1st October 2026
A Year Too Big for Two Suitcases: Notes From a Chevening Scholar
Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office Blogs
A unique insight into UK foreign and development policy
11th May 2026
The Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill: turning a global ocean agreement into UK law
9th April 2026
The Gulf, Berlin and the Commission on the Status of Women: building global alliances to advance women’s progress
17th November 2015
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Business in Turkey: good news
Three Turkish mobile phone companies bid for frequencies to roll out a new high-tech service known in Turkey as 4.5G. Billions of euro change hands, and the companies walk away with a variety of packages and bandwidth allocations. Who wins? I wrote a blog last February called “Business in Turkey: The rules of the Game”. […]
16th November 2015 Geneva, Switzerland
How Can Geneva Help Paris?
How can Geneva help Paris? I was going to write this week about antimicrobial resistance, the stealthily spreading obsolescence of antibiotics that will cost the world an estimated 10 million lives a year by 2050 if we don’t act now. But after Friday, that somehow didn’t feel right. With over 130 mostly young people massacred […]
16th November 2015 New Delhi, India
UK innovation express tour
One week, four Indian cities and over 300 Indian attendees gives SIN an opportunity to promote the UK’s excellence in innovation and incubation and celebrate ‘Technology is GREAT’ across India. The SIN India team and UK innovation experts showcased the strengths of our innovation and incubation ecosystem in India. Experts from Cambridge Enterprise, IdeaSpace, Isis […]
15th November 2015 Canberra, Australia
Solidarité
This time last year, I was in Paris with my family, visiting friends and exploring one of the world’s most beautiful cities. We did the usual things – climbed the Eiffel Tower, visited Sacré-Coeur, gazed at the impressionist art at Musée d’Orsay, ate in cafes and restaurants. And on an unusually warm Autumn weekend, we […]
13th November 2015 Science and Innovation Network
Arctic Circle: something for everyone?
The vision for the Arctic Circle conference is that it should be an Arctic version of Davos and therefore it caters for a wide variety interests. Despite being only 3 years old, the conference has grown into an event with almost 2000 delegates from around 50 countries, and with representation including princes and presidents! It […]
13th November 2015 Colombo, Sri Lanka
Looking forward in remembrance
On 8 November, we gathered at the Liveramentu War Graves in the Torrington Road cemetery for the annual reflection on sacrifice and the horrors of war that is Remembrance Sunday. The Act of Remembrance was as moving as ever. Bright Sri Lankan sunshine reflected off the rows of white headstones. Veterans, children, diplomats and serving […]
12th November 2015 Burma
8th November: A day in the life of a Burma elections observer
5.45am – voting opens The polling station manager lifted the empty ballot box over her head to show us the party candidates, other polling station volunteers and us observers that the boxes were empty. With just a few minutes to go, we were about to witness history in the making with the opening of the […]
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12th November 2015
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
A Song For Romania (and Britain)
We held a learning and development week at the British Embassy last month. Alongside training courses ranging from performance management to social media I decided to put together a slightly more light-hearted finale. We would attempt to identify the pieces of music which, in the view of Embassy staff, best represent Romania and Britain. I […]
12th November 2015 London, UK
Legalisation: the alpha phase
In my last post I discussed the FCO’s legalisation service and our plans to build a new digital service. So what have we done so far? After getting our spending controls approval, we used the Digital Services Framework to find development resources and appointed Informed Solutions to work with us. For development we’ve been following […]
12th November 2015
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Creating an environment for foreign investment: what “independent” means
I recently met a group of top Turkish business folk from the financial sector. They were an impressive group and a powerful advertisement for the talent Turkey has to offer. We discussed how best to boost Turkey’s role as a financial centre. Turkey needs more inward investment. It must compete for that investment with other […]
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