Ged Carroll

Category: london | 倫敦 | 런던 | ロンドン

Why London?

First of all I live in London, I put down my roots here because of work. Commuting from the outside towns into the city takes a long time. People only tend to do that when they don’t have to come in every day or getting their kids into a good school is important for them.

Secondly it is an area distinct from the rest of the UK, this is partly down to history and the current economic reality. It is distinct in terms of population make-up and economic opportunity. London has a culture that is distinct from the rest of the UK, partly due to its population make-up. Over 30 percent of the city’s inhabitants were born in another country. From music to fashion, its like a different country:

  • As one women’s clothing retailer once said on a news interview ‘The further north you go; the more skin you see’.
  • The weekend is a huge thing outside the city. By comparison, it isn’t the big deal in London. The reason was that there were things you could enjoy every night of the week.
  • You can get a good cup of coffee
  • The city was using cashless payments way before it became universal elsewhere in the country
  • The line has extended into politics. London opposed Brexit. London, like other major cities it is one of the last holdouts of Labour party support in the 2019 UK general election

London posts often appear in other categories, as it fulfils multiple categories.

If there are London subjects that you think would fit with this blog, feel free to let me know by leaving a comment in the ‘Get in touch’ section of this blog here.

  • London conference on cyberspace

    The Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the British Government has always had the best online presence of all the different government departments, but I still find it interesting that it is they rather than the department of media and culture who are looking to lead a discussion on the future of the web and associated technologies. The FCO are hosting a conference on cyberspace in London on November 1-2, 2011 and are extending it online through social media platforms. I can’t help but feel the dialogue is aimed as much within the UK as internationally.

    Of course, the ironic thing is that the UK isn’t at all progressive in terms of all things internet related compared to the likes of South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, Iceland or Finland to name but a few countries. The Digital Economy Bill and actions done by the likes of Ed Vaizey have shown resistance rather than working out how it can benefit from the change. The music industry tried to fight the change and has torn itself apart so it will be interesting to see how that stance will work out. I look forward to following the conference on cyberspace; in cyberspace.

    Find out more here. More online related topics here.

  • Beyond The Crash by Gordon Brown

    On leaving office, Gordon Brown immediately spent a lot of time hammering out a book Beyond The Crash. Unlike Peter Mandelson this wasn’t the Westminster equivalent of a sordid kiss-and-tell exposé or a Tony Blair-esque sales brochure to secure speaking engagements. Instead Brown set out to do what he does best, putting on page deep thought and analysis about the knotty problem of global finances. He did an excellent job of marshaling ideas and sources in the book. His grasp on Asian economics and China in particular is very good. There is a whole section on the Asian crisis of 1998 which is well worth reading on its own.

    In this respect, the Beyond The Crash is a solid piece of work, Brown isn’t as compelling a writer as other economic thinkers that the Labour party has looked to like Will Hutton; but he does a good job at making his ideas and concepts understandable to the average reader.

    Where things go wrong with the book is where Brown tries to humanise his writing. His comments of praise for colleagues and other politicians feels wooden, as if it was written into his book as a postscript. And it is because of this that we see a glimpse of Brown the politician; the polar opposite of his predecessor Tony Blair. Someone who thought at great depth and knew what to do but didn’t have the surface finish.

    If you are prepared to persevere with the book, it is a good read, and is currently for sale in Amazon Marketplace at a massive discount to the cover price. More book reviews here.

  • The futility of QRcodes on tube

    Traveling on the London Underground ‘tube’ recently I have noticed that more and more adverts have a QRcode. But the trips also highlighted the futility of using a QRcode, particularly on many of the deep lines.

    I am not too sure if tube QRcode is a recent phenomena or that I have been paying more attention as a number of the projects that I’ve been recently looking at are about the ‘web of no web‘: the interface between the web and the real world. I am a big fan of progressive approaches to marketing, however, the more I thought about the phenomena, the greater the waste of time that it seemed to be:

