As of March 2026, this website is no longer being updated. I now work mainly on climate issues, especially in Brighton and Hove, and new work can be found on the website of Climate:Change, our independent think-tank on socially inclusive action in the City: www.climatechangebh.org.uk.
Meanwhile, however, this website has over 850 entries, mostly representing my work on international development from 2010-2025. Among much else, there are over 50 book reviews, more than 20 papers and training cases on bridging research and policy and on managing think-tanks, nearly 100 articles on climate change, and many papers on other topics, including aid, food security and nutrition, and the future of international development. See ‘Topics and Themes’ for more details. I can be reached at sm@simonmaxwell.net.
Time Bush got Brown's message
Time Bush got Brown's message, Guardian, 11 February 2002
Gordon Brown bangs on about international aid like a man possessed - by Clare Short, perhaps. Speeches in New York and Washington before Christmas. More coverage last week. And a simple proposition: aid should double, adding $50bn (£35bn) a year to the total.
Quite right. Our government, like many others, has committed itself to the ambitious target of reducing poverty by half by 2015 and doubling aid is a necessary condition. The calculations were assembled by an independent panel for next month's UN conference in Monterrey, Mexico on financing for development: $20bn a year to 2015 to halve poverty and hunger; $9bn per annum to achieve universal primary education; $7bn to $10bn for HIV/Aids and so on................. (see link in title for full article)