About Martin
Martin Tod lives in Winchester, with his wife, Michaela.
He was the 2010 Parliamentary Candidate for the Liberal Democrats in Winchester and is currently a Vice-Chair of Winchester Liberal Democrats. He is a Co-Chair of the Liberal Democrat Policy Working Group on Housing and also one of the organisers of Lib Dems against the NHS Bill.
He currently works for Shelter as their Head of Corporate Fundraising. Previously he was UK Head of Brand & Advertising for Vodafone and a Marketing Director for Procter and Gamble.
Working hard for local people
Martin has been an active local campaigner on a wide range of issues. These include:
- His campaign to get more ambulances to fix response times in rural areas led to 10 extra ambulances for Hampshire and a significant improvement in response times.
- His work to get extra dentist places in Winchester helped ensure that Winchester was allocated a new dentists’ surgery.
- His ‘Trip to the Shops’ campaign to get action on our local potholes forced the County Council to announce a plan to get Winchester’s High Street resurfaced.
- He worked alongside local war veterans campaigning to save the 6A bus from being cut – and together they got the County Council to cancel their plans.
- He successfully campaigned to get a 9 a.m. start for Winchester’s over-60s bus pass
- He spent much of last summer and autumn chasing the City Council to get the Old Guildhall clock fixed faster
- Working with Jackie Porter, he successfully campaigned to keep vital public toilets open in Alresford!
- He persuaded the City Council to investigate a programme to support green jobs by insulating more homes (which they have since done). You can read the official council minutes here in pdf format.
- He worked closely with Lib Dem Councillors to get Winchester City Council to join up to the 10:10 campaign to cut their carbon dioxide emissions by 10% in 2010.
- He worked closely with Mark Oaten MP to get a ground-breaking trial of insulation for people living in park homes.
- He built the website for the Save the Stanmore campaign and worked alongside local campaigners to successfully oppose the planning application (although this decision was later over-turned by a Government Planning Inspector).
Active volunteer
Martin is an active volunteer in Winchester – mainly with homelessness charities and environmental groups.
He has also helped in schools across the constituency with citizenship classes.
Martin helps as a steward and litter-picker at the Hat Fair and is also involved in charitable fund-raising with Alresford Rotary Club.
His team at the Big Sleep Out in 2008 raised more than £3,800 for local charity.
Successful career outside politics
Unusually in today’s political world, Martin Tod has had a successful career outside politics before deciding to run for Parliament.
After studying maths and economics at Cambridge, where he was President of the Cambridge Union, Martin joined Procter & Gamble, the leading consumer products company.
Martin spent 14 years working with P&G, including several years living in Austria, Germany and the Czech Republic, before returning to the UK as a Marketing Director specialising in Central & Eastern Europe.
In 2002, he joined Vodafone as UK Head of Brand & Advertising. His work there won awards in Cannes and London for creativity and in Barcelona for ‘the best mobile marketing campaign in the world’ for 2005. He left in 2005 and has since worked as a marketing and strategy consultant.
Hobbies & interests:
Cycling, cinema, photography, internet, going for walks with Michaela in and around Winchester
Martin is also a member of Winchester Action on Climate Change, Winchester Friends of the Earth, the Campaign for Real Ale, Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust, the National Trust, the Electoral Reform Society, the Howard League for Penal Reform, the European Movement, Amnesty International, the Open Rights Group, and No2ID.
And finally…
Martin’s great-great-great-great-grandfather, Thomas Garnier, was Dean of Winchester and features in Winchester Museum as an ‘anti-muckabite’ campaigner to bring a sewerage system to Winchester in the 1860s. The Dean Garnier garden in the Cathedral close is named after him, as is Garnier Road, leading past the old pumping station.
If you want to know more about Martin Tod, why not ask him a question? All questions asked online will be answered online unless you would like the answer to be confidential.
37 Responses to About Martin
well, well done you!
Hi Martin!
I’ve read the web site with interest. Please, where you say “and voting in favour of committing the party to joining the Iraq war demonstration in Feb. 2003″ does that mean you were pro- or anti- the UK’s involvement in the Iraq operation, and have you since changed your mind?
Thank you.
Oliver Woodman
Oliver,
I was opposed to the UK’s involvement in the Iraq operation – and haven’t changed my mind.
I posted at some length on the issue on my old blog here.
