8th November 2024
Ecolabels: A Catalyst for Sustainable Food Choices?
Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office Blogs
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17th October 2024
OSLOBOĐENJE BEOGRADA
11th October 2024
Busting the gender myths – women and organised crime
23rd December 2011
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Poverty matters
I arrived in Addis Ababa just a week ago, as British Ambassador to Ethiopia. And one of the first things I wanted to do was to see how British development assistance is working in this very poor country – but one that is making impressive progress towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals. So on Wednesday […]
23rd December 2011 Windhoek, Namibia
Looking back on my first six months in Windhoek
It is incredible to believe that I have now been in Namibia for six months. The time has flown by and it has really been a wonderful experience. The world has seen an extraordinary number of things happen on the international playing field in 2011: uprisings in north Africa, numerous natural disasters, some significant deaths […]
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23rd December 2011 Athens, Greece
'Going for Green' lands in Athens. A GREAT opportunity
The first time I watched this film was during a screening organized internally for Embassy staff back in January 2011. “Going for Green – Britain’s 2012 Dream” was commissioned by the FCO, and tells the story of how the Olympic Park is being built in an environmentally sustainable way, as set out in the legacy […]
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23rd December 2011
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
From wedding feast to global business – never under-estimate the Parsi influence for good in Mumbai
I was fortunate recently to attend my first ever Parsi wedding. Two of the 40 or so Parsi staff in the Deputy High Commission in Mumbai, Nazneen (our press officer) and Burzin ( a member of the UKBA team), were getting married, and they had been kind enough to invite my wife and me to […]
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22nd December 2011
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
EU-Ukraine Summit interview
Ahead of the 19 December EU-Ukraine Summit in Kyiv, I did an interview on 15 December with the Levyi Bereg website. It was published today. You can read the full interview here (in Russian). We will be putting up an English translation shortly on the interviews and speeches page of our Embassy Website.
22nd December 2011 London, UK
Family, friends and photo albums!
Nick Latta Former Deputy Head of Mission and Consul General, British Embassy Tripoli Last Christmas Eve, my mother came to visit us in Tripoli, via Tunisia, bearing the strange story of a man there who had set himself alight in protest at police intimidation and his own poverty. Little did we imagine how that sad […]
22nd December 2011
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
We are a Christian Country
2011 has seen a year of activity commemorating the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. This Bible, possibly the single most influential text in the English language, was a great achievement of its day. But it also had lasting impact. In a speech last weekend to mark the anniversary, Prime Minister David Cameron said […]
21st December 2011 Ottawa, Canada
A holiday message
A holiday message from British High Commissioner Andrew Pocock… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zof8de9GQMk
21st December 2011 Nairobi, Kenya
Somalia: Reflections on 2011, Focus on 2012
With 2011 drawing to a close, let’s take a moment to reflect on the past year, and look ahead to the next. 2011 has been a particularly tragic year for Somalia and, most importantly Somalis. Despite a great deal of effort and goodwill by many people both outside and inside of Somalia, the country remains […]
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20th December 2011
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
UK leads humanitarian funding
Important developments at the UN in New York, where “humanitarian week” has ended with the annual replenishment conference for the UN Central Emergency Fund (CERF). This is a vital fund, established with UK encouragement in 2006 by the General Assembly, to provide timely and reliable funding for countries affected by rapid and unexpected emergencies, as […]