I hope you find this blog interesting and, where appropriate, entertaining. My role in Vienna covers the relationship between Austria and the UK as well as the diverse work of…
I hope you find this blog interesting and, where appropriate, entertaining. My role in Vienna covers the relationship between Austria and the UK as well as the diverse work of the UN and other organisations; stories here will reflect that.
About me: I arrived in Vienna in August 2016 for my second posting in this wonderful city, having first served here in the mid-1980s. My previous job was as HM Consul-General and Director-General for Trade and Investment for Turkey, Central Asia and South Caucasus based in Istanbul.
Further back: I grew up in Nigeria, Exeter, Lesotho, Swaziland and Manchester before attending Cambridge University 1976-79. I worked in several government departments before joining the Foreign Office in 1983.
Keen to go to Africa and South America, I’ve had postings in Vienna (twice), Moscow, Bonn, Berlin, Kyiv and Istanbul, plus jobs in London ranging from the EU Budget to the British Overseas Territories.
2002-6 I was lucky enough to spend four years in Berlin running the house, looking after the children (born 1992 and 1994) and doing some writing and journalism.
To return to Vienna as ambassador is a privilege and a pleasure. I hope this blog reflects that.
Dear Mr. Turner!
With a great interest I have read your interview.
Your reasonings have seemed to me absolutely adequate and very competent.
I agree with you that corruption in our country is a barrier to advancement forward.
I am a lot of years I live in Donetsk and I can observe, how people of the richest earth live almost in poverty.
Mines and factories are corrupted. Workers receive only a part of the salary. In Donetsk area – variety of small cities in which to find though any work very difficultly. There coal mining in awful conditions is organized are the dug tunnels in which people illegally work, is frequent – even teenagers.
Unless it isn’t awful? To earn money, threatening life of people!
But also in our fine modern city life doesn’t differ order presence.
Dirt, homeless children, homeless animals…
Whether John Hughes who has put the magnificent base to a great city dreamed of that?
How to see insulting it!
Having visited in September of this year your remarkable country, I have been surprised order degrees everywhere and in all!
Happy, benevolent people are always affable. They are assured of tomorrow! They have protection against the state!
Laws so are clear and simple what to break them it be no point – after all for assiduous work people get good wages.
In sew to the country as you have noticed, to work well – doesn’t mean well to live.
Our economic and political reforms look beautifully only on a paper.
Usual people – doctors, teachers, from elite have turned to beggars.
To us speak – suffer, we will necessarily make integration into the European Union! We will live better.
I don’t trust in it.
Because I see, how all more richly those who has the power also become richer.
Sorry my English…