Scott Liddle

Prev: @taptapsend & @Spare_Hand, special advisor to @RoryStewartUK @DFID_UK, official @BEISgovuk, delegate @ICRC, and Turquoise Mountain in #Afgh & #Jordan.

[Scott Liddle @ScottDRLiddle]

More barges please

[Agnes C. Poirier @AgnesCPoirier]

Oh the beauty of it. #NotreDame's roof trusses are arriving by barge on the Seine River.
(Pics David Bordes©Rebâtir Notre-Dame de Paris)

[Farah Abdessamad @farahstlouis]

Zarafa was a Nubian giraffe gifted to France’s Charles X by Mohamed Ali in 1836.

It took six weeks for the 🦒 to reach Paris from Marseille. The French tailored a raincoat for her.

She lived in the Jardin des Plantes.

[Scott Liddle @ScottDRLiddle]

This is absurd and the wrong use of international aid money — very sad. To spend £3.7bn on hotels and contractors in the UK is mind-boggling.

[Patrick Wintour @patrickwintour]

Official stats out today show the UK in 2022 spent more than three times as much of the aid budget on housing refugees in UK (£3,686 m) than FCDO did alleviating poverty in Africa (£1,109m). Refugee costs now swallow 28.9% of total UK aid. https://t.co/RLTbRYNDpb

[Nicholas Boys Smith @boys_nicholas]

Glory be to God for dappled things

[Scott Liddle @ScottDRLiddle]

paging @AliceFordham for a vigorous defence of brockwell park habitués

[Adrian Wooldridge @adwooldridge]

I'm sick of reading all these Tory denunciations of the North London elite? What about the South London elite? Don't we count for anything?

[Scott Liddle @ScottDRLiddle]

Best April Fools so far...

[Peter Abbott OBE @FCDOPeterAbbott]

As part of our ongoing work to promote British trade and investment in New England, a shipment of high-end, luxury tea will arrive by sea next week. After a short hiatus of 250 years, I’m delighted that British #tea will once again be coming into #Boston harbour! 🇬🇧 🫖

[Scott Liddle @ScottDRLiddle]

All hail FUKUS

[Velina Tchakarova @vtchakarova]

France joins AUKUS. The security and defence bloc is renamed FUKUS.
ht @CovertShores https://t.co/W6b0OClZic

[Scott Liddle @ScottDRLiddle]

Not entirely true — the gravity model applies to trade in services also; less so than to trade in goods, but distance is an important factor nonetheless (as is correlation with trade in goods in fact). Linguistic similarity also important. See eg. https://t.co/FqLBixjFRI

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

We’re a service economy. Distance is irrelevant.

[Scott Liddle @ScottDRLiddle]

To spend a third of development funding inside the UK is complete madness — and a third of a budget already reduced by nearly a third. These are funds that can go so far in helping in Somalia, or Yemen, and many other places — instead spent on contractors and hotels in the UK

[Lizzie Dearden @lizziedearden]

Here follows a story about how the government influences media coverage

At 10am yesterday, journalists were sent a watchdog report finding the UK spent £3.5bn of aid money - 1/3 entire budget - on refugees and asylum seekers already here in 2022
https://t.co/6YaluraMBK

[Centre on Armed Groups @Armed_Groups]

📢 New book with chapters by our Fellow @Ndawsari on 'Houthi Governance: An Examination of Engagement with Tribes' & Co-Director @a_a_jackson on 'Ideological Adaptations in Taliban's Shadow State, 2006-2020', among other valuable analyses of Islamist rule. https://t.co/rzzHbmusZp

[Scott Liddle @ScottDRLiddle]

@PedderSophie cc @yasmineseale

[Scott Liddle @ScottDRLiddle]

Yes!! We wanted to do the same for London as part of @roryforlondon campaign — just needs some vision and boldness…

[Mike Hudema @MikeHudema]

Madrid is building 74km forest belt of half a million trees 🌳 around the city to fight extreme heat, air pollution & climate change.IPCC

We have so many solutions. Implement them. #ActOnClimate

#ClimateCrisis #climate #energy #renewables #biodiversity #IPCC

[Scott Liddle @ScottDRLiddle]

You can’t make this stuff up…

[The Sulha Alliance CIO @SulhaAlliance]

MoD apologises unreservedly after @Independent reveals Afghans were asked to get evacuation documents certified by Taliban. @de_Jong_Sara co-founder @SulhaAlliance said UK bureaucrats often failed to understand what documents are available in Afghanistan.
https://t.co/RDDWBZbLEd

[Scott Liddle @ScottDRLiddle]

Fascinating — and what was happening in the 1820s/30s?

[Daniel Susskind @danielsusskind]

Oh, this one is better. Ngram of 'facts v. feelings' since 1800. In 2007, for the first time since the late 1830s, 'feelings' started to beat 'facts'.

[Scott Liddle @ScottDRLiddle]

@josephmdurso Reminds me of an early Dubai Expo 2020 brochure I saw which (I think) claimed that 80% of the world’s population lived within an ~8 hour direct flight of Dubai, therefore…

[Scott Liddle @ScottDRLiddle]

Saw last year how transformational mobile money has been in Mada — given size, terrain, weather, and difficulty of accessing banks: ideal use-case

[IFC @IFC_org]

Mobile money is revolutionizing financial services in Africa and increasing financial inclusion for one of the world’s poorest countries. #IFCinsights explores how digital finance is helping reach the unbanked in Madagascar: https://t.co/AeHVQpBrFA

[Scott Liddle @ScottDRLiddle]

Check out their podcast “A palace for the people” (inspired by Carnegie’s phrase and library building): https://t.co/vqHSRbfIMl

[Scott Liddle @ScottDRLiddle]

Amazing day in Nairobi visiting 3 public libraries being lovingly restored by @TheBookBunk with Nairobi County Gov @047County. Thank you Angela @SisterKilljoy. Pride, a sense of place, somewhere quiet to study, beauty.

[Susie Dent @susie_dent]

Word of the day is a reminder of 'ipsedixitism' (16th century): the assertion that something is 'fact' because someone else said so.

[Torsten Bell @TorstenBell]

The problem is we speak the same language and watch the same TV. So people often just assume we’re similar to Americans. But we’re not these days. Why? Because they are absolutely minted (technical term for 60% richer than us)