The blog post Why I don’t write about customer service sets out my problems with the general concept of “customer service”: the fact that it doesn’t deal with the biggest problems in the relationship between people and businesses. By way of illustration, it starts with a story about a friend and I using the weighing machines at the central Oxford branch of Boots.

This New Yorker piece on defeating Nigerian email scams is very interesting indeed. It made me see spammers and scammers in a new light.

Many moons ago, I lightheartedly suggested that we build a device to reduce the volume of stupid internet comments. The device would force you to answer a reading comprehension question before posting a comment. This would cut down on irrelevant drive-by insults and comments that misunderstand the entire point of the post. I called this imaginary device The Comprehender.

“Finding people to fix your typos is easy.” As someone who makes part of their living from proofreading, perhaps I shouldn’t admit it; but it’s true. Seth Godin’s blog < sethgodin.typepad.com > has gradually opened my eyes to the fact that spotting mistakes, amending, editing and so on is easier work than taking productive initiative.

I wrote last week about bad first drafts and why we should do more of them: because getting something out there, however bad, is often the best way of moving forwards with a creative project. I write bad first drafts with a sense of taking one for the team: OK, I’ll be the one who makes myself vulnerable to criticism if it means we can finally get going on this.

It was October, but the Spanish sea was warm enough to swim in. So that’s what I was doing until my husband came running down the beach, waving his arms to tell me to get out of the water. There was a big problem with our train home the next day: French railway staff were going on strike, which meant the sleeper between Barcelona and Paris wasn’t running.

I sometimes do copywriting work for clients who struggle to define exactly what they want. My tactic, which often surprises people, is to come up with what I call “a bad first draft”. It’s easier to look at what I’ve come up with and tell me why it’s wrong than agonise over trying to create a brief for the copy you want.

It started with a twinge. In 2006 I was a new freelancer who jumped at every job offered me. Sometimes that meant working 50 hours a week, but I’d happily do it because I knew that next week, there might be no work at all. I couldn’t believe I was getting paid to write; the very idea of turning work down seemed ridiculous.

Avon and Somerset Police have staged a publicity stunt designed “to encourage members of the public to call 999 as soon as they [see] a crime taking place”, as the BBC website puts it.

“Sometimes I’m afraid my son will be killed for something as insignificant as a snack.” That’s what one woman told researchers when they asked her what it means to be poor. Sabina Alkire, director of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) shared stories like this when she spoke at Oxford Town Hall last night.