Tag: diversity

12th February 2015 Skopje, North Macedonia

‘We are all equal’ – learn and play around the country

There are some conceptions for educating children that when they are born, they are ‘tabula rasa’. According to this, children are like sponges, they import whatever we teach them as they grow up. Thereto, if children are tabula rasa, our mission is to teach them of everything that is good. To teach them to care […]

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24th January 2015 Skopje, North Macedonia

Thoughts for UK and Macedonia cooperation 2015

Just past the eight-month marker as the no-longer-quite-so-new Ambassador, and having come through my first western-Christmas-New-Year-Orthodox-Christmas holiday season, I have been talking with colleagues and partners about the year ahead. Don’t worry, this blog is not about our business plan. It’s more about the UK-Macedonia bilateral relationship. Our two countries don’t enjoy the kind of […]

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12th December 2014 Skopje, North Macedonia

Education: Macedonia 2035 – the view from Mavrovo

Since I arrived in Macedonia, many people have spoken to me (usually with enthusiasm, though sometimes rather wistfully) about the role of Wilton Park in 2008 in helping to establish parliamentary procedures here. I have often been asked why we haven’t, given the success of the 2008 conference, done more Wilton Park events for Macedonia. […]

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18th October 2014 Skopje, North Macedonia

Journey into emotional territory – IHRA’s visit to Macedonia

Just occasionally a diplomat’s work takes us into deeply emotional territory. That happened here this week with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s visit to Skopje. The IHRA (www.holocaustremembrance.com) exists to foster international cooperation to support Holocaust education, remembrance and research.  The UK holds the Chair this year.  And in that role Sir Andrew Burns (ex-FCO, […]

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6th August 2014 Skopje, North Macedonia

Beauty is unity in diversity

Just in case you thought diversity was a modern obsession, peddled by management consultants and politically correct Human Resources teams, here’s a quote from John Scotus Eriugena, Irish philosopher who lived 1200 years ago: ‘Beauty is unity in diversity.’ It took me a while in my career to understand the value of diversity. I really […]

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11th April 2012 USA

The more things change

Like a lot of people interested in US politics and economics, I’ve been thinking quite a bit recently about the results of the last US census and the excellent analyses that demographers, political pundits and others have done on them. One thing that really strikes me is the projections of the US’s population out to […]

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5th December 2011

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by Leigh Turner

Ambassador to Austria and UK Permanent Representative to the United Nations and other International Organisations in Vienna

The first mosque in Kyiv

Shortly after I arrived in Ukraine in 2008, the Mufti of Ukraine, Sheikh Akhmed Tamim, invited me to visit him at the site of the proposed new Kyiv mosque, the first in the city.  I was pleased to take up this invitation and had an interesting discussion with him about Islam, and the history of […]

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15th June 2011

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by Leigh Turner

Ambassador to Austria and UK Permanent Representative to the United Nations and other International Organisations in Vienna

Ambassadors in high heels #2

How much should an ambassador know about Louboutins?  My recent blog Ambassadors in high heels prompted some interesting comments (eg from one female British diplomat: “there is no doubt that when I joined up as a young woman in the 1970s the expectation was that I would marry and leave”, but… “I have never not […]

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15th April 2011

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by Martin Harris

British Ambassador to Ukraine

Guest blogger: London 2012, a celebration of diversity in sports

Blog by Sally Wood-Lamont, President of the Romanian National Paralympic Committee I am delighted that the UK will host, for the third time in the history of the Olympic Games, an event that will keep the whole world connected through the values of fair competition and excellence in sports. That London 2012 has Paralympics at […]

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