Martin
Hello Martin, came across your page after doing research on the Micheldever Station Market Town. You have strong views oposing the development of an eco town, and i just wondered if you feel the same about the Borden development? Thanks
As far as I can tell the Bordon development is quite different:
In these respects at least, the Bordon proposal looks better than Micheldever Station Eco-Town.
One area I would be interested to understand better is the transport impact of Bordon. I had a very big problem with the traffic growth from the Micheldever Station eco-town proposal. Several commentators have pointed out that traffic is the biggest conceptual problem with eco-towns in general. I don’t know what the traffic situation is with Bordon. Before reaching a final conclusion, I’d like to understand this area better.
Hi Martin,
I love how you are running 4 parliament i told my teacher and now we even have a sign hanging up in the class room. Vote Martin Tod 4 president!!!!
Hi Naomi. Thank you for your support. I'm only running to be a Member of Parliament though. (It's like being the House of Representatives). We don't have a President in England. We have a Queen instead!
Do you support MPs not being allowed to employ their spouse and other close relatives under Kelly's proposals ?
No. I haven't supported this since well before the Kelly report was published and even wrote a blog post about this in February 2008.
Did you enjoy the concert in Winchester College Chapel by Ashton Singers? £850 was raised for Winchester Churches Nightshelter.
Thoroughly enjoyed it. Great news that so much money was raised as well.
Do you support the idea of a European Public Prosecutor's Office? How would it work with our Common Law tradition? Is it not yet another example of Eurocreep?
The Liberal Democrats are not signed up to the introduction of a European Public Prosecutor until quite a few issues are sorted out – as witness this set of comments by Andrew Duff MEP, Leader of our group in the European Parliament.
This article by Hugo Brady for the Centre of European Reform makes a good case that we should proceed very cautiously before introducing the role.
I share this view. I will take a lot of persuading that we need a European Public Prosecutor, with the dramatic legal and constitutional implications that follow, even if the role is restricted only to tackling EU budget fraud – as has currently been suggested.
Keep up the great work Martin and you will make it.
Best wishes
Stephen Pallister
At the last General Election the LibDems proposed getting rid of the Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA),believing there were better ways of spending the then £650 million pa cost.Do you still hold to this view,especially given the UK's dire overspending and consequential debt.?
There was no reference to scrapping EMA in our last manifesto.
We have however expressed repeated opposition to the £100 million spent on EMA bonuses and would redirect that money to close the funding gap between 6th forms and colleges.
Our latest policy statement says:
Your LIbDem colleague,Chris Huhne,has criticised Lord Ashcroft's contributions to the Conservatives.I have written to Chris asking which non-doms have contributed to the LibDems during this Parliament and how much they have given in total.I have received no reply.I also asked him why the LibDems have retained the £2.4 million donated by the convicted fraudster Michael Brown despite its source from his illegal actions.He has not replied to this question either.Are you prepared to answer these questions?
I don't have that information so can't really comment. I'm sure if there were any obvious non-doms on the published lists of donations, the other parties would have pointed it out by now. Feel free to take a look yourself.
The Electoral Commission has ruled on the Michael Brown case as follows:
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As a motorcyclist, aside from attention to pot holes (more attention is needed, particularly in the itchen valley area!), what are you doing to protect my interests?
Hi Martin,
I just wanted to wish you all the best in the forthcoming elections. It was a privledge to work with you in Prague and valued your support in getting the initiative program sorted out!
Hi Phil. Many thanks for this. I greatly appreciated working with you too – and it's very nice to hear from you again. Martin
There are currently 6 Sinn Fein MPs being paid a salary and expenses by HM, but none of them have taken the requisite Oath of Allegiance to our Queen, so are unable to participate in Parliament. What are you, or the Lib Dems going to do to address this horrendous misuse of OUR taxes?
I'm pretty certain the costs of the Sinn Fein MPs will be more than covered by the taxpayers of the constituencies they represent. If they choose to elect MPs who don't sit in Parliament, that is a matter for them. I would not want to refuse the people of those constituencies the right to vote for the candidates they wish.
Hello Martin,
Its Felicity Stonehill here the youth MP for the Winchester and Eastliegh region, I hope you still have my card from lunch the other week.
Anyway what a rollercoaster it has been for the Libdems and Im so happy to see such positive feedback, I hope if you are elected that we can keep in contact as I need support in my regional campaign, get back to me soon
Felicity