Blog Action Day | The heat is on
When it comes to climate change, things are hotting up. I don’t just mean in the way many people are aware of – that is, that global temperatures are getting warmer and the world needs to act now if we …
Vicky Seymour
Wouldn't you want to mill your own flour?
So today it was my turn in the climate change hot seat here at the World Bank in Washington. The highlight of my day was being able to approve an exciting new programme called Scaling-up Renewable Energy (SREP). SREP will focus on …
From the front line to the political front
Talk about a rollercoaster of a start to a new job... I thought coming back from Afghanistan would mean a period of relative relaxation. How wrong I was! Climate change is where it's at. My first couple of months have …
Departing Afghanistan: Reflections on my year in Helmand
My time in Afghanistan has, all too soon, come to an end. I'm moving on for pastures new, not because I'm ready to leave the country I've come to love so much, but just because the time has come. I'll …
The festive season in Afghanistan
Christmas Day on camp will mean roast turkey and all the trimmings, served by the civilians, officers and senior non-commissioned officers. There'll be a carol service in the chapel, touch rugby, Christmas films and of course the Queen's speech. I …
An invisible issue? AIDS in Afghanistan
As people around the world concentrate on HIV/AIDS - today is World AIDS Day - it's hard to know where to focus here in Afghanistan. We just don't know much at all about the scale of the problem. Data for …
Remembering the dead
Of all the routine events of life here in Helmand, there’s one thing I’ll never get used to: the all too frequent repatriation services, or ‘ramp ceremonies’, for fallen soldiers. 125 British soldiers have now died in Afghanistan. While the …
Round and round in circles: life on camp in Lashkar Gah
I live on a military base in a very dusty part of the world, where temperatures top 50 degrees in the summer. We've not seen much rain since I first came here in early June. A number of UK troops live on …
A day in the life of a civilian in Afghanistan
I was in the air somewhere above Helmand the other day, flying in a Sea King helicopter, trying to do my commute-time reading, but a long way from the squeeze of the Tube. A moment later, I was interrupted from …
Things that go boom in the night
The themes of my week have been interrupted dinners and the frequent donning of body armour. Why? On Saturday night, there was an attempted attack on Lashkar Gah - the first since the Taleban arrived here in the 1990s. The …
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