Over in Brussels, a heated debate is underway about a sensible new proposal to cap the amount of food that is burnt as biofuels. But so far, a number of European energy and environment ministers including UK Energy Secretary Ed Davey cannot see the need for such a cap.

We could be the generation to end poverty. For many that statement seems a little unbelievable at least in part because we've heard it all before. But it really is possible - the problem is maybe that we've tended to get too bogged down in the past and thinking that the problem of global poverty is just too big to solve.

A remarkable revolution is taking place in finance, not in the City, but under the shade of large communal trees in villages across Africa and the developing world. It's a savings revolution, and one with the potential to pump $157 billion into the global economy, and particularly developing nations, if the 2.7bn adults worldwide who are 'unbanked' participate in savings-led microfinance programmes.

It's not just down to me to tackle poverty. It's not just down to me individually, to my organisation, or to the UK. The sooner we stop abdicating responsibility and expecting 'someone' to sort it all out, the better.

Aid doesn't always work. Is that what you expected the chief exec of an NGO serving more than 50 countries to say? No? I'm not surprised.

Our Olympic and Paralympic heroes deserved every bit of the great parade we saw last week. But why didn't this celebration happen again yesterday? That's when the UN announced that the number of children dying each year under the age of five has fallen by 41% since 1990. While 12 million died in 1990, just under seven million lives were lost in 2011. That's 14,000 a day less than were dying in 1990. The progress made in reducing child deaths must be one of the biggest success stories of the last decade. Yet there was no tickertape parade.

Next year Putin and Cameron take the reins of the G20 and G8 respectively. They must show that bringing the most powerful people in the world together can still deliver results for the most powerless.

At its inception in 1945, the IMF was disputed by two rival tendencies. The British group, led by the brilliant economist J Maynard Keynes, envisaged an organisation which would act to regulate capital flow world-wide in order to cap national deficits, and so avoid the employment crises and economic collapses which had wracked the world economy of the 30s.

My day started at 6.30am as I got up to go to the gym, which I do regularly in a normal week, but this was the first time I'd been since I started living on £1 a day.

With the Queen's Speech just two weeks away it's becoming increasingly unlikely that the Coalition government will keep their promise to enshrine 0.7% of GNI on international aid.

Contrary to initial hopes that biofuels would help us tackle climate change, the UK's planned use of biofuels will make climate change worse by increasing UK greenhouse gas emissions. This will potentially having the same effect as adding - yes adding - another six million cars to Britain's roads.

The mantra of growth as a cure to the economic malaise that is engulfing Europe and the US is repeated ad nauseam by economists and political pundits. My training is in engineering science, not economics, so let us not be encumbered by economic dogma or theory. Let us go back to first principles to examine some of the prevailing economic axioms.