    • Londoners often joke about the tube being like cattle trucks; in reality European Union regulations wouldn’t allow livestock to travel on a train with the conditions of the tube on a hot summers day. A combination of overcrowding together with the lack of air conditioning  means that some of the lines can be as hot as a walk in the desert. The over-crowding also means that would be hard to take a picture of a QR code. So whilst the advert may have a large reach, the realistic reach of the QR code call to action is a lot smaller
    • So you happen to be lucky in terms of where the crush places you and try to snap the QR code with your phone. You probably won’t be successful, tube lines aren’t known for the smooth ride of say the Paris Métro, so you will be trying to hold your camera still whilst the train carriage rocks and sways in front of your smartphone. Your phone won’t be able to focus and take a clear image of the QR code. That’s one of the reason’s why there isn’t a tube advert shown here to illustrate this post, despite at least three attempts over the past week to snap a picture of an appropriate advert
    • Unlike other mass transit systems in the likes of Singapore and Hong Kong, huge high-traffic sections of the lines are underground or in such a deep cutting that they are inaccessible to mobile phone networks so QR code won’t take the audience through to an appropriate web page, but instead prompt a ‘network unavailable’ message

    The futility of QRcodes on the tube shows that the media buyers, marketers and or designers don’t pay much attention to the context of their advertisement art work, which could artificially skew campaign objectives and measurement adversely. In order to combat ‘the futility’, we need to go beyond TGI data and media packs. We can start this process by keeping our eyes open to the world around us.

  • Hackgate & UK audience

    Much has been made this week on the Murdoch’s appearing at a parliamentary inquiry into hackgate: a scandal involving phone hacking and other nefarious practices by the media in order to get stories. What is less getting less to no real discussion is what hackgate says about the UK audience. News International is a business, if the content didn’t sell, they wouldn’t create more of it.

    Content that would formerly only air in blackmail cases would appear on the Sunday breakfast table and consumers lapped up the lives of public figures. I am no fan of News Corporation’s media outlets but I feel very uncomfortable about the four-minute hate that is going on at the moment. Lots of people are enjoying the details about the how, but nobody seems to be asking about the why of the whole episode.

    Like the war on drugs, the problem isn’t only one of supply, but one of latent and actual demand that will be supplied one way or the other. Whilst there are middle-class people who believe that cocaine is an ideal final course at a dinner party you will have drug cartels. Whilst you have consumers who have a prurient interest in other people’s lives there will be publications that are willing to push the envelope in news-gathering.

    Why aren’t questions being asked about the thirst of UK consumers for the kind of stories that hackgate revealed. An examination of society as well as media ethics is called for.

    Why did it take the murder of a child (Milly Dowling) to suddenly make the media gathering behaviour move from naughty to wrong in the general public’s eyes? More media related commentary can be found here.

    More discussions of note about the case

    Monocolumn – High farce lets Murdoch off the hook [Monocle]

    RPT-COLUMN-It pays to be Murdoch. Just ask US gov’t: DCJohnston | Reuters

    Hunt asks regulators to reconsider News Corp/Sky deal – Media news – Media Week

    Murdoch Closing Tabloid Linked to British Hacking – NYTimes.com

    James Murdoch accused of lying

    UK deputy PM: Chance to clean up press-gov’t ties

  • Maze restaurant

    In many other countries the best restaurants are often found in a good quality hotel; in London you have a lot of restaurants out of hotels in areas like Mayfair and Soho. Gordon Ramsay’s Maze restaurant is inside the London Marriott Grosvenor Square hotel.

    Grosvenor Square is a bit out of my stomping ground, but would be ideal for shoppers on New Bond Street and the plethora of hedge fund managers based in Mayfair. I went along with my friend Tomoko on a Saturday morning, so your mileage may vary.

    Whilst the hotel is a vintage brick building, the interior design of the restaurant has a modern tip with a nod to 1960s science fiction films. We got there early and so grabbed a drink at the bar. The bartender was friendly and set a high standard of service that was matched later on when we sat down to eat.

    One of the problems with having a successful career is the inevitable spread that comes with too many corporate lunches. maze addresses this by having a menu more akin to a set of tasters rather than full-blown dishes. The food is tasty and aesthetically pleasing modern European in style.

    Whilst you eat the food, you can hold a reasonable conversation with your lunch date, given that the noise levels are lower than most Soho diners because of the acoustic panels lining the walls. In fact, the only thing that would negate me recommending maze as a business restaurant is the fact it only opens as 12h00; so there is no breakfast menu – which nukes half the business meetings I do.

    maze restaurant (in the London Marriott Grosvenor Square hotel)
    10-13 Grosvenor Square
    London W1K 6JP
    020 7495 2211
    Open Daily 12pm-2:30pm, 6pm-10:30pm