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?
27th January 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Reshoring: Good news for Europe
Last week, UK Prime Minister David Cameron was in Davos for the World Economic Forum, where he discussed his strategy for making Britain the ‘Reshore Nation’. He also outlined what Europe can do to reap the benefits of reshoring. What is reshoring? It’s generally considered to be the process where a company has moved business […]
27th January 2014 Budapest, Hungary
Better Together
It’s been quite a start to 2014. No chance of easing my way back into work after the holidays. The year has got going at 100 miles an hour. I was wondering which part of the excitement to write about in my first blog of 2014. But I went to a celebration of Burns night […]
27th January 2014 Athens, Greece
Remembrance and Affirmation
On 27 January each year, the United Nations remembers the Holocaust that took the lives of six million Jewish people during World War II. This day is called the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust. On this day in 1945, Soviet troops liberated the Nazi concentration and death camp […]
27th January 2014 Sana’a, Yemen
Robert Burns: the Yemeni?
Guest blog by the Embassy Lyricist This week the British Embassy (and millions of Scots worldwide) gathered to remember the Scottish poet Robert Burns. Britain and Yemen’s shared love of poetry led us to think, could the 18th century poet actually have hailed from Yemen? I’ll leave you to decide! How can a man born in […]
27th January 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
How to train the best soldiers – and leaders
Talking to a highly-trained and brilliant audience is always a challenge. So I am not surprised when, after my talk about developments in Turkey and economic opportunities, a forest of hands goes up. Most of the questions demonstrate a strong grip of political and economic as well as military issues. Any inconsistencies within my presentation […]
Read more on How to train the best soldiers – and leaders | Reply
27th January 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Minister of Africa visit to Sudan
Last week Mr Mark Simmonds came to stay. He is the Minister for Africa in the Foreign Office. He spent two days here meeting Government Ministers and senior Officials, representatives from several political parties, civil society and the business community. He also squeezed in time for a brief sunset boat trip on the Nile. There […]
27th January 2014 New Delhi, India
Forward look 2014
Earlier this month I wrote a short review of 2013 and promised a preview of the coming year. Although at this stage, it’s impossible to know everything the next 12 months will bring, it’s already shaping up to be a busy time! This year’s EU Research roadshow kicked off in Delhi in January and the […]
27th January 2014 New Delhi, India
Visiting India: ten top tips
One of the major parts of our work is arranging visits and meetings between the UK and India. There’s no real replacement for meeting face to face if you want to get a collaboration going, but travelling between the UK and India, in either direction, is no small undertaking – a long flight, a new […]
24th January 2014 Brasilia, Brazil
3 years ago I witnessed a revolution
Exactly three years ago, I was visiting Aswan, in the south of Egypt, with two friends. We wanted a break from the 6-week volunteer programme we were doing. We went out for dinner and on our way back to the hotel some images on a TV shop caught our attention: an ocean of people gathering […]
24th January 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Neighbours
I had written another blog for this week. But it didn’t seem right to publish something interesting but not especially important, while far more serious events are taking place in a neighbouring country. It is part of diplomatic work to keep an eye on those countries next to the ones you serve in. What goes […]