politics (ISSN 1751-598x), a title I founded in 2005. I am the executive director and secretary of Science, People and Politics Ltd (Co No 0590 1911), a non-trading company acquiring capital in published copyright, and as such I undertake tasks an officer of the company is legally obliged to take. As majority shareholder I work to make the company's purpose and intent as clear as current capacity allows. I commission and edit copy, market the magazine and its content, produce the magazine, liaise with the title's advisors and deputy editor, write for the title, implement what the advisors suggest for the magazine. I explore the potential for other compatible titles publishable from the north of England. I built and maintain the website carrying the title's urls. Since 30-04-2012 I have also assumed responsibility search-engine optimisation. I remain an editor, author, science writer and journalist available for freelance work, and would be happy to take on clerical support within my competence.

See my personal and professional twitter account at: http://www.twitter.com/HelenGavaghan.
See my public profile on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/pub/helen-gavaghan/11/96b/589
And see my WordPress blog here: http://helengavaghan.wordpress.com/2011/08/20/hustings-speech/

2002-2004 part time post graduate research student at the University of Manchester writing a transfer report from M.Phil. to Ph.D. Topic: the impact of individuals on large international ventures, explored via the work of Sydney Chapman and Lloyd Berkner, the chairman and deputy chairman of the international geophysical year of 1957-1958. 37,000 words of work in progress to end of February 2004, about 70 per cent of my post graduate work, are available for interested employers. Skill consolidated: concept, context and data identification. Work in progress submitted to my research supervisor. In parallel I was developing a book concept that would have taken my Ph.D to a wider audience. My intent at CHSTM was to learn how to be a professional historian and acquire the formal qualification of Ph.D, because that would demonstrate competence and enhance my employability. I think I made significant progress under the supervision of Dr Jeff Hughes of shifting my thinking from journalist to historian, but dearly would have liked to complete the task.

1997-2002 Freelance Journalist, Editor, Author and Science Writer.
Repeat clients: Nature, Science, New Scientist, The Scientist, BioMedCentral, EUMETSAT, The European Space Agency, WHO, Biofutur (French), Telecommunications Development Asia Pacific, Nature Biotechnology - once, stemming from my interactions with other Nature titles, UNESCO - once, Dorling Kindersley (contributions to the Dorling Kindersley childrens' space encyclopaedia, editors Heather Couper and Nigel Henbest). Won an invited competitive tender to write the first History of EUMETSAT, working with the IGOs primary records.

July 1996 to mid 1997, based in London. Editor of Clinica, a weekly business-to-business title (28 to 32 A4 pages and minimal advertising) with daily on-line output. I led a team of 9 including one US editor/correspondent. Tasks: editorial restructuring to enable shift from cut and paste, strategic thinking about the magazine's editorial direction. Commissioned initial rough redesign ideas. Liaison with advertising and marketing. Liaison with training. Liaison with HR. Liaison with recruitment: my responsibility being job descriptions and selection of the successful candidate, salary justification, interviewing and naming the appointee. Liaison with management. Strategic thinking about staff salaries, staff job content (remained unchanged in essence and reporting structures. My aim was to keep all staff within an agreed restructuring if at all possible and to identify training needs). All members of my staff were excellent at their jobs and flexible in outlook. I was responsible for passing the title for press. Recruited a US editor. Recruited a sub. Obtained agreement for expanded office space and oversaw move. Initiated round table discussion among all stakeholders in Clinica. Actively by my work contributed to maintaining subscriptions during changes. Favoured, quite sensibly, increased staff salaries. On the circulation list of the title's management accounts. I spoke of these accounts appropriately and favourably after leaving the title. I resigned because I was deeply and rightly unhappy about my lack of direct contact with the publisher in a changing world, which made it hard to communicate with my editorial staff. I was exhausted from second guessing his publishing intentions. Weeklies and dailies both work within real time news environments, but they move to different rythms, and the manner in which Clinica approached and combined weekly and daily reporting had - in my then view - the potential to undermine one or the other.

