3rd December 2024
RENEWING OLD TIES: THE NEW BISHOP OF LONDON
Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office Blogs
A unique insight into UK foreign and development policy
25th November 2024
The climate crisis and gender-based violence
8th November 2024
Ecolabels: A Catalyst for Sustainable Food Choices?
7th March 2016 Athens, Greece
Magna Carta tour at the British schools
Throughout 2015, British embassies across the world celebrated the 800th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta at Runnymede. This is the foundation document of the rule of law in England – including the important principle that the Crown itself is subject to the law. In our Embassy at Athens, we made the Magna […]
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7th March 2016 Science and Innovation Network
Opportunities for UK-India collaborations in advanced manufacturing
In December, we supported a visit of UK advanced manufacturing experts to Pune and Bengaluru in India. This included Ben Kitcher, who represented the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) and the University of Sheffield. Ben wrote an excellent blog (originally on the University of Sheffield website) capturing why this sort of visit is so important […]
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4th March 2016 Bangalore, India
Li-Fi brings digital enlightenment to India
One of the UK’s brightest (quite literally) and revolutionary technological developments is Light Fidelity or LiFi. Invented by Professor Harald Haas, LiFi has the power to change how we access and transmit data in offices and home around the world. You can read more about my visit to Prof. Haas’s lab in the University of […]
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3rd March 2016
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
TURKS AND CAICOS PUNCHING ABOVE ITS WEIGHT IN THE REGION
It can be useful, once in a while, to step back from day-to-day work and look at what we are trying to achieve against a wider background. I was able to do that for a couple of days in February when the Deputy Premier Akierra Missick and I attended a “brain-storming session”, for want of […]
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3rd March 2016 Guatemala City
Exciting time to be newly arrived Ambassador in Guatemala!
This is my first blog as British Ambassador to Guatemala. I arrived here six months ago, but thought I’d wait a while before starting to blog. I’ll try to write quite regularly from now on. I hope you find my blogs interesting! I arrived in Guatemala City in mid-August 2015, just in time to witness […]
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3rd March 2016 Khartoum
First Impressions
My first impressions were wrong. When I arrived last November, I thought that there was limited prospect for meaningful development in Sudan. I thought that the long shadows cast by the decades of conflict in Darfur meant that there would be few opportunities to make progress. I thought that the international community had become constrained […]
3rd March 2016 Tripoli, Libya
A Nation In Ruins
A few weeks ago a BBC journalist visited Leptis Magna, on the coast east of Tripoli. It contains the remains of one of the most spectacular cities of the Roman Empire with its imposing public monuments, harbour, market-place and residential district. The report included a picture of a lone man standing guard over the ruins. […]
3rd March 2016 London, England
World Wildlife Day – the future is in our hands
‘The future of wildlife is in our hands’ – the theme of this year’s World Wildlife Day and a call to action. The issues raised are serious and affect us all. The Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT) is a major criminal industry worth more than £6bn each year. It threatens the existence of some of the […]
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2nd March 2016
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Education helping to forge new people to people contacts between the UK and North West Russia
Russia has many great educational institutions and the North West Federal District is home to a number of these. I was fortunate enough to visit two in St Petersburg and one in Kaliningrad in the past few weeks. All three were impressive and keen to develop links with the UK. I was struck by the […]
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2nd March 2016
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Gay Pride in Istanbul: what next?
A group of colourfully-dressed people gathers in an Istanbul public square to form a Gay Pride march down a busy public street. Year after year, the procession grows, from 5,000, to 10,000, and eventually as many as 100,000. The international community commends Turkey’s approach to LGBT issues. In 2015, however, the Istanbul Gay Pride march is […]