28th January 2013
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Why is the Turkish company HDM Steel setting up a £7m manufacturing plant in South Wales? Take a look at the world. Think about countries where you might possibly imagine investing your money. Do they have a solid record on stability and democracy? Do they rank highly on ease of doing business, with a predictable […]
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25th January 2013
Toronto, Canada
Earlier this week, Minister for Universities and Science David Willetts gave a speech at the Policy Exchange on “eight great technologies” which will help the UK grow and prosper over the next decade. You can read the speech here, the BIS press release here and the Policy Exchange pamphlet here. Let’s look at each technology […]
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25th January 2013
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
In the second season of the excellent US series “The Wire”, a trade unionist working on the Baltimore docks says he’s just seen a film about Rotterdam – one of the most automated container ports in the world. He calls it a horror movie. I thought of “The Wire” during the recent “Container Handling Technology […]
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24th January 2013
Dublin, Ireland
You will of course be aware that David Cameron, our Prime Minister, delivered a major speech on Europe in London on 23 January. It has received a lot of coverage in the Polish media and Foreign Minister Sikorski commented on it on 24 January. The speech is a very clear commitment to keeping the UK […]
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18th January 2013
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
This January figures were published showing that Turkish gas imports had hit an all-time high. So the timing of the UK-Turkey Knowledge Partnership Conference at the British Consulate General in Istanbul on 17 January to examine Energy and Resource Efficiency in Manufacturing could not have been better. Turkey is an increasingly important research and manufacturing […]
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14th January 2013
New Delhi, India
For my first day back at work in New Year I had the pleasure of welcoming UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser Professor Sir John Beddington (@uksciencechief) back to India. He was in Kolkata to speak at the inauguration of the 100th annual Indian Science Congress. Founded in 1914, in Kolkata, the Congress was the initiative […]
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10th January 2013
Beirut, Lebanon
This week I was asked to speak at USEK, on ‘How Does Lebanon Succeed in the 21st Century?”. Tough audience, tough subject. Especially on the first day back, and after a night of epic storms (during which my sons had taken it in turns to wake me to tell me how frightened they were). In […]
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8th January 2013
Washington DC, USA
How do you prevent the spread of dangerous weapons around the world? Negotiations? Treaties? Sanctions? Seizing illegal shipments? Securing dangerous materials? All of these play an important part. But there is always room for innovation. And who is better suited than the wealth of NGOs and think-tanks based here in the US to combine their […]
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3rd January 2013
Washington DC, USA
As 2012 and my first six months of my job at the Embassy came to a close, my colleagues and I reflected back on how great the year was for the UK. One of the reasons that we were able to celebrate this was because of the cutting edge UK fashion industry. Recently our very […]
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3rd January 2013
Toronto, Canada
If you aren’t familiar with the Raspberry Pi, it’s a $35 computer about the size of a credit card. Designed and assembled in the UK, the RPi was conceived as an educational tool to bring “real” computer science back into schools. Rather than simply learning how to be an end-user of computer programs, students would […]
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