Politics, polarisation and pity parties: the Post Office scandal unpicked

This is the second in a series of pieces trying to explain what happened in the UK’s ongoing Post Office scandal and why it matters. The first was about the lack of media coverage the story received for the first 20 years. (It can be found on How Journalists Think, on the Loose Wire Blog … Read more

Why did journalists ignore the biggest miscarriage of justice in British legal history?

Why do journalists not cover some stories — even massive ones — and can they be persuaded to? I’m writing about the UK’s Post Office scandal elsewhere, but for this column on How Journalists Think, I wanted to explore why most UK journalists ignored the country’s biggest ever case of legal injustice for nearly 20 … Read more

A Beginner’s Guide to Scanning

(This is the text of my weekly Loose Wire Service column, written mostly for newcomers to personal technology, and syndicated to newspapers like The Jakarta Post. Editors interested in carrying the service please feel free to email me.) A lot of folk ask me whether they should buy a scanner: those things that take bits … Read more

Column: Ethel fights back

Loose Wire — Tea, Sympathy And Service By Jeremy Wagstaff from the 25 July 2002 edition of the Far Eastern Economic Review, (c) 2003, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. If you want good customer service on-line, try impersonating a little old lady. It worked for me. Frustrated by the poor response to my own e-mail … Read more