What can you do but shake your head in wonderment at the debacle over the UK government's £800m Environmental Transformation Fund? As John Vidal reported in...
Alex Evans
Alex Evans is a Senior Fellow at the Center on International Cooperation (CIC) at New York University, and the author of The Myth Gap: What Happens When Evidence and Arguments Aren't Enough? (Penguin, 2017), a book about the power of deep stories to unlock transformational change. He lives in North Yorkshire and is currently working on political polarisation and learning dry stone walling. Full biog here.
FCO’s new website
Oooh... aaah... bow your heads in reverence before the Foreign Office's brand new website. Especially nice: this Google maps mashup showing FCO activities...
DNI conference in Washington
Want to hang out with spooks in DC for a couple of days in September? Well, now's your chance: the office of the Director of National Intelligence is holidng...
Viagra for the brain
Via Kevin Drum, this vignette from Johann Hari about his experience taking Provigil, which (we're told) college students describe as "viagra for the brain": I...
Food security in Britain: time to head for the hills?
How much should people in Britain worry about food security? Here's a starter for ten, taken from a recent Guardian article by Harriet Green: For three...
Starting to think through the long term food agenda
Just back from ten gorgeous days on holiday in Cornwall - hence radio silence on the blogging front, and a much-needed break from frenetic activity on the...
Where next for humanitarian assistance?
I'm over in Geneva, where I've just been presenting to the IASC, which is composed of the heads of the world's largest humanitarian agencies (including UN...
Rising Food Prices: Drivers and Implications for Development
Briefing paper by Alex Evans, published through Chatham House’s food programme (April 2008).
Geoff Hoon: the new Ben Affleck
Sam Coates at The Times reports from the White House Correspondents' Dinner in DC last week ("where the President and Washington press corps show Hollywood...
Public (school) diplomacy
David Miliband writes: My visit this week to Pakistan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iraq was punctuated with people describing their links to Britain. One...
The problem of an independent civil service
For English policy wonks walking along Massachusetts Avenue in Washington DC, the experience is invariably bittersweet. On one hand, they are (they must...
Three foreign policy maxims
A diplomat who shall remain nameless offers three rules of thumb: Don't mistake activity for action Don't mistake access for influence Don't mistake...
Whitehall 2.0
A civil servant friend told me yesterday that the Cabinet Office has just issued guidance that all senior civil servants (that's deputy directors and upwards)...
CNN interview on food prices
Here's a CNN interview I did at an unholy hour this morning on rising food prices. Some of the cutaway footage they've spliced in is truly random. One shot...
Suburban farming
On the front of yesterday's Wall Street Journal, via John Robb - a sign of things to come, perhaps: BOULDER, Colo. -- When suburbanites look out their front...
Australia: not just anyone
Amidst the general swooning over Kevin Rudd (to which even we at Global Dashboard are not immune), the latest convert is David Miliband, who last week penned...
New Chatham House briefing paper on food
I've just published a new Chatham House paper on why food prices are rising and what it means for development: download it here. One of the paper's main...
An SMS Shakesperean tragedy
From Gizmodo, a terrible tale of technology, misunderstanding and revenge. Our story begins in Turkey, where Emine and Ramazan are in the process of...
“We now have a full partner in Pakistan”
Barney Rubin has an excellent post updating on latest developments in Pakistan's federally administered tribal areas. Start, he says, from a clear...
Saudis say “no need” for more oil expansion; global majority thinks oil running out
Interesting times for the peak oil debate. Last week came the news that Russian oil had peaked: its Q1 oil production in 2008 fell, for the first time in a...
More from Global Dashboard
A choice between decline and growth – UK global influence and the Spending Review
This is the first in a series of blogs on the upcoming Spending Review, and how Britain maximises its influence and soft power across the world at a time of declining budgets. This focuses on the Spending Review, and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO). Civil...
People Power – What Progress on Fighting Inequality Would Look Like
Movements overcome injustices not just by bearing witness to the wrongs of the time, but by enabling people to envision a better future. Martin Luther King described the Dream, the Promised Land, the place towards which people were marching. The Anti-Apartheid...
What Diane Abbott gets wrong about Jo Cox’s proposals on Syria
Oh dear. So these people want to join with the Tories & vote to bomb Syria @jo_cox1@JWoodcockMP #sad http://t.co/WRAg4FwjUc — Diane Abbott MP (@HackneyAbbott) October 10, 2015 Labour Shadow International Development Secretary Diane Abbott is right to be sceptical...