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Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office Blogs
A unique insight into UK foreign and development policy
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International Day of Women in Diplomacy: UK Special Envoy for Women and Girls visit to Geneva
1st May 2025
The UN Commission on the Status of Women: My first visit as UK Special Envoy for Women and Girls
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 […]
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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 […]
24th January 2014 Mumbai, India
Plasma research by the Sabarmati
Fluorescent lamps; flat-panel displays; sterilisation devices for medical tools – what’s common among these items? They all have plasma in them! Plasma is the fourth state of matter; the others being solid, liquid, and gas. It is formed when a gas is heated to extremely high temperatures. Recently, I visited the Institute for Plasma Research […]
23rd January 2014 Havana, Cuba
CELAC and the Falkland Islands – the right to self-determination
Next week the CELAC Summit will be held in Havana and the Cuban government will be in charge of finalising the language in the Summit declarations. Inevitably there will be one on the Falkland Islands and I suspect it will ignore the referendum held on the Islands last year when 99.8% voted in favour of […]
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23rd January 2014 Washington DC, USA
23 years of the UK economy in approximately 650 words (and the next 23 years in just 30)
“Is it just me or has everything shrunk?” That was the principal thought running through my head on January 15th as I walked into my old high school – the Inverness Royal Academy – for the first time in 23 years. The Head of the Economics Department there, Ian Stewart, was the first person to […]
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23rd January 2014 Lima, Peru
Lima as the Key Stage Towards a Global Agreement
By Sir David King, Foreign Secretary’s Special Representative for Climate Change If we all, together, continue to emit greenhouse gases at the present rate, 1.8% per annum, by 2040 we will have burnt up the entire planet’s budget for carbon. Exceeding that budget means that we face a global warming temperature rise of more than 2°C, […]
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