Subsequent relationship with the publisher, Phillip Brown of PJB Publications, were rare, but genuinely wholly amicable from my perspective, with no conflict. And I definitely wish the title and company well. On leaving I immediately began to rebuild my client base and slowly again increased my profitability.

February to June 1996. Back in the UK after five years living and working freelance in Washington DC. Completed the bibliography of my book, Something New under the Sun, Satellites and the Beginning of the Space Age (Copernicus/Springer Verlag, New York, 1997), and began job hunting.

1991 to 1995. Freelance journalist and author based in Washington DC. Freelance for New Scientist, on retainer for Nature as the biomedical research policy correspondent, recruited by David Dickson (formerly my news editor and then editor at New Scientist). This work with David Dickson at Nature was enjoyable, and I gave it up reluctantly to concentrate on my research into my first book, Something New Under the Sun, Satellites and the Beginning of the Space Age, and because the subject matters were profoundly different. I am competent to cover news or write history in both aerospace/physics and biomed/policy, but not both at the same time. I could write/cover a news beat and write history in the same topic. I did, however, keep my link to biomedical policy alive by writing a number of early news stories on a repeat, one off basis for Nature Medicine at the request of Barbara Culliton - (member of the US Intitute of Medicine) - and the first editor of Nature Medicine. Subsequently Barbara also invited me to write a news feature for Celera, which I did, though I failed dismally to get an interview with the Wellcome Trust! Washington correspondent for Le Journale Internationale de Medecine. I also contributed news and dispatches to the BBC World Service. These were routine stories such as restoration of the Enola Gay and smuggling CFCs, taking leads in the latter case from the Federal Register.

1984 - 1991: Full time staff at New Scientist. Three and a half years as technology news editor, during which time I also contributed news and news features and features (writing or editing), promoted in response to my own urging, to technology correspondent. Washington correspondent on two occasions. First, by invitation from my editor, for two months, covering for the US editor during his work sabbatical in Argentina, and then, largely at my own urging, for one year.

During the two months I made representations to the magazine's publisher at a meeting in New York for expansion of the magazine into the US. It was an idea "in the air" for New Scientist, one dilemma, as I learned, being printing press size. I prepared a report on the staffing levels and locations I thought were needed.

Responsibilities during my seven years at the magazine: running the technology section of New Scientist (three and a half years from January 1984), commissioning and editing news, commisioning and editing features, news gathering and writing, feature research and writing. Occasional acting news editor. I resigned in good order to move to Washington DC, and did so wholly as an active career advancement choice, and to drive home the message my skill set and educational competence was being undervalued, and to ensure that did not happen. Topics covered as a journalist and editor: aerospace, energy, environment, space, miscellaneous. Topics commissioned as technology news editor: all things technological from computing, and patents to biotechnology, energy, environment and medical technology.

1980 to 1984: editing and writing news and features for a range of trade and technical publications. This was a good introduction to the concerns of business management. Building Services and Environmental Engineer as assistant editor (monthly controlled circulation). Three months as a technical writer in Holland. Electrical Times (now closed), a weekly cc tabloid where I wrote a column and news stories. I, and my news editor, and a graphic artist, developed a publishing concept about American sports played in the UK and presented our ideas to IPC magazines, but failed to win company backing. Redeployed during closure of Electrical Times to Electrical Review, also a weekly, and then part of IPC, during a company reorganisation, and then asked to work with a new editor in setting up a new launch, Electrical Review International, and acted as deputy editor because of unexpected circumstances.

Holiday work during all summer holidays after "0" levels and through University: Factory work for Wireform in Hebden Bridge, packing eggs at Thornbers, packing dog shamphoo, bar work at two different hill top pubs, clerical work at the tax office in Bradford for three weeks, chamber maid and waitress in Wales for a summer, playgroup leader in Hebden Bridge, housekeeper and cook for a small hotel, shop work in the family shop.

