OK, that’s me done for the year. Off to gorge on mince pies and family dysfunction. See you next year. ht Richard Cunliffe for the cartoon. I mean – gold, frankincense and myrrh. What’s with that?

Now the LSE term is over, I’ve been catching up with the backlog of The Economist and Prospect (my two print subscriptions). One Economist piece caught my eye – ‘How to Change the Policy of the British Government’. The answer is apparently….blogging! ‘To wangle £11bn ($14bn) out of the British government, it helps to write a blog post. “Full expensing”, which

Some COP 28 links. First a nice ‘killer graphic’ on the paltry funds being pledged for loss and damage, ht Loss and Damage Collaboration (L&DC) And the best wrap up I’ve seen so far: ‘COP 28: neither a triumph nor a disaster, so let’s just crack on’ from Simon Maxwell Harrowing: ‘What can I do?’: Reflections of a Gaza aid

Links I Liked UN Women makes Norm Change central to its mission What’s it like Explaining NGOs to Senior Military types from 40 Countries? Feminist Climate Justice – what is it and how could it help? Mia Mottley on Slavery, Poverty, George Floyd, Climate and the Future of the World Some last minute Christmas book presents

Lucy Gray asked in comments for some recommended reads for last minute presents. Be careful what you wish for, but where to start? I picked 5 criteria for this completely personal selection: What emerges from these competing demands? I’ve grouped these 16 books v roughly into 5 thematic areas (with lots of overlap, obvs): Activism Bury the Chains: timeless classic

I was lucky enough to attend the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley’s extraordinary speech at LSE last week (Video here or audio file here). Props to outgoing Oxfam CEO Danny Sriskandarajah and whoever else from Oxfam was involved in pulling it together, along with the LSE’s International Inequalities Institute, who hosted. It was jaw-dropping for both the performance, interweaving

Guest post from Laura Turquet, Silke Staab and Constanza Tabbush, all of UN Women By the time you read this, you may know the final result of COP 28 in Dubai, but as of Monday, it doesn’t look very hopeful. Could feminist thinking unlock some of the logjams that continue to frustrate action on the scale and speed that we

Got a grilling from an unusual audience (for me) last week. 100+ senior military officers (colonels and above) from 40 countries, attending what amounts to a UK-sponsored ‘military Masters’ (my words) – a year-long course on strategy for future leaders. Can’t be more specific as it was Chatham House rule. My task was to introduce them to the wonderful world

Bafflingly, I was recently invited to an online ‘Expert Group Meeting’ to help UN Women flesh out a really important new strategy – making norm change central to its role. This from the Concept Note for the session: ‘In recognition of the emerging emphasis on an articulated approach to social norms in international development and acknowledging that discriminatory social norms

Oxfam got a lot of coverage for its new report (with the Guardian among others) on the links between economic and carbon inequality – i.e. the carbon footprints of the extreme rich. A cartoon strip from the wonderful First Dog on the Moon definitely helped. Whole strip here As did this powerful graphic from Mumbai ‘Something’s different about the reaction

Links I Liked Voices of Gaza What do 70 Masters students from around the world want to campaign on? What to read on the new UK White Paper on International Development? What can we learn from looking at the overlaps between innovations in ways of doing research and neglected development issues?

The same subjects have been coming up again and again in random conversations recently, especially the ones where someone comes down to South London for a general chat in a local coffee shop (one of my favourite ways of avoiding work). In a recent discussion with Oxfam Mexico’s Estefanie Hechenberger, a small penny dropped – the value of looking at