Opinion: I'll rather have a smug pilot

The NewYorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank

Catching up on The Week

By coincidence, I was on a flight back from Frankfurt when I encountered the above cartoon in an outdated copy of my subscription to The Week magazine. I am probably 6 to 8 weeks behind and I doubt if I’ll eventually catch up with the issues I have missed.

The Week is both an aggregator of the best news stories globally with sections that offer contemporary analysis issues and events, social, political, economic, scientific and about life in general. I will sometimes have The Week lead me to do more research on topics I have been introduced to. The Week has become my preferred magazine subscription.

The point the cartoon makes is succinct and deep; when taken in the context of the political earthquakes of rejected orthodoxy in #Brexit, referendums in Columbia, Italy and Hungary, the election of Donald Trump in the United States of America, it can only be concluded that we live in fearfully interesting times.

Chuck the pilot for a tyro

Now, to imagine that someone rather than a competent, well-trained pilot with the necessary qualifications, essential sobriety, and the presence of mind was at the controls of the flight I took from Frankfurt to Manchester is at best scary and with the knowledge, bordering on the suicidal.

Then to think, in having an unqualified pilot volunteer to take the controls just as all the other passengers' vote to jettison the qualified one just because they feel they have been ignored, disrespected, thought little of or just out of unfounded dislike. No, it does not bear thinking of.

Yet, that is what we did in 2016, the situation exemplified in the statement of Michael Gove, the Justice Secretary when he said, “People in this country have had enough of experts.”

The function of the expert

Now, experts are supposed to have the full knowledge and experience in their areas of expertise. However, being an expert does not make you perfect, even with all the data to hand, there might be variables completely outside the control of the expert to be able to give a definitive statement that represents the outcome that eventually is experienced.

However, the expert is not only necessary, they are also important to the decision-making process especially when met with a crisis that would call on experience to resolve. An expert as a pilot knowing how to land a plane if an engine is lost or the landing gear does not deploy. The expert as a consultant that told me that they knew how to treat my cancer, but the variable outside their control was my physiology, that alone could determine if I survived or died within 5 weeks.

The experts that were thought little of by Michael Gove were the economists who thought post-Brexit Britain would be disastrous. Whilst things have not turned out so bad, things are less than perfect, in fact, everything is in flux with the pound scraping the bottom of the barrel in the foreign exchange markets. Once Brexit is triggered the uncertainty might lead to other unintended shocks to the economy, no one can say, but the experts are there at least to give some guidance.

Taking offence at smug pilots

The other narrative of the ‘smug pilot’ is an aversion to fact, truth, knowledge, and expertise. The tendency not to need to verify anything before it is accepted and relayed as the truth it is not. There was a lot of that during the referendum campaign in the UK and quite a good deal of that in this cycle of the US presidential campaign.

Basically, Donald Trump got away with murder literally and Hillary Clinton could not get away with a mere email scandal, the end result would be an interesting 2017 where a man who has never ever held elective office, whose antecedents in business leaves much to be desired, with such thin skin, given to slights and vituperation, lacking in decorum and class would now assume the mantle of the leader of the free world.

Democracy’s suicide pact

Like the man in the cartoon says, “These smug pilots have lost touch with regular passengers like us. Who thinks I should fly the plane?” A man with no verifiable experience apart from the willingness to take a risk that could lead to the loss of souls along with the plane has just been voted in to fly the plane. You wonder if everyone who raised their hands in that plane thought of the possible consequences of their collective votes.

Maybe, they were on a suicide mission just because they have taken umbrage at ‘smug pilots that have lost touch with regular passengers like them’, that is where we are with the democracy we have played in 2016, if we do not crash land with the loss of all souls in a major air disaster, we might just count ourselves lucky.

I’ll rather have a smug pilot at the helm of the plane than someone who makes me feel special, but knows nothing about how to fly a plane.

Thought Picnic: Fan, shit and table

Like Line-Management 101

One of the functions of a line-manager is to know how to ensure that the skills pool does not suffer the inconvenience of indispensability.

It is important that a team has experts, knowledgeable people whom we can trust to get things done, yet, it is essential that the expert does not become someone we cannot do without.

That means, there should be someone else able to do whatever the expert does, maybe not as neatly or as quickly, maybe needing some help and guidance, though not necessarily poise to replace the expert, only being there to backfill if necessary.

Continuing Line-Management 101

Part of this line-manager activity is having the resource to get a job that usually gets done by their team available when that job needs to be done, with caveats obviously about the alacrity and finesse. One often needful element is to ensure that the experts document all their procedures and processes, should in case, someone needs to act in the expert’s stead.