PUBLICATIONS
1. Something New Under the Sun, Satellites and the Beginning of the Space Age. Copernicus, New York, a trade imprint of Springer Verlag (1997). I wrote and researched this book with a scholarship of $125, 000, which I won from the Alfred P Sloan Founation. It tells the story of the emergence of navigation, weather and communication satellites in the US, and their geopolitical and scientific environment.
2. Rocket and satellite sections of The Childrens' Encyclopaedia of Space. Dorling Kindersley (1999).
3. Careers for scientists, a 10 000 word supplement for Nature (1999).
4. A History of EUMETSAT. EUMETSAT (2001).

DIRECTORSHIPS
Director Science, People and Politics Ltd. (Co. No. 0590-1911). Registered office address 165 Longfellow Court, Mytholmroyd, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, HX7 5LG.

NOTABLE INTERVIEWEES
Bernadine Healy, first woman director of the multi-billion dollar US National Institutes of Health, for Le Journale Internationale de Medecine.
David Cox, Detective Superintendent running the Historical Enquiries Team, for The Guardian in 2006. I, by my skill and not The Guardian, secured this interview. No money changed hands between he and I, and there was no inducement of him by me. A quote I did not get was inserted into this story, and I learned of this only after publication. My anger was real and expressed, and I view The Guardian's action as vandalism.
Clive Stafford-Smith, US lawyer and campaigner against the death penalty, for Le Journale Internationale de Medecine.
FBI specialist for a story about lie detector tests, for Le Journale Internationale de Medecine.
Professor Martin Rees (Lord Rees) in 2005, president of the Royal Society and Astronomer Royal, for Astronomy Now, and published with their publisher's consent in Science, People & Politics.
Professor Robert May (Lord May) in 2003, president of the Royal Society, for BioMedCentral.
Lord Sainsbury in 1999, science minister, for Nature.
Alice Mahon (in 2007), former MP for Halifax and now (2011) a vice chair of CND, for Science, People & Politics.
Tilman Mohr, the first director general of EUMETSAT, for Science, People & Politics (2010) and earlier (2000), for A History of EUMETSAT.
John Morgan in 2000, the first director of EUMETSAT, for A History of EUMETSAT.
Roy Gibson, the first director-general of the European Space Agency and of the British National Space Centre, for New Scientist.
Professor Ian Fells, Newcastle University, for a story about magnetohydrodynamics, for Electrical Times or Electrical Review, or Electrical Review International.

EDUCATION
PROFESSIONAL AND ACADEMIC
2002-2004: Part time postgraduate research student preparing a transfer report from M.Phil. to Ph.D at the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at the University of Manchester. Work interrupted and ended uncompleted in March 2004 because of medical misdiagnosis and clinical negligence, still an open legal issue but irrelevant to my work and personal life, and wrong doing by Professor Worboys and a solicitors' betrayal.

1980. BSc (hons) Biophysics, University of Leeds.
Subsidiaries, all of which took me beyond A level: Maths, physics and chemistry.
Elected secretary (for one year) and then president (for one year)of the Leeds University student union biophysics' society. As taught at Leeds, biophysics was a four year, full time academic course with final year mini research and research techniques project and write up. The degree was about the underpinning science needed to understand the three dimensional macromolecular physical structure, structure-function relations and interactions of biological macromolecules. Though this subject has since been re-organised by the university I think this department was one of the precursors of today's rational drug design. The department was unusual in offering close to a 1 to 1 staff student ratio during much of the time I was studying there. My professional life has kept my knowledge at the cutting edge. The biophysics I learned still has relevance in the new stem-cell based landscape.

