About Online Rant

Online Rant is an independent magazine of short opinion columns about the small, specific frustrations of modern British life. We cover the things that make a reasonable person sigh audibly in a queue.

What we write about

Software updates that remove features. Cookie banners. Rail ticketing. Parking apps. Chatbots. Printed receipts that could wallpaper a hall. The planning notice in six-point type. The shop that will only take contactless. The things, in short, that are not important enough for the news and too persistent to leave alone.

How we work

Columns are written by the editors or by guest contributors, under the Online Rant byline. We do not run personal attacks, we do not name private individuals as rogues, and we do not call a business a wrong-un unless the complaint is already a matter of public record. We prefer specific examples that illustrate a problem to anonymous rumour.

What we are not

We are not a consumer advice line. For actual problems, Citizens Advice, Which? Consumer Rights and the relevant ombudsman are the sensible places to start. We link to them often. We are also not a tech blog, a satire site, or a politics site. We try to be funny when something is funny and plain when it is not.

Corrections

If we get a fact wrong, email [email protected] with a link and we will correct it and add a dated note at the foot of the column. We would rather read a cross email than leave a mistake sitting.

Credits

The masthead and favicon are our own drawings. Fonts are DM Serif Text and Crimson Pro, both free to use under the SIL Open Font Licence via Google Fonts. The site is hand-written static HTML, no trackers, no ads. If you are reading this with cookies off, it will work the same.

The editors, Online Rant