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Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office Blogs
A unique insight into UK foreign and development policy
2nd December 2025
In cybersecurity, there are no limits – only new voices ready to lead
14th October 2025
Lost and Found (but mostly lost)
1st March 2013 Beirut, Lebanon
Britain’s Education Offer to Lebanon, and Speechmaking by Twitter
Yesterday was our ‘Education, Education, Education’ Day. I met the prizewinners of our competition for English teachers, including an inspirational administrator from Nahr el Bared Palestinian refugee camp, whose winning lesson plan was based on fish and chips. She is helping even those living in extreme desperation to enjoy and unlock English. But the day […]
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1st March 2013 London, UK
A historic victory for common sense
Fishermen going out in all kinds of weather, catching healthy fish and then throwing up to two-thirds of them back into the sea, dead or dying: a wasteful, immoral policy that angered anyone who cares about conservation. It was a practice that never made sense, and this week it was agreed that it should stop. […]
1st March 2013
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Personal Best
The talk last week was all about PBs or “personal bests”. Best of what? We often make up “catch phrases” – or “модное слово” (modnaye slova). They are not always easy to understand. By “personal best”, we mean “personal best times” or “личный рекорд” (leechni record) in Russian and “асабісты рэкорд” (asabisty record) in Belarusian. […]
28th February 2013
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
St David’s Day: my Welsh great-grandfather
Here are some things you can do to celebrate St David’s Day, the national day of Wales, on 1 March: read this blog about my Welsh great-grandfather, John Derfel. Includes a beautiful old picture and links to the Welsh- and English-language Wikipedia entries of his Welsh nationalist father, Robert Jones Derfel; check out the Welsh Flag which […]
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28th February 2013 Islamabad, Pakistan
Exploring Faisalabad
Now, I’m not one who normally gets passionate about sport. I could have been certain that my first blog from Pakistan, where I recently arrived as the High Commission’s new Press Attaché, would not have been about sport. But, I am surprisingly doing just that. When I think of sport in Pakistan, cricket comes into […]
28th February 2013 London, UK
Digital diplomacy in the Middle East and North Africa
I’ve been the Digital Communications Manager for the Middle East and North Africa for the last 21 months and today is my last day. I wanted to reflect on our many digital diplomacy successes from the region and share some of my personal highlights. I joined the team at the height of the Arab Spring […]
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28th February 2013
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Doing Business in Sudan
Any Sudanese you talk to, whether in Government or on the streets, will tell you that the economy is one of the biggest problems facing the country: high inflation, especially in food items, big public deficit, no foreign currency, little investment. Of course even the strongest of economies would suffer after the kind of dislocation […]
27th February 2013 Washington DC, USA
A Science Initiation
The following is a guest blog by Roben McCabe, Executive Assistant, Global Issues Group at the British Embassy in Washington. As someone with a background in International Conflict Resolution, I was a bit unsure if my attendance at Last week’s American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS) Annual Meeting would be too high level […]
27th February 2013 Dushanbe, Tajikistan
Looking for evidence in Central Asia
The following is a post by Will Schomburg, a member of DFID’s Graduate Scheme. It takes imagination to picture what ancient Panjakent once looked like. While it might now be little more than a sprawl of ruins in western Tajikistan, the city was once a thriving trading point along the Silk Route. Like famous Samarkand, just […]
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26th February 2013 Lima, Peru
The UK takes a big step towards equal marriage
The following is a guest post by Ben Rawlings, Prosperity Officer – British Embassy, Lima. Marriage is an important institution in the UK. The principles of long-term commitment and responsibility that underpin it are part of what binds society together. But marriage is not static; it has always been an evolving institution. In the 20th […]
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