St Josepth's College, Bradford (then a direct grant grammar school).
A Levels (4). Physics, Chemistry, Biology, General Studies with language option French. One year study toward A Level Maths (pure and applied). Exams passed at the end of the first year, but I discontinued this fifth A Level because of circumstances.
O Levels (10). Maths, physics, chemistry, biology, history, French, Latin, scripture, English language, English literature (1973). One year formal tuition in Spanish and school exam passed, but no public exam. Though I can read French slowly with the help of a large dictionary, and as long as the sentence construction is not too sophisticated nor the text too idiomatic, my ability would not be helpful to most employers. But I have an affinity for the language and respond well to its sound, and would be willing and able to study intensively outside work hours if the skill were needed.
Elected deputy head girl of the school and head girl of the convent boarding school (secret ballots). Initiated an anti-smoking campaign. Appointed chess captain, playing board one unless I thought it best not to. Bradford girls chess champion. Stopped playing chess in my first year at University. Member of the school choir (not a natural singer) and film club. Grades one to 8 speech and drama, with distinction at grade 6, participation and performance in numerous drama festivals. One year study toward an LRAM teaching speech and drama, undertaken privately during my first year at The University of Leeds. Tutor, Miss Mary Kilduff. Member of The Troubadors, an adult choral speaking group in Bradford.
Junior school: St Joseph's, Todmorden.

CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
2010-2011, 40 hours of upskilling workshops, run by HMRC:
How VAT works;
Becoming a director (introduction to responsibilities to HMRC and a nod toward what Companies House expects);
Becoming an employer;
Statutory Sick Pay;
Statutory pay and leave for maternity, paternity and adoption;
PAYE, completing your employer annual return (p35s and p14s), P60s, p11ds and p45s, and what to do about student loans etc;
PAYE expenses and benefits: the basics;
Employers' annual returns of expenses and benefits;
Business expenses and capital allowances;
Introduction to international trade (held at Bradford Chamber of Commerce); and
the HMRC CD-ROM.

Though this CD (for very small firms) has now been superseded by a download from HMRC when one registers as an employer, the workshop was helpful in showing how the information required by the Revenue come together irrespective of company size, and the downloads can take some of the anxiety out of planning for record keeping as an employer.

Each workshop was a basic introduction of about three hours, giving an overview, and of relevance to justifying line items in a business plans. HMRC helpline information for continuing support was explained.

2010: One day with the Federation of Entertainment Unions (NUJ, BECTU and Equity) discussing copyright.

VOCATIONAL
2008 Clait Level 1 diploma (90 hours). Word, excel, powerpoint, computer art and Internet Explorer. I already had facility with Corel Wordperfect and notepad, email and the internet.
1995. Half of a course on news and feature making for broadcasting, in-house at the BBC World Service, sponsored by news and current affairs. And made a program based on interviews I had done in the field and from a studio in house at the BBC World Service 2005-2006 using their modern recording and program making equipment. Though not the intent, this task, co-incidentally, completed the course I started in 1995!
1981 Journalism at The London College of Printing (1981), on release from Building Services and Environmental Engineering, Batiste Publishing. I also informally followed NCTJ training with my first editor. I emphasize this was informal, but real, and I have never learned shorthand, but would be pleased to do so in my own time, though my degree gave me experience taking comprehensible longhand notes.

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
2009-2010: attended Business Link Workshops (about 30 hours): Though the workshops transpired to be more accurately personal rather than professional development I would not have attended the Business Link events I did attend had I not been in business, and the events had business benefit which has not yet translated into sales (and might never translate to sales), but despite no sales still was low cost business benefit. I attended also events organised by Connect Yorkshire and Yorkshire Gold. These were excellent for making contacts.

Courses late 1990s and 2000 taken, and deliberately not completed, mainly because I could not afford the money, but to explore if they might be a sensible basis for changing career: Researching business information at Bradford University and web site building with basic html at Calderdale College, Halifax. At the time, in addition to not having the money, I concluded not, given my professional and educational background to date. Now I might make a different decision.

Courses taken out of interest and offering no qualification:
Early renaissance art, series of lectures provided by the Workers Education Authority/University of Leeds, offered in Hebden Bridge.
Great books of western literature, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC.
Master classes in voice with the voice coach of the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington DC (1994 ish).

HOBBIES
Webart. Supporting, through volunteer work, the Square Chapel for the Arts in Halifax (2002 and 2004 to date). Visiting art galleries, theatre, film, live performances and erforming arts. Reading.

PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS
National Union of Journalists, member in good standing. Joined in early 1980s, left when in the US for work, and rejoined in December, 2005. I have never supported the idea of closed shops.
From 18/05/11 (A.G.M. 2011) to 02/04/12 (A.G.M. 2012), assistant branch secretary (responsible for minutes and correspondence) of Calderdale branch of the NUJ.
Defeated in an open vote on 02/04/12 in a bid to be treasurer of Calderdale branch of the NUJ. Two candidates stood. Vote: 6 for the other candidate. One vote for myself. Seven members present from an eligible electorate of roughly 80.
I intend to stand either as branch treasurer, or branch union development officer, in 2013, if the branch it makes most sense for me to belong to is Calderdale.
Platform in campaign to be treasurer: opposition to any NUJ payment - even one pound - to the local town hall project, because even a small donation can be misconstrued, and has the potential to compromise journalistic independence. I have voted openly in opposition to even small payments from the NUJ to the local Town Hall project. My opposition is not intended to cast aspersions on the integrity of individuals, but is intended to defend journalistic independence.
My platform as union development officer is threefold fold - at least: one, reform NUJ rules to ensure journalists may simultaneously belong to more than one organisation representing journalists, eg CIOJ and NUJ; and, secondly, campaign to ensure trade union members are not discriminated against by employment lawyers. The point being that access to employment lawyers ought, in my view, to be independent of the trade union to which one belongs. I think trade unions are for specific trade-related issues.; and three - propose to the A.D.M that we commission a position paper on the interface between employment law and trade unionism within the specific context of journalism, posting our findings in the open part of the NUJ's website. The position paper needs to delineate the trade-related issues we rather than other trade unions face, acknowledging any trans-union issues can be lobbied at the level of the T.U.C. via interactions with individual MPs and other non-privileged public conduits of communication.
Member of the Publishers' Licensing Society (since 2010).
Authors' Licensing and Copyright Society (since 2010).
Wish list given my current activities: To join the Federation of Small Businesses, to learn how to be polite in Mandarin Chinese or to study French whilst reading part time for the bar. I can type, but have no touch typing competence.

TALKS|Public events|speeches (Prepared my own speeches).
1. Hustings speech to a joint meeting of four Dublin branches of the NUJ in October 2011.
2. Pitch for election as DGS NUJ August 2011, hustings at Birmingham & Coventry Branch of the NUJ.
3. Chaired meeting for barrister, Jane Lambert, at Leeds City Library (2010 or 2011).
4. Speech in May 2010 from a journalist's and editor's perspective about UK stem cell policy and ethics and their environment, given to a stem cell conference, organised in part by the University of Toronto. Declaration of conflict of interest, air fair and accommodation costs were paid by the meeting organisers.
5. Talk in December 2003 about my research to the Ph.D seminar group at CHSTM, University of Manchester.
6. US Budget legislative process. Lunch time speech to Halifax Rotary (sometime between 1998 and 2000).
7. After dinner speech to Leeds University Biophysics Society.
8. To sixth formers when on staff at New Scientist (twice).
9. Spoke by "elbowing" my way to the microphone (not as MOC) at various union meetings at Friends Meeting House in Euston, London in the mid 1980s.

VOLUNTEER WORK
I started volunteering when I was at junior school via membership of the St Johns' Ambulance brigade, though I ceased as a teenager to have any first aid skills. I would be pleased to reacquire first aid skills. At university I joined the Officer's Training Corps, but after discussion with my commanding officer chose, in a mutually agreed decision, to leave in my first term, or early in my second term, and shortly after collecting my combat kit. I had refused no order, and knew of no order I would refuse. I then for no more than a year visited the elderly via the Roman Catholic chaplaincy. In Washington DC I was a volunteer science teacher, via the Roman Catholic Cathedral, tutoring people preparing for a science GED. I did this for two years but concluded that without teaching skills it was unfair to continue. Back in the UK I was a Samaritan for three and a half years before leaving to do other volunteer work, namely as a teenage mentor in schools (Todmorden High, specifically) in Calderdale, and then doing bar and other voluntary work at Square Chapel for the Arts in Halifax, since 2001 or 2 (not in 2003).

