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Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office Blogs
A unique insight into UK foreign and development policy
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12th November 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Honouring the dead
Remembrance week is always a poignant time of year for me, as someone who has spent most of their career supporting the UK’s Armed Forces on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those who have died – friends or strangers – and the families that they left behind are never far from my thoughts. On Sunday, […]
11th November 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Bright sunshine for Remembrance Day at the Australian War Memorial
The sun shone brightly on Canberra’s national war memorial on Remembrance Day, which Australia celebrates actually on 11 November, rather than on the nearest Sunday as in the UK. Wreaths were laid by the Governor General; Senator Ronaldson (for the Prime Minister who is overseas) and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten and senior parliamentary, military and veteran […]
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11th November 2014 Budapest, Hungary
Remembrance Day 2014
I’ve blogged before about Remembrance Day: the day when we in the UK remember those who have died defending our country and our values. Every year at this time we honour and remember them and their sacrifice. But this year our commemoration has been particularly poignant since 2014 is the centenary of the start of […]
11th November 2014 London, UK
Further adventures testing the Chevening application system
Some beautiful photos from the latest round of Chevening user testing, and what we learned from the latest cohort of scholars On Saturday 25 October, the latest cohort of Chevening scholars were invited to an orientation event: a day’s activities welcoming them to the UK and helping them settle in. At the end of the […]
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11th November 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Increasing Our Security in an Increasingly Insecure World
Europe is surrounded by an “arc of instability”, in the words of Philip Hammond, the British Foreign Secretary. Bulgaria, responsible for one of the EU’s key external borders, and on the land route to Syria, is in a key position. It is vital that we, Bulgaria’s allies, step up our support. It is just as […]
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11th November 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Prosecutor General Visits London
By guest blogger Sarah Riley, Deputy Head of Mission at British Embassy Sofia. This blogpost follows Bulgarian Prosecutor General’s visit to the UK from 4 to 7 November 2014. Last week I spent two days in London with Prosecutor General Sotir Tsatsarov, on his official visit to look at all aspects of the criminal […]
11th November 2014 Colombo, Sri Lanka
A Time To Heal
Over the course of this summer, 888,246 ceramic poppies have progressively filled the Tower of London’s moat. Each poppy represents a British military fatality during the Great War of 1914-1918. In total, over nine million died, over 20 million were wounded and over seven million were reported mission in action during those four years – […]
10th November 2014 Havana, Cuba
What next for Cuba’s media?
What do you want from your daily paper? That’s what readers of Granma, Cuba’s biggest daily, were asked on Friday last week. In countries where the press is independent and free, trying to find out what readers, viewers or listeners think is something all media outlets do all the time to try and improve their […]
10th November 2014 Yerevan, Armenia
A week for extraordinary anniversaries
What a week for extraordinary anniversaries. On November 11, in the UK and the Commonwealth we commemorate Remembrance Day (in the US, Veterans Day) – re membering the 100 years which have passed since the start of World War 1, and the many lives lost and lives changed forever in the devastating wars of this […]
10th November 2014 Bucharest, Romania
Bridging the Gap: how to bring NGOs closer
The work of British NGOs operating in Romania is always a source of inspiration. John McKellar, today’s guest blogger, shares with us the ins & outs of supporting smaller NGOs to become more visible and reach out to volunteers and local donors. If nothing else, being back in Romania 12 years after I last lived […]
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