1st October 2013
Just over a year ago on a warm August afternoon, I paid a call on the Environment Minister, Lena Ek. She had an idea she wanted to share with the UK about the campaign for action on climate change. Twelve months on, that idea has been launched as a major international effort in New York, […]
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13th August 2013 Havana, Cuba
I met the Ambassador of the Solomon Islands a few weeks ago. The Solomons (Honiara is the capital) are in the Pacific Ocean over 13,000 km from Cuba and they only have a few embassies around the world so you might wonder why they have recently opened one in Havana. The Ambassador, Simeon Bouro, explained to […]
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12th August 2013
That was the principal message of Permanent Secretary at the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, Martin Donnelly, when he visited Australia last week. He said that the UK’s GDP growth was expected to reach around 1% this year and perhaps 2% next year. Australian economists and business people he met shared this positive assessment. […]
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1st July 2013 London, UK
Ten years ago, the world was a very different place. No one had heard of Twitter and there was no Facebook. Ten years before that, we didn’t even have the World Wide Web. Given the pace of change, what will the world look like in ten years’ time, and what does this mean for Europe?
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21st June 2013 Havana, Cuba
I didn’t see any tulips in Santa Clara but this week the town had a very Dutch flavour. Most of the people I met there on Monday were wearing orange, a colour which the local baseball team, Villa Clara, shares with the Dutch national football team. This week Villa Clara finally won the Cuban baseball […]
20th June 2013 Washington DC, USA
As a Senior Trade Policy Advisor here at the Embassy in Washington, part of my role over the last few months has been in helping to coordinate the delicate dance required in the run-up to the launch of a major international negotiation.
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11th June 2013 Havana, Cuba
Last week in Havana we saw a fantastic celebration of British culture. Once a year, as in many other countries in the world, the Embassy organises a BritWeek when we put on a variety of events. In Havana our cinema programme included the Cuban-British film, The Day of the Flowers. Obra Blue/Orange, put on by British director […]
14th May 2013 London, UK
A startling statistic – over half the businesses that get help from UK Trade & Investment go on to win additional sales of over £600,000 within two years. The UK’s trade performance is often discussed in the abstract, or at the macroeconomic level. People look at the effect on UK GDP or the balance of […]
20th March 2013 Paris, France
The big theme for me this week has been the economic and high-tech co-operation between Britain and France. In terms of economies, we had Boris Johnson, the Major of London, in Paris last week. He gave a number of media interviews but also a big speech to businessmen here, in which his main theme is […]
1st February 2013
There are two fundamental planks of reform in Romania, on which the Romanian authorities are engaged in commitments to the International Financial Institutions and to their EU partners – the Stand-By Agreement with the IMF (plus the World Bank and EU) and the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism for tackling corruption and judicial reform with the […]