18th March 2013 Nairobi, Kenya
Last Thursday, the Federal Government of Somalia, together with the UK, hosted the latest meeting with a number of key international partners in Mogadishu. The location was significant. This was the first time such a meeting had been held in Mogadishu since the Federal Government came to power last year. It was a real demonstration […]
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15th February 2013 New Delhi, India
Last week was an exceptional week in taking the UK-India relationship in climate science to an even higher level, from an already strong position. The week was jam-packed with three events, two of which ran in parallel. The first was the joint Indian Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) – UK’s Natural Environment Research Council’s (NERC) scoping […]
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6th December 2012 Washington DC, USA
Back in the days when tweeting was what birds did, a cloud was something in the sky, an app was what you sent to the university admissions office, and Google was simply a misprint for the word which means 10100, who’d have thought that mobile phones could improve the daily lives of the world’s poorest […]
26th November 2012 Kingston, Jamaica
My job in the last week has involved discussions with ‘tars’ (or sailors) about ‘tarps’ (or tarpaulins). When posted to Singapore I had the opportunity to visit a number of other nations’ ships, which often stopped at the naval base for a few days. Last week in Kingston we had a short-notice visit from a […]
30th May 2012 Islamabad, Pakistan
It is 6.30 am Saturday morning in Lahore, the room service waiter points at the TV news and says “that’s you”. I agree that it is, as footage plays of a meeting I had the day before with Nawaz Sharif, PML-N political leader and twice former Prime Minister of Pakistan, and, Shabaz Sharif, his brother […]
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13th April 2012 Islamabad, Pakistan
I really enjoy sharing my experiences and thoughts in an informal way through this blog. I’ve been able to do blog posts on subjects as diverse as foreign policy issues, the Commonwealth, the trade and education links between the UK and Pakistan and of course cricket. And I have particularly valued the feed back. But […]
12th March 2012 Nairobi, Kenya
Last week the world marked International Women’s Day – a day to renew our commitment to the empowerment, education and advancement of women and girls around the world. Somalia is, according to a 2011 survey, one of the worst countries in the world in which to be a woman. Women are subjected to violence, harassment […]
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10th February 2012 Nairobi, Kenya
It’s been quite a fortnight. At the end of January, I accompanied the UK Development Secretary, Andrew Mitchell, to the AU Summit in Addis Ababa and then to Somalia. In Dollow – the first time a British Minister has visited southern Somalia in recent years, Mr Mitchell saw for himself the huge difference that UKaid […]
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30th January 2012 Islamabad, Pakistan
Variety is one of the things I love about my job. It comes from the huge range of issues, people and types of engagement that connect the UK to Pakistan. We have just launched a multi-month communications campaign to celebrate that variety. It is called Celebrating Connections and it is in the media, on our […]