Peter Dawe

Peter Dawe OBE (born 1954-55) is a British entrepreneur known for founding Pipex, the UK's first ever commercial internet service provider, and the Internet Watch Foundation.

Business ventures

After studying management at Cambridge College of Arts and Technology, Dawe founded Unipalm in 1986 and Pipex in 1988.[1][2]

Afer selling Unipalm/Pipex, in 1996 Dawe purchased a 1,500 acre farm in Norfolk, with the intention to set up a "self-sustainable" community called "Beat the Bear" that would support up to 100 "survivalists" who would pay between £10,000 and £100,000 per year to live in the community.[2]

In 1996 Dawe also founded Safety-Net (later renamed Internet Watch Foundation) which proposed ideas to combat obscene material on the World Wide Web, for example a rating system that would tag web content similar to the BBFC rating scheme and block unrated or age-inappropriate material.[3] For his work with the Internet Watch Foundation, Dawe received an OBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours of 2001.[4]

In 2020, Dawe suggested that homeless people could sleep inside two wheelie bins, which he called a "Sleep Pod" as an alternative to rough-sleeping in sleeping bags. During the day, the homeless person can use the bins to store their clothes. Dawe came up with the idea after inventing a single person car, also created from a bin.[5]

Politics

Dawe ran as the UK Independence Party candidate for the Ely North and East seat in the 2013 Cambridgeshire County Council election. He lost to Conservative candidate Mike Rouse, receiving 17.6% of the votes.[6]

For the 2017 Cambridgeshire and Peterborough mayoral election Dawe stood as an independent candidate for the newly created combined Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough role. He lost to Conservative candidate James Palmer (mayor), receiving 4.6% of the votes in the first round of voting.[7][2]

Dawe ran for Parliament in the 2019 United Kingdom general election, where he stood as the Brexit Party candidate for Cambridge, losing to incumbent Labour Party candidate Daniel Zeichner, receiving 1.9% of the vote.[8]

References
  1. "Peter Dawe - ARU". aru.ac.uk. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
  2. Josh Barrie (21 October 2019). "Brexit Party candidate charging up to £100,000 a person for place at post-apocalyptic farm". The Scotsman. Retrieved 6 February 2020.
  3. "Industry moves to limit porn on the Internet". The Independent. 23 September 1996. Retrieved 6 February 2020.
  4. "Internet pioneer honoured". BBC News. 15 June 2001. Retrieved 6 February 2020.
  5. "Multimillionaire invents 'bin pods' for rough sleepers by joining wheelie bins together". Daily Mirror. 5 February 2020. Retrieved 6 February 2020.
  6. "Election results 2013 for East Cambridgeshire district". Cambridgeshire County Council. 3 May 2013. Archived from the original on 5 May 2013. Retrieved 6 February 2020.
  7. "Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Mayor Election Live Results". eastcambs.gov.uk. Retrieved 6 February 2020.
  8. "General Election 2019 - Cambridge constituency result". cambridge.gov.uk. 13 December 2019. Retrieved 6 February 2020.
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