Scenes from City life

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Near the Bank of England yesterday. Flickr version here.

I love the City of London. My first job was in a company which was based between the Bank of England and the Stock Exchange, and once — for a bet — I managed to wangle my way onto the Exchange’s trading floor. My office window looked out on the side-entrance to the Bank and ever so often there would be a line of black limousines outside indicating that the Bank’s Court was in session. Later, when the Observer was based in Queen Victoria Street I used to get the train to Liverpool Street and walk down Old Broad Street, Threadneedle Street and Cheapside to St Paul’s, where I often popped in for a quiet moment before plunging into the maelstrom of the newspaper.

Yesterday I found myself at Liverpool Street and decided to walk my old route. Last time I was here was 14 months ago. The atmosphere is very different now. Much more subdued. Many of those expensive boutique shops which cater to the whims of investment bankers have ‘Sale’ and ‘3 for 2’ signs, though the cigar shop opposite the Bank is still in business, still displaying “the biggest cigar in the world” in its window.

Last time I was here it was Christmas and it was impossible, literally impossible, to get a taxi. But yesterday the vast majority of cabs had their ‘For Hire’ signs illuminated.

A matter of timing

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John McPhee had a nice piece about fact-checking in a recent issue of the New Yorker which included this anecdote:

The worst checking error is calling people dead who are not dead. In the words of Josh Hersh, “It really annoys them”. Sara [a retired New Yorker fact-checker] remembers a reader in a nursing home who read in The New Yorker that he was the “late reader” in the nursing home. He wrote demanding a correction. The New Yorker, in its next issue, of course complied, inadvertently doubling the error, because the reader died over the weekend while the magazine was being printed.

John McPhee, “Checkpoints”, New Yorker, Feb 9&16, 2009.

Later: Julian Barnes (who wrote the magazine’s ‘Letter from London’ for years) had a nice essay about the New Yorker’s fact-checkers in one of his books. Now where did I put it?

Obama’s antitrust nominee: “Microsoft is so last century”

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From Microsoft’s local paper.

According to Bloomberg News, Christine Varney, who President Barack Obama has nominated to be the next antitrust chief, is not so concerned about Microsoft’s market position.

“For me, Microsoft is so last century. They are not the problem,” Varney said at a panel discussion sponsored by the American Antitrust Institute in June, according to the Bloomberg report. The U.S. economy will “continually see a problem — potentially with Google” because it already “has acquired a monopoly in Internet online advertising,” she said.

“When all our enterprises move to computing in the clouds and there is a single firm that is offering a comprehensive solution,” Varney said, “you are going to see the same repeat of Microsoft.”

Varney’s view is clearly good news for Redmond, which already seemed to be in favor with the Bush Justice Department. Google and Yahoo abandoned their advertising deal last fall after the Department of Justice said it would file an antitrust lawsuit to block it. Microsoft had lobbied against the deal.

Thanks to Rex Hughes for spotting it.