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Today, Friday June 25, is Take your dog to work Day. Yesterday, it was National Pralines Day which “honours a confection made from nuts (whether in whole pieces or ground) and sugar syrup”. By the time you read this, Insight will have embraced both these agreeable events and, with luck, will have avoided both office dogs…

News this morning that the crime of the century has at last been solved. Thanks to a combination of good old fashioned investigative work including door-to-door enquiries, and the latest infrared surveillance technology, a thief who has been taking the daily copy of the Times from our doorstep, has been identified. Although not yet apprehended,…

Diana Mary “Dido” Harding, Baroness Harding of Winscombe has had some pretty big jobs, perhaps most notably as head of the NHS Test and Trace programme. She is chair of NHS Improvement and was also appointed interim chief executive of the new National Institute for Health Protection, later renamed the UK Health Security Agency. She…

It’s all in the presentationDuring the first Gulf War, a video of a downed British pilot was broadcast by the Iraqis. Clearly delighted with their prize, his captors filmed the pilot reading from a prepared script about how sorry he was, that the USA was a wicked Satanic country, Saddam was a glorious leader, blah,…

Two national institutions have come in for a bit of a kicking this week. The BBC has been lambasted about the way in which Martin Bashir was able to trick his way into the interview of the century. Even if you grudgingly admire the lengths to which a journalist used nefarious means to get his…

 A weekly email from Babylon pings in (odd, given Insight does not subscribe). The headline, It’s OK to not be OK: A therapist’s guide to “new normal” anxiety, is a timely reminder that it’s Mental Health Awareness Week, and naturally that’s the email’s focus. The good news is we’re not alone in feeling anxious facing the “new normal life”…

GPs in a Derbyshire practice have got their stethoscopes in a right old twist, blaming the introduction of a new online triage system for the “doubling of demand” for their services. Which, they say, prevents them from continuing to provide a safe service. They’ve written an achingly long open letter which, on the face of…

It pays to be careful what you wish for. After months of willing an end to the dreary and frequently frightening news about you-know-what, suddenly there’s a whole lot of “other news”. Much of which is almost as upsetting. For example, at the height of a national crisis in which many people have been financially…