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Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office Blogs
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OSLOBOĐENJE BEOGRADA
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Busting the gender myths – women and organised crime
10th August 2012 Budapest, Hungary
Sziget – Day 3
Guest blog by chargé d’affaires Theresa Bubbear Today I spent my third and final day at the Sziget Festival for this year. It was, unsurprisingly, a day of threes – third speech in Hungarian, policemen from three countries, three unexpected faces on Hungarian banknotes, and a meeting with three organisations. And Team GB remains third […]
10th August 2012 Budapest, Hungary
Sziget: Second impressions
Guest blog by chargé d’affaires Theresa Bubbear Day 2 of Sziget brought a surprising number of double events. For the second consecutive day Hungary won two Olympic gold medals – congratulations to Danuta Kozák and Éva Risztov. I gave my second speech in Hungarian and two media interviews. We dodged two American footballers, sat two […]
10th August 2012 Warsaw, Poland
What a GREAT Show – There’s much more to come!
London 2012 will stand out as a shining example of British Excellence for a long time to come. It’s a Great show – our best medal performance since 1908; our Gold medal rankings; Great British cycling; superb dressage – the Great athletics show which has glued me to the TV each night for the last […]
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10th August 2012
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Small state, big opportunities – Goa entices UK visitors
Goa could hardly be a bigger contrast with its neighbouring State of Maharashtra. Unlike Maharashtra’s huge population there are less than 1.5M in Goa’s attractive State, and its capital Panjim has around 115,000 inhabitants at the most. Most visitors to India associate Goa primarily with its fine beaches, exotic tropical terrain and Portuguese ancestry. But […]
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9th August 2012 Islamabad, Pakistan
Summer Holidays in northern Pakistan; a far-flung cry from my childhood holidays in North Wales …
When visiting my regular family summer holiday spot in North Wales each year as a child, it was unimaginable that one day I would be taking my first (and hopefully not my last) summer holiday in the Baltistan region of Pakistan. Since arriving on my diplomatic posting to Pakistan earlier this year at the British […]
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9th August 2012 Washington DC, USA
Life’s a breeze at the Olympics and in Florida
As a Londoner, I have to admit that sometimes Londoners can be cynical. As we left for the US last November, we left our friends muttering about anticipated congestion and transport angst and plans to let out their houses to Olympic-crazed tourists and spend the month in Florida. However, from the moment the fabulous opening […]
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9th August 2012 Budapest, Hungary
Sziget: “First” impressions
Guest blog by chargé d’affaires Theresa Bubbear Team GB might not have won any medals on 8 August (although we were very happy to see Hungary doing so well), but for me it was a day of firsts: Day 1 of the Festival was also the first anniversary of my arrival in Budapest and I […]
9th August 2012 Bucharest, Romania
Great Britons in Romania: Captain Stan Platt OBE, founder of Light Into Europe
Today I invited our colleague Ian Saunders to share with us his interview with Captain Stan Platt OBE, founder of Light Into Europe, which currently sources and trains guide dogs for the blind. This is the fourth in our series of blogs about Great Britons in Romania. Stan’s first experience of Romania was shortly after […]
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9th August 2012
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Not the End of Geography
Globalisation, advances in communications, the “shrinking of distance” do not mean the End of Geography, any more than the collapse of communism presaged the End of History, as Francis Fukuyama claimed. That was the thesis of a talk on “Geography and Diplomacy” I gave to the Royal Geographical Society of Queensland this week. The state’s […]
8th August 2012 Lima, Peru
In the Olympics
The following is a blog by Julio Muñóz-Deacon, Peruvian Ambassador to Peru in London. The Games are coming to an end. And up to this point, we can say that they have been outstanding. The Chinese and the Americans have been the most successful so far and team GB is doing great. There has been […]