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Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office Blogs
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25th November 2024
The climate crisis and gender-based violence
8th November 2024
Ecolabels: A Catalyst for Sustainable Food Choices?
21st May 2012
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Sport for all
The Olympic flame arrived in Britain last week ready for the London 2012 Olympics. It is now on a journey round the British Isles that will take it within reach of the vast majority of the country’s population. The message is clear: Sport for All. The flame was lit in Ancient Olympia where the tradition of […]
21st May 2012 Bucharest, Romania
Meet the Romanian Paralympians!
I invited a special lady to guest star on my blog on this very special day. Today we mark 100 days to go until the opening of the Paralympic Games, so there is no better time to meet the extraordinary Paralympic team then directly from Sally Wood Lamont, the President of the Romanian Paralympic Committee!
20th May 2012 Washington DC, USA
A Chicago Welcome to NATO
The following is a guest post by Neil Holland, First Secretary, Foreign and Security Policy Group at the British Embassy in Washington. Last time I visited Chicago I was struck by three things. First how much fun it was. Blues, good food and drink, and history. That pretty much checks all the main boxes for me. […]
20th May 2012
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Chelsea: UEFA Champion!
Guest blog by Stuart Taylor, Consular Regional Operations Manager Exciting, enthralling, exhillerating, exhausting; Saturday night took us through a mixture of emotions as Chelsea proved victorious in Munich. The game itself followed a similar pattern to that of 1974’s ‘Rumble in the Jungle’. This time, instead of Mohammed Ali being forced against the ropes for […]
19th May 2012 Washington DC, USA
What Chicago Means for Afghanistan
The road from the previous NATO Summit in Lisbon to Chicago has had some bumps, but what the NATO/ISAF Alliance will focus on this weekend is the degree to which we have stuck the course and remained committed to Afghanistan’s future. At Lisbon, NATO and ISAF allies agreed that we would remain in a combat […]
18th May 2012 USA
GREAT British Music Rocks and Rolls Through The Years
The following is a guest post by Bob McNally, drummer for MADlantic, a local rock and roll cover band with US and UK band members. It is Music Week and Great Britain celebrates its long and outstanding tradition of rock and roll. Music is one of the great cultural ties between the US and the UK. The […]
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18th May 2012
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Concrete and blood-red wax: British art in Kyiv
A feast of British art is heading for Kyiv. First up is a major new exhibition of sculptor Anish Kapoor. Kapoor has been one of my favourite artists since I saw his 1991 Turner Prize-winning exhibit at the old Tate Gallery (this was before the Tate Modern opened in 2000). Kapoor also has a work, called […]
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18th May 2012
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
I.O.R.
The acronym stands for “Istituto per le Opere di Religione”, or Institute for Religious Works. A typical Pontifical Institution, you might think, running standard charitable activities on behalf of good causes. Well, the I.O.R. does that too. But it is better known, if misleadingly, as “the Vatican Bank”. This week, Ambassadors accredited to the Holy […]
18th May 2012
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Freestyle Olympics
This morning I was again helping raise the London 2012 flag in front of our Embassy, to mark the arrival of the Olympic Flame in the UK. This time I was assisted by Yanet Siyoum, a young and promising Ethiopian swimmer, who is preparing not just for the Olympic Games but also her college exams. […]
17th May 2012 Washington DC, USA
A GREAT Embassy Open House
It isn’t every day that you walk out of your house to find 10,000 people on your lawn. But on Saturday, for EU Embassy Open House day, that is what happened to me. From the time gates opened at 10:00—with quite a queue already formed—until they closed at 4:00, a steady stream of visitors turned […]