9th September 2016 Kolkata, India
Last December, I flew in for the last time to Minsk, the city of my previous posting. As the aeroplane descended through the clouds, a pale whitish landscape emerged – there had been a light snow fall. Like many Britons, the sight of snow cheers me – I think it’s because we see it only […]
8th February 2016 Geneva, Switzerland
Last week’s conference in London did not solve the Syrian refugee crisis. That requires an end to the conflict. The suspension of the peace talks in Geneva last week shows we’re not even at the end of the beginning of that process, as Churchill might have said. But London did some important things. It raised […]
15th September 2015 Berlin, Germany
Saxony is a German state that has been in the news for all the wrong reasons lately. And so it was good that Martin Donnelly, Permanent Secretary at the Department for Business, Innovation, and Skills, decided to take a trip there in September to find out more about how Saxony does science and vocational training […]
3rd June 2013
Some once said that football was a game where England played Germany over 90 minutes and extra time and then the Germans won on penalties. Which is an inelegant way of saying that the UK and Germany are very much together on the reform team in the EU, with Sweden on side as well, of […]
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8th February 2013
50 years ago, everyone in Rome was talking about “aggiornamento”. There is no English word that translates it perfectly, but in prosaic terms it means “bring up to date”, as well as “revision” or “renovation”. The word was used by Pope John XXIII to describe and set out the task of the Second Vatican Council. […]
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