Mark Seddon
Mark Seddon is the former United Nations Correspondent and New York Bureau Chief for Al-Jazeera English TV. He reported from eighteen countries during that time, including North Korea, China, Haiti, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. He has interviewed, amongst others, Ban Ki-Moon, Lech Walesa, Tony Blair, Hans Blix, Michael Foot, Mia Farrow, and George Clooney. In a journalistic career spanning over twenty years, he has been Editor of Tribune and an elected member of the UK Labour Party's National Executive Committee. He has written for most British newspapers and many magazines, including The Guardian, The Independent, The Daily Mail, The Times, The Spectator, New Statesman, Private Eye, British Journalism Review and Country Life Magazine. For a number of years he was a Diarist at the London Evening Standard, and has also reported for, amongst others, the BBC and Sky TV. He lives in Buckingham, England.
What future is there for journalism? Or is there a future in journalism for many of the bright young things who will have read a recent article titled ‘The Hamster […]
Britain now faces a ‘Winter of Discontent’, which is what many commentators claim will happen each winter, taking their cue from the winter of 1979, when the country ground to […]
JUST how committed is the new British Coalition Government to Human Rights – and in particular the much trampled human rights of the Chagossians who have spent the best part […]
How about this for some real corporate mumbo jumbo? BP’s own internal report into the Deepwater Horizon disaster mixes the technical with the pseudo diplomatic. But there is no doubt […]
AS the dust begins to settle on an extraordinary week dominated by the astonishing spectacle of a former Prime Minister peddling memoirs whose vulgarity and venality thoroughly demeans the office […]
THE Dean of Columbia’s School of Journalism recently bemoaned the lack of public broadcasting in the United States, and went on to argue that America needed its own version of […]
It has come to a pretty pass indeed, when we have to rely on the New York Times to report a British political and media scandal, while much of the […]
As ballot papers for Labour’s leadership land on doorsteps this week, those charged with electing the next Leader of the Opposition, namely party members, MPs and affiliated trades unionists have […]
London: Westminster sources claim that the former leader of the Liberal Democrats, Charles Kennedy, has been discussing defecting to the Labour Party, with four or five Liberal Democrat colleagues. The […]
There is much excitement and controversy too over the decision by former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to hand over the proceeding from his soon to be published memoirs. The Royal […]
New York, like London, is peopled by every race and denomination –and indeed by those who have none. Whatever your place of worship, if indeed you do, there are Churches, […]
Just as better off New Yorkers head for the Hamptons in August and the French head en masse on holiday, clogging up roads, the British see August as the month […]
We are but two days away from Friday 13th August, which for all of those who are superstitious about black cats or walking under ladders, threatens to be something of […]
Imagine heading out West with a pair of binoculars and unexpectedly coming across a pair of passenger pigeons, birds that have been extinct for decades? Or imagine driving into the […]
“Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated”, Mark Twain famously responded after reading his obituary in the New York Journal. To which may now be added “Reports of the […]
Since this is Big Think’s ‘Month of Thinking Dangerously’, here are my three pennies worth. In politics it has almost been impossible to think dangerously on either side of the Atlantic […]
At one level you can but admire the chutzpah of CNN President Jonathan Klein who is replacing the venerable Larry King with an English presenter, who King says he” wouldn’t […]
Self serving, egotistical and narcissistic. These epithets accurately describe the personality and motivations of former UK Business Secretary, former Northern Ireland Secretary and former Industry Secretary, Lord Peter Mandelson. Which […]
There is at least one way of guaranteeing Western media interest in the United Nations; a leaked letter from a disgruntled former employee that attacks a “leaking culture” within the […]
Silence speaks volume. In the unmitigated disaster that is the Gulf of Mexico, two silent partners watch as BP endures a hurricane of criticism, Transocean and Haliburton, who it has […]
When, after thirty years of authoritarian rule, a young dissident and perennial thorn in the side of the Establishment, Mohammed Nasheed won the first free and fair election in the Maldives in […]
It is no wonder that the Government of the Maldives has been talking about buying up a tract of land elsewhere in South Asia to evacuate its people to if global sea levels […]
IT is ten days since French MPs voted to ban the Burqa, on the grounds that the garment “is an insult to the country’s values”. Yesterday two women wearing a […]
Mr Cameron has gone to Washington. Have any of you noticed? David Cameron is the new British Prime Minister, and today he is meeting with President Obama in the White […]
To coin a phrase by Britain’s pre Second World Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, “It is a faraway country of which we know little”. Chamberlain was of course referring to Czechoslovakia, […]
“Just rejoice at this news!” So said Mrs Thatcher outside Downing Street as Prime Minister on news that the Royal Marines had recaptured the uninhabited, ice bound island of South […]
IN what will be seen as a significant ratcheting up of the pressure on isolated North Korea, South Korea is considering major changes in its relations with China – up […]
“Mad, bad and dangerous”, these are the epithets apparently attached to Gordon Brown, our previous Prime Minister by Tony Blair our previous Prime Minister but one. They form the centre […]
Robert Reich warns of “coming trade wars” in a recent blog, also carried by Big Think. It is an important contribution in as far as it recognises that a debate […]
As a result of a recently leaked assessment from the UK Treasury the new British Government’s austerity budget will most likely lead to 1.3 million jobs being lost across the […]