David Miliband U.K. Secretary Of State For Foreign And Commonwealth Affairs Is Too Busy Blogging! Allows The Attack On Pope Benedict!

"Lets Bring The Whole Fucking Thing Down On Their Heads!"

David Miliband U.K. Secretary Of State

For Foreign And Commonwealth Affairs

From The Foreign & Commomwealth Office Blog

A blog about British foreign policy and the work of the Foreign Office. This blog won't be updated during the UK general election campaign


About David Miliband

Work
I was appointed Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs in June 2007 and before this, from May 2006 to June 2007, I was Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

I was elected as MP for South Shields in June 2001 and my previous Ministerial jobs have been Minister of Communities and Local Government (2005-6), Minister for the Cabinet Office (2004-5) and Schools Minister (2002-4).

Before that I headed-up the Prime Minister's Policy Unit at Downing Street, after working as Head of Policy in the Office of the Leader of the Opposition.

From 1989-1994 I worked as a Research Fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) and from 1992-4 was Secretary of the Commission on Social Justice; my first job was for the National Council for Voluntary Organisations.

Education
I was born on 15 July 1965 and my first career ambition was to be a bus conductor. I attended schools in London, Leeds (where I spent a formative year as goalkeeper for the school football team) and Boston in America, before being educated at Haverstock Comprehensive School in North London.

I went on to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where I got a first class honours degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics. After this I was Kennedy Scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where I got a Masters Degree in Political Science.

Interests and family
I am President of South Shields Football Club and am a season ticket holder at Arsenal Football Club.

My wife Louise is a violinist with the London Symphony Orchestra and we have two sons.

About this blog
Politics should be about dialogue and debate, and new technology makes this more possible than ever. But the gap between politicians and the public seems to be growing.

This is why in my last ministerial job I began writing a blog. I found it a great way to engage with people: to explain my work and my thinking in a more personal and less formal way than the usual Ministerial speeches; and to hear directly what people thought of what I was doing.

As Foreign Secretary I want to keep blogging. But it will need to be a conversation with people across the world, as well as with the people of Britain.

At the heart of this is the idea that diplomats need to reach out beyond governments to talk to people – at home and around the world. I want to explain to you the decisions we are making and what we are trying to achieve. And I want to hear from you what you think about what we're doing, what we could do better, and how we can solve problems which affect us all, such as conflict, climate change and poverty.

Having learnt some lessons from my previous blogs, I am also keen to try a couple of new approaches. First of all, my blog will be joined by blogs from different members of my FCO team around the world. This will show more of the enormous range of interesting, and challenging, work we do and why we do it.

I am also keen to make this blog a real dialogue. I can't, of course, respond to every single comment we receive. But we will try to keep abreast of your comments and ideas, and respond to them.

The Last Blog Post from David Miliband

Signing Off
Posted 06 April 2010 by David Miliband
The British General Election is being called today. While it is going on I cannot post blogs for the Foreign Office website. So for now, thank you for all your comments. I hope we'll continue the conversation soon!