Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office Blogs

A unique insight into UK foreign and development policy

22nd July 2013

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by Paul Madden

British Ambassador to Japan

Green school in Bali – the world’s greenest school

Imagine a school where all the classrooms are constructed of sustainable bamboo, the kids help to grow their own food and the whole curriculum has a sustainable theme. The toilets are biodegradable. That’s the Green School in Bali Indonesia, brainchild of celebrity jeweller and eco-pioneer John Hardy. Last week we took a brief holiday from […]

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18th July 2013 USA

Spencer Mahoney

by Spencer Mahony

HM Consul and UKTI Regional Director for the South East United States

Video Games: From the Basement to the Boardroom

I can fondly remember my first interactions with video games – first the Commadore 64 and then on Nintendo and SEGA. We crowded round them at the house of the lucky kid in our neighbourhood and all dreamed that we might own one someday. Remarkably for my brother’s generation everyone did seem to own at […]

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18th July 2013

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by Peter Beckingham

Former governor in Turks and Caicos Islands

Farewell to Mumbai (Part 2): Doing better than we think

Peter Beckingham at an OCS event

Some UK visitors to India, and British newspaper headlines, seem to consider that business here should be ours by “divine right”, as if it is Britain’s for the taking. We have, the argument goes, a special relationship with India – language, law, cricket, immigrants – which means that we must have an advantage on the commercial playing field. […]

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18th July 2013 Cape Town, South Africa

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by Simon Atkinson

Deputy Head of Mission, Cape Town

Celebrating Mandela Day

A blog by Nick Monkhouse, British High Commission Pretoria. Today, 18 July 2013, is Nelson Mandela’s 95th birthday. It is also Nelson Mandela Day, recognised by the UN and around the world as a day which seeks to inspire people to take action to help change the world for the better. As South Africa and […]

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17th July 2013 Montreal, Canada

Life Cycle Assessment: from cold water washing to cotton bags (by guest blogger Roland Clift)

This post is written by Roland Clift , Emeritus Professor of Environmental Technology in the Centre for Environmental Strategy at the University of Surrey, who was keynote speaker at the Montreal conference on Social – Life Cycle Assessment held in Montreal last May . . .

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17th July 2013

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by Paul Johnston

Ambassador to Ireland

Justice for all

Working at the UK mission to the UN in New York often meant late nights. But only once was I in the office until three in the morning. It was the morning after the night before, the night the Security Council had voted, around midnight, to refer the crisis in Darfur to the International Criminal […]

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16th July 2013

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by Paul Johnston

Ambassador to Ireland

Innovation

The 2013 Global Innovation Index lists Sweden and the UK as two of the world’s top three countries for performance in innovation, based on a survey of 84 different measures in 142 countries. The British Olympics team had the motto “better never stops”. Similarly with innovation, I think: it’s when you’re at or near the […]

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