Tag Archives: Cameron

Development aid debate – today and post-2015

Posted on September 26, 2012 | Leave a comment

Further to my 24 September post on the re-emerging debate in Britain about foreign aid, I neglected a major reason why the government’s commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of GDP on development assistance isn’t changing: Prime Minister David Cameron is co-chair of the UN High Level Panel on the future of development. No surprise, then, that he confirmed the 0.7 per cent commitment straight after the panel’s first meeting. Continue reading →

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Posted in International development

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England’s riots: If the UK were a fragile state…

Posted on August 15, 2011 | 10 Comments

Last week, rioting and looting gripped England. At a time when many people are feeling in one way or another bad about our country, it seemed salient (and perhaps inevitable) to ask, if the UK were a fragile state, how would we approach the events of last week, their aftermath and the future? Continue reading →

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Posted in Conflict & peace, Riots

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Libya: the (next) moment of decision is approaching

Posted on July 6, 2011 | 1 Comment

When intervention in Libya was being discussed in Britain a few months back, the key ethical argument was the dual claim of the urgency of doing something and impossibility of standing by and doing nothing. After the first 2-3 weeks, it became clear even to passionate advocates of intervention that the issue was more complicated than that. Continue reading →

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Posted in Conflict & peace

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Libya and the fog of intervention

Posted on April 10, 2011 | 6 Comments

The three weeks of what has become NATO’s armed intervention in Libya have generated far more questions than anyone could hope to answer. The uncertainties by no means overwhelm the case for intervention but they do add immediacy to the reservations expressed by the doubters and sceptics. Continue reading →

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Posted in Conflict & peace

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Intervention in Libya? A case of shooting slowly from the hip

Posted on March 10, 2011 | 7 Comments

Only ten days ago, when UK Prime Minister David Cameron put up the flag for a no-fly zone over Libya, nobody saluted. Now the British and French are drafting a UN Security Council Resolution. After all, you cannot just sit and watch the dictator wield overhwelming force so he and his disgusting son can hang onto power and not think something should be done to stop him.

True enough – but you should think very, very carefully about what can and should be done. Continue reading →

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Posted in Conflict & peace, Power

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The new UK economic greenprint, politics and how the media reacted

Posted on July 16, 2009 | 1 Comment

Two of the big issues the world faces today are how to recover from the economic crunch and how to reverse global warming and deal with climate change. On Wednesday 15 July the UK government addressed both with a major policy statement reshaping its energy policy to reduce carbon emissions. It signals a bold effort to green the economy and create several hundred thousand new jobs. The biggest risk it faces is getting politically entangled – and in this regard, the media reaction was a worry.

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Posted in Climate change, The economic crunch

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