A line-manager would have somewhat failed in their responsibility if at the point of need, they have failed to adequately provide resource to fulfil a requirement that all they have is excuses that would adversely affect an operational activity.

Fan, shit and no table – Line-Management failure

At this point, the shit might well hit the fan in an uncomfortable escalation, the line-manager having poorly provided for the consequence, in not having a table to hide under when the shit starts flying.

Sometime ago in an exchange with a colleague, I wrote a rather tersely worded email when it seemed to be looking for who to blame rather than take responsibility for what he was tasked to do. “I cover my arse by doing my job rather than by looking for someone to blame, you should try to do that too.”

The response was a protest, but he had not hiding place, he was exposed just as a line-manager can be exposed by avoidable personnel management flaws.

So there …

Thought Picnic: My Interview Weaknesses

Interviews are not the same

We all interview in very different ways depending on the situation, the circumstance and the opportunity. In my case, interviews have straddled the spectrum of a grilling interrogation to a friendly discussion sometimes without a definitive inkling as to whether I will be considered suitable for the role or not.

It is not easy to determine what to expect at an interview and when it is not face-to-face, it is more difficult to project oneself as well especially where a question presents a difficulty in coming up with clear answers.

My lacking in ability

Whilst I am fine with telephone interviews, I will only attend a Skype interview without the video element, though I can remember about 14 years ago where I attended an interview at a recruitment agent’s office, it was recorded on video and sent to panel working for the employers where current employees voted on who they liked and that determined eligibility.

Recently, I have noticed that I am not that good at core technical narratives, much as I have been doing what I do for over a decade, I fully understand the workings and the innards but the hypothetical scenarios I get given at interview leave me wanting for expression and jargon, I am almost tongue-tied.

Planning ahead of typical troubles

Another disadvantage I seem to have had comes from not experiencing some of the issues that come up in questions I have to answer, it was interesting when the interviewer said on reflection that I probably take time to plan out and capture as much as I can of the situation before I design and implement solutions – I end up with fewer management and critical issues and by reason of that, I am probably not as tested as those who have to fight fires daily because of unforeseen issues and much else.

Where one is engaged to design from scratch, one is at an advantage but in situations where one is to maintain an existing but flawed deployment solution change might be difficult to instigate and implement for more political than technical reasons.

Swotting to swat the quiz

I find I still have to learn to exude to the level that I know to do in a practical setting; reading gives words to the actions I have literally learnt to perfect, creating scenarios and painstakingly working through each to some working conclusion creates consistent workflow processes that I hope I will find words to express when asked at interview.

Most pertinently, I rarely attempt to reinvent the wheel, so many have travelled the roads I travel and have documented hard-won lessons that come in handy every time, I am grateful to them because it usually means, if I know what to look for, I will find a clue, a pointer, a thinking, a process, an implementation or a solution that I can adapt and use to perfect the imperfect situation I am facing.

Books still matter

Sometimes, that is simply what an expert is, not the person who can give a good talk but the person who understands the general problem and knows how to seek out solutions that work.

Meanwhile, back to the books, there is much theory to refresh until it becomes the Shibboleth of interview success.

Editorial: Cancer of the mind

Lazy newspapers

The editorial today is derived from a number of health scares that made the Nigerian social networking headlines within the last 24 hours all to do with how the big C – cancer can be contracted.

From Twitter with a URL that linked to a 234Next.com online newspaper story the eye-catching title was ‘Grilled meat can cause cancer' and then through Facebook to a news story on The Nation Online Nigeria it was ‘Beware! Oral sex causes mouth cancer, Fed Govt warns.’

I will not contest the fact that the function of the newspapers is to inform, but when it comes to health scares, they might well be literate but they are far from numerate, their copy fails to apply reason and the thinking that informs their dissemination of that news story lacks objectivity as they plumb the depths of sensationalist incomprehensibility to produce unbelievable headlines.

Undeserving experts

The blame however cannot be placed entirely on the newspapers even though they are probably best advised to give health scares a wide berth just as readers are supposed to resist the urge to charge as bulls to the matador; propagating these stories until they go viral for the want of an appropriate term and an urban legend is born.

On the matter of grilled meat which is a delicacy called suya in Nigeria the medical expert on the occasion of World Cancer Day proffered that “Cancer cells thrive in an acid environment,” and with that seemingly categorical statement suggested, “A beef based diet is acidic, especially when burnt, so avoid suya and processed meats.”

The assertion about cancer cells was quite quickly debunked by doing a search on the most outlandish statement on Google which lead to http://www.snopes.com the website that pricks urban legends and provides incontrovertible fact over fiction, fable and fallacy.

