Truth be told…

The first casualty when war comes is truth, is a quote attributed to an American senator, Hiram Johnson. Do all Johnsons have an interesting relationship with the truth?  With another gruesome shooting war about to be waged in the Middle East, the fight for the moral high ground has also started and the protagonists’ versions of truth…

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Try, try and try again…

Among Insight’s many and varied life experiences, one of the most poignant was as a member of the Independent Monitoring Board for a local prison. Every prison in the UK has an IMB whose role it is to take a fresh eye to proceedings within the walls and, when necessary, call the authorities to account.…

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Acts of Asininity

I walked into our shared workspace yesterday and proudly informed Senior Management that I had completed some task or other – and that I had sent her an email about it. Instead of even a cursory acknowledgement, I was somewhat taken aback to be told that I was just like so-and-so who “sends send me…

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Men behaving badly

Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman….so sang Tammy Wynette in the 1968 hit, Stand by your Man. While the lyrics will no doubt sound hollow to many women, for the past week, it’s been quite hard to be a man – at least to live with the shame of being one. Men – for…

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Passport to success

An old joke: a chap is asked why he’s only wearing a single glove on a nice sunny day. His answer was that he’d heard the weather report saying that it was going to be a day of mixed temperatures – on the one hand it promised to be quite a warm day – but…

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A Good Innings

As one wait ends, another begins. Today, the Government published its Workforce Plan – a “blueprint to boost the NHS workforce by 200,000.” The details will be pored over but, thus far, it has received a broadly positive response. Not least from Shadow Health Minister, Wes Streeting who offered his respect to the Plan –…

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Going forward, it is what it is…

Private Eye has an occasional column – the Curse of Gnome – in which people the magazine has pursued, or been sued by, are reported as having come to a sticky end. Robert Maxwell, James Goldsmith and Sonia Sutcliffe all faced the Curse. Their hex on Rupert Murdoch has yet to materialise. Imitation being a…

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Escape from the Chateau

Insight has been indulging in a little schadenfreude this week, along with the red tops, Daily Mail and, significantly, the broadsheets.  That a TV darling turns out, off-camera, to be a monstrous bully, pervert, drug addict or all three is nothing new. Think Clarkson, John Leslie, Frank Bough, Rolf Harris. It’s a long list. But, news…

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