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FCO’s brilliant Kosovo blog

I can’t let today go by without mentioning the marvellous blogging effort over at the Foreign Office. Ruairi O Connell, deputy head of the British Embassy-in-waiting in Pristina, Kosovo, has put together a series of fascinating posts which give a terrific crash course in why today’s declaration of independence matters. Simple things like the protocol of how you refer to place names, the historic context, the personal stories. Read this one page, and be dramatically better informed.

When Ruairi started blogging in January, I noted: ‘An insight from the UK’s Embassy-in-waiting could be very timely indeed.’ I’m now starting to wonder if it might actually be a deliberate new policy, to use the freedom of the web to tell the story from inside international hotspots. Traditionally, corporate blogging efforts have foundered because people have been unable (supposedly) to find the time. This almost looks like the Foreign Office deciding that blogging is a communication priority. And if so, good on them.

Next on the list, by the looks of it, is a new blog from Philip Barclay at the Embassy in Zimbabwe. Another hotspot, at another significant moment: presidential elections are due in a month. Never mind the fact that the BBC - including the World Service, funded by the FCO - are banned from the country.

PS: Pristina’s Albanian-language Express newspaper had a contender for Headline Of The Year. Be warned, it contains one use of very strong language in English, and in large print. See this thumbnail, or the full edition in PDF.

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