Facts off course

The statement was false, it was attributed to Johns Hopkins University and circulated via email to the many gullible readers who passed it on without verifying the claims, it was so serious that Johns Hopkins University released a comprehensive email completely rubbishing each one of the claims including the one the medical expert with all the authority of a forum made for public consumption.

Now, indeed there are dangers in practicing oral sex and there is medical or scientific study that suggests the presence of the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) might well make people susceptible to types of oral cancer.

Experts at quackery

That piece of information coming from the Chief Dental Officer of the Federal Ministry of Health was welcome and useful, however, when the expert veered off into the moralisation and societal consequences of the use of the mouth, she had tangentially departed the commonsense bounds of scientific rigour and defaulted to a quackery of the most impressionable kind reminiscent of snake-oil merchants and street-corner confidence tricksters.

The greater concern is if on the one hand medical experts cannot be trusted to properly validate studies through basic research and verifiable facts and on the other hand they fail to appreciate their limits of the expertise before delving into social commentary that has no basis in incontrovertible truth, fact and unimpeachable scientific data, we find ourselves at the mercy of seemingly esteemed professionals operating as quacks.

The cancer of the mind

In essence, not only do we face the danger of cancer in whatever form attacking the body; a cancer of the mind even leaves us more vulnerable to risk-prone, hardly meticulous and assuming people whose guesswork and absence of logic in the process of medical diagnosis might be more fatal than a double tap.

It is then no wonder that Nigeria suffers a serious health crisis if those with ultimate responsibility cannot ensure they get their facts right before they scare us witless with laughable fables.

Blacks after slavery

On a more educational note, I came across a link to a PBS documentary about Black in Latin America narrated by the esteemed Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. who finds global fame in being the black man who on identifying himself as the owner of his own residence still ran afoul of the law in God’s own America.

He expounded on how slavery took Africans to Hispaniola, Brazil, Mexico, Peru and Cuba and where the black race after slavery stands today and in comparison to the United States of America. The whole series makes really compelling viewing as it draws you in and the shocks you.

One rather interesting refrain suggested that long-term relationships were rarely formed in many cases between races but somehow sex appeared to be colour-blind. One should take the time to carefully view every single episode and if well-disposed a contribution to the service would also be welcome. You can find the homepage at Black in Latin America | PBS

Acknowledgements

The 234Next Newspaper piece titled ‘Grilled meat can cause cancer’ appeared in February and the news story published yesterday by The Nation Online Nigeria it was ‘Beware! Oral sex causes mouth cancer, Fed Govt warns.’

The Time Magazine did publish information about the study Oral Sex Can Add to HPV Cancer Risk in April 2007 and so did the BBC with the title Oral sex linked to mouth cancer as far back as February 2004; with a BBC3 documentary aired in January 2011 that stuck with the substance of the report.

The findings of the study itself were published in the New England Journal of Medicine with the title Case–Control Study of Human Papillomavirus and Oropharyngeal Cancer downloadable as a PDF file in May 2007.

The Snopes website debunked the “Cancer cells thrive in an acid environment” assertion by publishing the full false email attributed to Johns Hopkins University and the each point in that email for further rubbished by the university in a publication titled - Cancer Update Email -- It's a Hoax! And this as far back as April 2009.

The Henry Louis Gates arrest controversy as documented by Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia is just what it is.

Harry, the expert like no other

Introducing Harry the guru

I rarely if ever plug the services of technicians but there is once in a while that unusual person whose expertise transcends the norms whose skills need to be commended and generously rewarded.

Harry is such a one, the breadth and scope of his knowledge is almost beyond compare and that puts it in the superlative, his is a compendium of skills so varied and effective, he probably has a solution to whatever gadget problem is giving you headaches.

Quick on the mark

I saw him at work the other day, Ronnie had come in with a problem, his Blackberry was not working, immediately, Harry diagnosed the problem and fixed it, explaining in detail the hows and whys of Blackberry problems whilst keeping tabs of developments in that field.

Ronnie was so impressed that he posed another question about issues he was having with his Apple, Ronnie did not know it was out-dated and could easily be upgraded through a deal that Harry was able to arrange – he is what you might call a Most Valued Professional and that recognition gives him the inside on good deals.

With all the gaming consoles out there, one would suppose Harry would have the best advice on which one to acquire, even I was surprised that he quite confidently recommended the X-Box 360.

Required viewing and training

Harry’s technical manner trumps the much acclaimed good doctor’s bedside manner, he never frowns in explaining the thorniest problems keeping you at ease and quite well informed, it would surprise how each gadget is given an everyday example to with resorting to unnecessary jargon.

