Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office Blogs

A unique insight into UK foreign and development policy

14th August 2013

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by Nigel Baker

Ambassador to the Holy See (2011-2016)

The Wisdom of Father Brown

The following is a guest blog by Steve Townsend, Deputy Head of Mission. It was announced this week that the Bishop of Northampton has started the investigation whether there is a case for canonisation for G K Chesterton.  This prompted me to go back to his best-loved creation, and one of my favourite fictional characters, […]

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13th August 2013 Havana, Cuba

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by Tim Cole

Former British Ambassador to Cuba

From Honiara to Havana for health reasons

I met the Ambassador of the Solomon Islands a few weeks ago. The Solomons (Honiara is the capital) are in the Pacific Ocean over 13,000 km from Cuba and they only have a few embassies around the world so you might wonder why they have recently opened one in Havana. The Ambassador, Simeon Bouro, explained to […]

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13th August 2013 Chevening, UK

A Botswana Chevening Scholar Visits The Mother of Parliaments

Our latest blog entry is by Bogolo Joy Kenewendo, a 2012 Chevening Scholar from Botswana. Bogolo is studying for an MsC in International Economics at the University of Sussex. If you are a Chevening scholar and are interested in submitting a blog entry for the Chevening Conversations blog, then please email us at fcoscholarships@fco.gov.uk. This is a story of […]

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12th August 2013

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by Paul Madden

British Ambassador to Japan

UK economy returns to sustainable growth

That was the principal message of Permanent Secretary at the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, Martin Donnelly, when he visited Australia last week. He said that the UK’s GDP growth was expected to reach around 1% this year and perhaps 2% next year. Australian economists and business people he met shared this positive assessment. […]

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12th August 2013

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by Sarah Dickson

Ambassador to Guatemala (June 2012 - June 2015)

Working Together

The International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples was celebrated on 9 August, and to mark it we have a guest blog from Thomas Hart, Country Director of Health Unlimited, an organisation that this Embassy is supporting with a project in Guatemala’s second city, Quetzaltenango. Over to you Thomas… I was recently asked in a […]

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12th August 2013

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by Sarah Dickson

Ambassador to Guatemala (June 2012 - June 2015)

Working Together

The International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples was celebrated on 9 August, and to mark it we have a guest blog from Thomas Hart, Country Director of Health Unlimited, an organisation that this Embassy is supporting with a project in Guatemala’s second city, Quetzaltenango. Over to you Thomas… I was recently asked in a […]

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12th August 2013 Dushanbe, Tajikistan

Voluntary Service Overseas – Broadening Horizons

The following is a post by Adam Lancashire, VSO Volunteer. Ever since that first induction day with VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas) I knew that volunteering abroad was something I had to do. The stories from returned volunteers and the collected professionalism of what I saw and heard really made it clear to me that this […]

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