Rebecca Thomson speaks

Hi

Being in isolation give you a chance to do some literal and metaphorical housekeeping. The hoovering starts tomorrow! The following is an example of the latter.

Four years ago I contacted Rebecca Thomson, the journalist who broke the Post Office Horizon story for Computer Weekly in 2009. She worked under the guidance of Tony Collins, who will be well known to readers of this email, but Rebecca did the work herself. She produced what I think, in retrospect, is one of the single most important pieces of journalism this century. That might sound like I’m over-egging it, but when you read about the impact the piece has had – and how big this story has grown – it is hard not to put it up there.

Of course, I know all we journalists have done is report. The activism, the campaigning and the sheer hard yards have been ground out by the Subpostmasters themselves – chief among them Alan Bates – and the politicians and professionals who have given up goodness knows how many hours to help them.

But everyone loves a good origins story, don’t they? So I thought the Making Of… that first Computer Weekly investigation might be of interest.

Callanan’s query

If you missed it, Lord Callanan has sent a letter to the Department of Health querying Paula Vennells fitness to chair an NHS Trust – and (off topic, forgive me), if you want to read a practical guide to avoiding getting coronavirus, this article in El Pais newspaper is the best I’ve seen so far. It allows you to judge risk far more effectively than anything I’ve seen to date.

The Johnny Depp v NGN Newspapers judgment comes through on Monday so I’m probably going to be focused on that for a bit, but I hope you’ve found the recent flurry of Post Office pieces useful.

Have a bon weekend.

Nick