REFERENCES.
Available on request.

SIGNIFICANT AWARDS AND CONTRACTS
Alfred P. Sloan Foundations Fellowship for $125 000 in 1991/92.
In 1999 I won an invited competitive tender to research and write a history of EUMETSAT.

TRANSFERABLE SKILLS
Concept identification and application in more than one context. Interviewing, abstracting, translating science and technology for different audiences. Strong learning skills and comfort with science up to and beyond degree level. Ability to do repetitive, tedious work with concentration. Comfort in varied business environments from the "shop floor" "upwards", and in non British locations, and working on a contractual basis for international bodies. Ability to research, analyze, manage and create stories and histories from large amounts of material at post graduate level. Basic office skills. I also have the skill to create webpages in basic html without any kind of package or text editor, and I built www.gavaghancommunications.com without help. I could check and correct and report back to you the basic html at the core of your website, before application of style sheets etc..., and I would not need to see your software interfaces, nor to know which version of html you were using, in order to provide a useful written report about the coding.

My personal characteristics are a strong independent streak, but I am also a team player, know the importance of a clearly designated team leader and/or "boss", and I enjoy the separate dynamics of co-operative work environments with similarly independent thinkers uninterested in imposing their view on the rest of the team, but who work toward a common aim in an inclusive but independent manner. I have management experience as an editor, and as a publisher, and am willing to take the lead, or not.

CONTACT DETAILS
165 Longfellow Court, Mytholmroyd, Hebden Bridge, W. Yorks, HX7 5LG.
+44 1422 886015. Helen.gavaghan@btinternet.com.

I have learned more of the UK Courts (Civil and Criminal) than it is fair any citizen who is not guilty of crime, is not a Court officer, is not a lawyer and who was not a Court reporter (I am contemplating undertaking a lot more formal Court reporting) should have had to learn. My experiences have been deeply and profoundly distressing.

On 17/9/08 at Bradford Crown Court His Honour Judge Scott cleared me on appeal, correctly, of harassment without violence of a secretary of West Yorkshire Police. District Judge Bennett had, correctly, found me not guilty of another set of charges on 22nd January 2008. The situation which arose, in which it seemed I was committing crime was, I allege, the fault of profoundly sexist and ageist behaviour in and from 2004 of WYPolice, of the medical profession, in particular in Halifax and at and from Hebden Bridge Group practice, of professor Michael Worboys, CHSTM, University of Manchester, and of solicitors. I was contacting the police (first time at the end of January, 2004) as a victim of what I thought was minor crime, but knew might not be minor, not as a fantasist. This saga has given rise to other issues I am also dealing with, and which are wrong doing against myself. I was also discharged automatically without restriction orders from bankruptcy on 8.11.07, and reached agreement, recorded with his consent, with Mr David Henry, to whom I gave the recording, the then Leeds-based official receiver and my trustee in bankruptcy, that my aim was annulment of bankruptcy. There is no compunction on me to do so.

Willing to relocate. Though I drink and enjoy alcohol, I can with ease not drink if the local culture is "dry". I've lived and worked in London (11 yrs), Washington DC (6 yrs), Leeds (4 yrs) and Holland (3 months). Full driving licence. British citizen. Immediate salary expected, based on last salaried post and current expertise, which still has room for expansion, a basic of £40,000-65,000, depending on job.

In summary: BSc (Hons), Uni Leeds 1980; post graduate research experience at the University of Manchester 2002-2004; vocational competence and training 1980 to date; professional experience, 1980 to date; journalism and editing 1980 to 2000 solely print, with increasing online work from 2000 to date; published author in the US and Germany; worked from shop floor upwards, whilst studying between age 16 and 22, clocking in; willing to update skills professionally, personally, academically and vocationally.
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