The Online Diplomat0

• DIPLO Blog, Public diplomacy
• 21st September 2020

Skip to content Sian MacLeod
UK Ambassador to Serbia
Part of Digital Diplomacy FCDO Outreach UK in Serbia
21st September 2020 Belgrade, Serbia
The Online Diplomat The Online DiplomatI was recently asked to open a conference on communications. Because of the public health situation the conference was held virtually, that is to say, online.
It’s a dangerous thing to be an amateur opening a conference of professionals.
To do so using their own medium was, to use typically British irony, ‘courageous’.
I realised that I was probably in more need of advice from the experts than they were from me. But as the saying goes, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Diplomacy, broadly speaking is about policy, people and places. A diplomat’s life and work is about presenting policy, meeting people and visiting places.
That’s tricky just now.
I wouldn’t go as far as a well-known commentator for Carnegie Europe who said that coronavirus had “brought diplomatic activity to a standstill”.
But there is a qui..

Why the British Embassy in Vienna is proud to be green0

• DIPLO Blog, Public diplomacy
• 17th September 2020

Skip to content Leigh Turner
Ambassador to Austria and UK Permanent Representative to the United Nations and other International Organisations in Vienna
17th September 2020 Vienna, Austria
Why the British Embassy in Vienna is proud to be greenDiplomats from the British Embassy are off to an important meeting in Vienna. The Ringstrasse, as so often, is gridlocked. No problem for our diplomats, who hop on an embassy bike and arrive not only on time, but in style.
Our British Embassy Vienna bikesOur embassy bikes mean that British diplomats in Vienna make many journeys by bike which would once have been by car. Result: zero emissions (apart, perhaps, from some panting). The bikes are just one of the measures we have taken to make the three British diplomatic missions in Austria greener. Our Embassy ‘green team’ are constantly looking for ways to reduce our environmental footprint. Measures we have taken so far include:
Banning single use plastics. This is harder than it sounds. The first..

How Austria has – and hasn’t – changed0

• DIPLO Blog, Public diplomacy
• 7th September 2020

Skip to content Leigh Turner
Ambassador to Austria and UK Permanent Representative to the United Nations and other International Organisations in Vienna
7th September 2020 Vienna, Austria
How Austria has – and hasn’t – changed‘You were a diplomat in Vienna in the ‘80s?’ My interlocutor scans me, perhaps wondering why I am still working, or alive. ‘It must have changed so much!’
‘Well…’ I seek a diplomatic reply. ‘Yes and no.’
Oscar Wilde famously said “Comparisons are odious”. I often cite him when asked which of my diplomatic postings I have preferred out of Vienna, Moscow, Berlin, Kyiv and Istanbul. But Vienna has evolved since 1984-87, when I served here as second secretary press and political.
With exactly one year to go before I am due to conclude my posting as ambassador in Vienna, I thought I would have a go at highlighting five things that have changed since the ‘80s, and five things that haven’t:
What hasn’t changed

(i) Vienna used to be so grey and dull, didn’t it? Young Vi..

How Austria has – and hasn’t – changed0

• DIPLO Blog, Public diplomacy
• 7th September 2020

Skip to content Leigh Turner
Ambassador to Austria and UK Permanent Representative to the United Nations and other International Organisations in Vienna
7th September 2020 Vienna, Austria
How Austria has – and hasn’t – changed‘You were a diplomat in Vienna in the ‘80s?’ My interlocutor scans me, perhaps wondering why I am still working, or alive. ‘It must have changed so much!’
‘Well…’ I seek a diplomatic reply. ‘Yes and no.’
Oscar Wilde famously said “Comparisons are odious”. I often cite him when asked which of my diplomatic postings I have preferred out of Vienna, Moscow, Berlin, Kyiv and Istanbul. But Vienna has evolved since 1984-87, when I served here as second secretary press and political.
With exactly one year to go before I am due to conclude my posting as ambassador in Vienna, I thought I would have a go at highlighting five things that have changed since the ‘80s, and five things that haven’t:
What hasn’t changed

(i) Vienna used to be so grey and dull, didn’t it? Young Vi..