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?
16th February 2016 Skopje, North Macedonia
Not everything you learn is in university
Living as a student in the UK what mainly contributes for my satisfaction are opportunities that the university offers. However, the quality of higher education in the UK is not news. It is well known that some of the best universities in the world are here, and they not only provide students with first-class academic knowledge, but also enable them to […]
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15th February 2016
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
How Turkish whizz-kids can scale-up fast
A young Turkish entrepreneur enters a hotel meeting room. She comes face-to-face with some of Turkey’s top business gurus. ‘OK,’ says the chair, ‘you have five minutes to convince us.’ Five minutes later, after the young whizz-kid has set out her plans for growing her business by establishing a foothold in the UK, the assembled […]
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12th February 2016
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
#RegisterToVote
A guest blog by HM Consul Timothy Fisher, British Consulate-General Istanbul 100 years ago my great grandmother was protesting on the streets of London with other Suffragettes campaigning for the right for women to vote in Britain. It was a time when the right to vote was a hot political topic. A century later, voting remains as […]
11th February 2016 London, UK
Spreading the word (and data) on country names
We’ve been working with the Government Digital Service (GDS) on a project to develop a “Country Register” which will be a dataset of UK approved geographical names for countries and territories. This work is the first stage of a project to create a range of Registers which will be a key part of the UK’s […]
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10th February 2016
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Against Modern Slavery: working with the Holy See
Pope Francis is on record as calling modern slavery “a crime against humanity”. Over 200 years since the British Parliament abolished the transatlantic slave trade and began an international campaign, led by the Royal Navy, to eradicate it, the Home Office estimates that there are around 13,000 potential victims of modern slavery in the UK […]
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10th February 2016 Canberra, Australia
Out of Africa
Sudan is a rhinoceros. If I had written that sentence during the two years I worked at our Embassy in Khartoum, there might have been raised eyebrows. But the fact remains that Sudan is a rhino, and a very special one… Sudan was born in what is now South Sudan in the late 1970s, and […]
9th February 2016
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
#AdiosIstanbul
How many reasons are there to like Istanbul? Since I arrived in Istanbul in August 2012 I have featured over 500 #reasonstolikeistanbul on my @leighturnerFCO twitter account. The response has been mostly enthusiastic. That’s not surprising. Istanbul is a spectacular city, with an epic past, a potential-packed present and, I hope, a brilliant future. But all […]
8th February 2016
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
A recipe for economic success
A lot of people ask me why there aren’t more British businesses investing in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They’re usually surprised to hear that, in fact, there are already quite a lot. Our British Business Club has over 120 corporate members, big and small. I would love to see more British companies trading here. But the […]
8th February 2016 Geneva, Switzerland
Solving the Syrian Refugee Crisis
Last week’s conference in London did not solve the Syrian refugee crisis. That requires an end to the conflict. The suspension of the peace talks in Geneva last week shows we’re not even at the end of the beginning of that process, as Churchill might have said. But London did some important things. It raised […]
7th February 2016 London, UK
International community must act now on Syria
As we approach the fifth anniversary of the civil war in Syria, the most urgent humanitarian catastrophe of our time continues. A quarter of a million lives have been lost. The international community must significantly step up its efforts and act now to support the 18 million people in Syria and neighbouring countries who are […]
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