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. …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
I was recently interviewed by Dan Schawbel for his blog Personal Branding, and here it is. Jamie, how does one get a really cool job like being the managing editor of Playboy? In a specific way, I knew the right guy at the right time. Prior to being hired, I had contributed to Playboy for …
My eagle-eyed friend John Connolly spotted this complimentary comment about Spy in, of all places, The Tube City Almanac of McKeesport, Pennsylvania: With My Little Eye: One of my purchases during the recent Book Country outing was a history of the late, lamented Spy magazine called Spy: The Funny Years. I started to page through …
“Indeed,” says Joe Klein of Time magazine, “as the weeks have passed since the election, I’ve felt — as an urban creature myself — less restricted, less defensive. Empowered, almost. Is it possible that, as a nation, we’re shedding our childlike, rural innocence and becoming more mature, urban, urbane . . . dare I say …
A highly eclectic, hardly systematic accounting of what I liked best in 2008: 1.) THE ELECTION. What a tremendous drama. The characters were strong and well-drawn–too-good-to-be-true Barack Obama, the redoubtable Hillary Clinton, the indomitable and gracious John McCain, and the brilliantly imagined Sarah Palin, among others–plus the well-plotted series of upsets and comebacks, culminating in …