DOWNSIZING - which means, in plain English, firms sacking workers - is wrong, according to the word's inventor. Stephen Roach, an economist with Morgan Stanley, has now said: "I must confess I am having second thoughts." Here are some other dramatic about-turns.
John Henry Newman, later a Roman Catholic Cardinal, preached sermons as an Anglican describing Rome as "the whore of Babylon".
Gandhi, who helped gain India's independence, said while visiting England during the First World War: "I discovered that the British Empire had certain ideals with which I have fallen in love."
Richard Course, a former chairman of the League Against Cruel Sports, later came out in favour of fox-hunting, and concluded in 1995 that "the 15,000 foxes killed each year by hunts would be condemned to a much worse death" by criminalising it.
Oswald Mosley was elected to Parliament as a Conservative in 1918. In 1922, he became an Independent. In 1924, he joined Labour (being regarded as a possible future leader). In 1931, he founded the New Party. In 1932, he set up the British Union of Fascists (incorporating the National Socialists in 1936).
Winston Churchill, having begun his political life as a Conservative, became a Liberal in 1906, only to return to the Conservatives as a "constitutionalist" in 1924.
Gladstone was a Tory in 1833, left them for the Whigs in 1846 and found himself a Liberal by 1859. He once confided to his journal: "There is some point in the query of the Westminster Review: whether my appointments are a covert satire."
