Dengl 3 How to have Two Top Lives (in London anyway)

The Evening Standard in London gave away in mid-October a booklet listing “The 1000 London’s Most Influential People 2007” http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/influential.do/. The introduction also declares that “London is the world’s most influential city”. Maybe – this depends on how one measures such things – but as we will see, systematic analysis is not the name of London’s (or the Standard’s) current game. Influence should be measurable in terms not just of current impact worldwide but also guessable in terms of anticipated impact in the future.
Looking through the 22 walks of life listed in the Contents (24 walks of life on the outside cover) one soon notices that a person in one section appears again elsewhere (Sebastian Lord Coe, for example, and James Purnell Gordon Brown’s new man in the Department of Culture media and Sport). This may mean that there are not actually 1000 names in the whole booklet. Never mind – this is the least important drawback in what is in many ways a valuable and interesting exercise.
My main sadness is that there is no section on Science. Yes, Education is there, and Health, but no specific section for Science. This is connected with the weakness in outlook which emphasises energy, charisma, heaps of bounding current success, but which partly neglects the intellectual foundation on which durability depends.
The Contents list starts with “new media” (itself a dubious term), goes on with retail, and ends with television & radio and finally “Social London”. This is a markedly upper class collection whose recognition or impact fifty years on may well be fading out of sight. Daily we read of street stabbings by teenage members of “gangs” – are these not a prominent part of “social London” with a huge impact on how many people live now – and possibly on the future evolution of the capital?
In the section on ‘literary life’ we lead with J.K.Rowling who may or may not be considered a Londoner, since she lives in Edinburgh, and Jamie Byng, an Edinburgh publisher; also borrowed is Chimamanda Adichie who lives in America. These are not quintessential Londoners surely, but also listed is Charlotte Mendelson – the topic of a separate Dengl.