Prev: @taptapsend & @Spare_Hand, special advisor to @RoryStewartUK @DFID_UK, official @BEISgovuk, delegate @ICRC, and Turquoise Mountain in #Afgh & #Jordan.
Joined May 2019
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More barges please
Oh the beauty of it. #NotreDame's roof trusses are arriving by barge on the Seine River.
(Pics David Bordes©Rebâtir Notre-Dame de Paris)
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Scott Liddle retweeted
Zarafa was a Nubian giraffe gifted to France’s Charles X by Mohamed Ali in 1836.
It took six weeks for the 🦒 to reach Paris from Marseille. The French tailored a raincoat for her.
She lived in the Jardin des Plantes.
This is absurd and the wrong use of international aid money — very sad. To spend £3.7bn on hotels and contractors in the UK is mind-boggling.
Official stats out today show the UK in 2022 spent more than three times as much of the aid budget on housing refugees in UK (£3,686 m) than FCDO did alleviating poverty in Africa (£1,109m). Refugee costs now swallow 28.9% of total UK aid. gov.uk/government/collection…
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paging @AliceFordham for a vigorous defence of brockwell park habitués
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Best April Fools so far...
As part of our ongoing work to promote British trade and investment in New England, a shipment of high-end, luxury tea will arrive by sea next week. After a short hiatus of 250 years, I’m delighted that British #tea will once again be coming into #Boston harbour! 🇬🇧 🫖
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All hail FUKUS
France joins AUKUS. The security and defence bloc is renamed FUKUS.
ht @CovertShores navalnews.com/naval-news/202…
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Not entirely true — the gravity model applies to trade in services also; less so than to trade in goods, but distance is an important factor nonetheless (as is correlation with trade in goods in fact). Linguistic similarity also important. See eg. jstor.org/stable/40441094
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To spend a third of development funding inside the UK is complete madness — and a third of a budget already reduced by nearly a third. These are funds that can go so far in helping in Somalia, or Yemen, and many other places — instead spent on contractors and hotels in the UK
Here follows a story about how the government influences media coverage
At 10am yesterday, journalists were sent a watchdog report finding the UK spent £3.5bn of aid money - 1/3 entire budget - on refugees and asylum seekers already here in 2022
independent.co.uk/news/uk/ho…
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Scott Liddle retweeted
📢 New book with chapters by our Fellow @Ndawsari on 'Houthi Governance: An Examination of Engagement with Tribes' & Co-Director @a_a_jackson on 'Ideological Adaptations in Taliban's Shadow State, 2006-2020', among other valuable analyses of Islamist rule. global.oup.com/academic/prod…
Yes!! We wanted to do the same for London as part of @roryforlondon campaign — just needs some vision and boldness…
Madrid is building 74km forest belt of half a million trees 🌳 around the city to fight extreme heat, air pollution & climate change.IPCC
We have so many solutions. Implement them. #ActOnClimate
#ClimateCrisis #climate #energy #renewables #biodiversity #IPCC
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You can’t make this stuff up…
MoD apologises unreservedly after @Independent reveals Afghans were asked to get evacuation documents certified by Taliban. @de_Jong_Sara co-founder @SulhaAlliance said UK bureaucrats often failed to understand what documents are available in Afghanistan.
google.com/amp/s/www.indepen…
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Saw last year how transformational mobile money has been in Mada — given size, terrain, weather, and difficulty of accessing banks: ideal use-case
Mobile money is revolutionizing financial services in Africa and increasing financial inclusion for one of the world’s poorest countries. #IFCinsights explores how digital finance is helping reach the unbanked in Madagascar: wrld.bg/rCvi50MUSln
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Amazing day in Nairobi visiting 3 public libraries being lovingly restored by @TheBookBunk with Nairobi County Gov @047County. Thank you Angela @SisterKilljoy. Pride, a sense of place, somewhere quiet to study, beauty.
Check out their podcast “A palace for the people” (inspired by Carnegie’s phrase and library building): bookbunk.org/podcast/episode…
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Scott Liddle retweeted
Word of the day is a reminder of 'ipsedixitism' (16th century): the assertion that something is 'fact' because someone else said so.
Scott Liddle retweeted
The problem is we speak the same language and watch the same TV. So people often just assume we’re similar to Americans. But we’re not these days. Why? Because they are absolutely minted (technical term for 60% richer than us)
