Jon Snow
I’m sitting the Locarno room at the Foreign Office waiting with 200 other hacks for the Obama/Brown press conference, and even in this august circumstance there’s an air of a palpable expectation. Not of course in terms of economic breakthrough but the mere arrival of The Man.
Jon Snow
There is undoubtedly a historic feel to the impending arrival here of the new American president. But despite the ascent of Barack Obama, Grosvenor Square, in London’s west end, together with the looming hulk that is America’s embassy, will be the focus of anti-globalisation protesters tomorrow. As a clapped-out old protester myself – to my…
Jon Snow
Last night France’s finance minister talked to us on Channel 4 News. So did China’s ambassador to London. They were both in their individual ways impressive. They were both women too. In 2009, well into the 21st century, it is still rare to interview women, even on a programme as enlightened as ours!
Jon Snow
I’m in a high-speed inflatable on the Thames, south of the barrier. What a godforsaken spot! The ExCeL centre where the G20 leaders will meet on Thursday is flanked by a large scrapyard and rather forlorn-looking Victorian dock.
Obscene would be putting it too strongly, but it did seem odd talking about dead African children amid the gilded Louis XIV interiors of Lancaster House last week. One of London’s finest townhouses, just across the road from Buckingham Palace, this is where Rhodesia’s independence from Britain was signed in 1979.
George Soros in today’s FT makes similar points to those raised in my posts on Africa (Zambia here and Tanzania coming later today), Latvia and Hungary about the need “to protect the periphery countries from a storm created in the developed world… the periphery countries will suffer even more than those at the centre”.
Zambia is reckoned to be the 13th poorest country in the world. Sixty-four per cent of the people live in poverty. More than one in six children die before their fifth birthday, and if you live to the age of 42 you are doing better than average. Britain is the largest bilateral donor to Zambia,…
Jon Snow
The EU President Jose Manuel Barroso is a boundless optimist. Most of our intersection yesterday was satisfactorily off the record. I say “satisfactorily” because, of course, you learn far more, and can eventually drip-feed what you learn subtly into succeeding perspectives as the months go by. But what I did learn whilst I was at…