LONDON: SURVEILLANCE CITY
There are more than 800,000 CCTV cameras in London, about 4.5 million in the UK, more per capita than any other place on earth. In Central London, they are everywhere.
LONDON DAY SEVEN
Two final meetings today. I had breakfast with Mark Law (above, clear), a veteran journalist who runs thefirstpost.com, one of the very best websites on either side of the Atlantic. It was fun to trade tales with such an accomplished and experienced editor. Afterwards I journeyed to the South Bank to the headquarters of No2ID, …
LONDON LINE
Why I had to go all the way to London to hear an expatriate report on a New York cop’s version of US Airways Flight 1549’s miraculous and unexpected landing in the Hudson I don’t know, but I did. “What’s there to say?” the cop reportedly told a TV reporter. “A bird. . .a plane. …
LONDON DAY SIX
Another busy day, led off by a phone interview with David Davis, a conservative member of Parliament who was shadow Home Secretary. For those who don’t understand the British system, the out-of-power party has a shadow cabinet, so that when an election is called, voters know who will hold post if that party is elected. …
LONDON: ON THE TUBE
Above, an ad posted by atheists on the underground, to counter the WWJD ads put up by fundamentalists. The tube leads the way in video ads. One of the most compelling is a ten second version of a longer commercial for T-Mobile, in which a flash mob comes together to do a bunch of line …
LONDON DAY FIVE: OH, THE PEOPLE YOU’LL MEET!
Wednesday was far and away the busiest and perhaps the most exciting day of the trip. At breakfast at the Royal Gardens Hotel, I met Mina Al-Oraibi (above), the Current Affairs journalist for Asharq Alawsat, an international, pan-Arab daily. I had seen Mina on the BBC’s Dateline London program many times, and knew her to …
LONDON DAY FOUR, PART II
In the evening I met David Cox at the great, grand Grosvenor Hotel near Victoria Station. David is a writer and former broadcast journalist whose work, oddly enough, I was recognizing just as he was being recommended to me; just the week before last, he wrote what seemed to be an insightful article about how …
LONDON DAY FOUR
It didn’t seem reasonable to go to London to write about CCTV, and not make a pilgrimage to quiet Islington in North London, where, at 27B Canonbury Square, George Orwell wrote 1984. Today, within 200 yards of the building, 32 CCTV cameras are in unblinking operation. The building, by the way, is for sale. I …
LONDON DAY THREE
One of the side benefits of being the friend of Tim O’Toole, most especially when you are writing an article about CCTV, is that as Managing Director of the London Underground, Tim runs one the largest CCTV systems in the country. Presently he has nearly 10,000 cameras, and soon he will have 12,000. On Monday …
LONDON DAY TWO
As luck would have it, my friend, college roommate and the best man at my wedding, Tim O’Toole, lives in London, and a more generous and better informed guide would be hard to imagine. On Sunday he and I visited the Tate Modern on the South Bank. Frankly, I was disappointed. I had heard that …