In my view, after watching Harry at work, this is recommended viewing for Computer 101 courses as much as it can be used in staff training as to how to approach serious customer problem without levity, an astute mind and definitely a confident smile.

Obviously, one must thank Ronnie for allowing for this exquisite work of troubleshooting expertise to be recorded.

After watching this clip you will know how to contact Harry for your computer problems too.

Sally Clark - Medical profession hubris or humiliated

Preamble

The Many Tragedies of Sally Clark is a blog I wrote about two months ago - a doctor camped out there for a few days with some comments to which I wrote a few lengthy responses, this new blog developed as a result of comments left therein.

The boss, the priest and the doctor

There was a time when people did not question their bosses, their priest or their doctor. Nowadays, the bosses can find themselves in hot water, besides, the moment people learnt how to build a career, and they took control of the decision of who they would want as boss.

The priest who still stands as succourer is now challenged in that role by the therapist with a bottle of pills and the moment people learnt to read the Bible, the word of the priest was no more as infallible as it once was, much as a good few are getting into trouble lately.

One profession that has failed to grasp the changing times and seasons is the medical profession, they still scribble in illegible handwriting and we rarely get a second opinion of their views, even in a life threatening situation.

Doing a good job

A number of cases have highlighted that fact that doctors want to be applauded as people who save life and that should be all-encompassing beyond any need for accountability or ethical adaptation to the realities of what society now expects or these professionals.

In the past week, I have been engaged within the comment fields of a certain blog I wrote a few months ago with a doctor who takes a completely different view from the tone and context of my write-up.

It was about the case of Sally Clark, the woman who was convicted and then acquitted of the murder/cot-deaths of her two infant sons, she died recently, which triggered my original write-up.

Exercise cautionary expertise

However, a good deal of my commentary centred around the mystique of expertise that exuded from the expert witness a renowned and celebrated consultant paediatrician who had formulated a behavioural syndrome which became the pivot on which the case against the many women who endured the tragedies of cot-deaths faced criminal trials.

When the famous and respected professor veered out his realm of expertise into the superfluous statistics, the judge, jury and press were completely enthralled by the numbers; it is almost beyond debate that those numbers influenced the outcomes of those cases.

When the numbers were really tested against realities, most of the convictions became unsafe, additional information about the health conditions of the victim infants seemed to point to other exculpatory evidence which was not offered as part of case evidence.

The need for moral responsibility

I stand by the views I expressed in my earlier post, professionals have responsibilities, to know what they are talking about and appreciate the value or import of their opinions on humanity, it is pertinent to be confident however one should exercise competence with a sense of consideration; it is called understanding your moral responsibility.

As the exchanges developed certain key issues arose, some like soundbites with an emotive tinge, but serious in any case, four of those issues I address below:

Doctors don't take the Hippocratic Oath - This shows how behind the times I must have been, doctors used to take this oath with the view that they pledge to preserve life. My view is the preservation no more just a physiological or anatomical issue, there other areas of social responsibility that the doctor occupies, the gravitas of their profession confers on them some sweeping purvey over their patient's lives, that issue must become part of any 21^st Century medical curriculum.

Dead babies who have no advocate - I would that any baby that dies in any suspicious circumstances has a thorough, confident, intelligent, meticulous and fair advocate to state their case. The babies' and the parents' rights should and must be protected and safeguarded from unwarranted opprobrium.

The automatic imputation of guilt and liability on the parents in order to seek some sort of retributive justice for the innocents is an extreme that should be unacceptable in our society. Experts must ensure they have complete review of all the circumstances before they postulate. Where it can be proven that the parents are culpable, then that evidence and the presentation must be beyond reasonable doubt.

Doctors treat patients not laboratory results - I fear for this statement, indeed doctors should be treating patients but in most cases no treatment can conclusively be administered without the benefit of laboratory results. One good example was the subject of the 2005 Nobel Prize for Medicine, the discovery of bacteria in the stomach against the overarching body of medical knowledge. The bacterium - helicobacter pylori - was found to be causative of certain ulcers and even cancer, who would have thought certain cancers could be treated with antibiotics.

Certain evidence suggested that a cot-death victim might have died of staphylococcal septicaemia; the commentator contends the child did not die of this infection, but if the pathologist had offered this evidence to doctors when the child took ill weeks before, there might have been a different outcome from better observation.

The medical profession is against the GMC - This is where doctors need a review of their activities beyond their education and expertise; their interaction with the public.

I quote liberally from the Economist, professions have at least four elements; an accepted body of knowledge, a system for certifying mastery of that knowledge before it can be practised, a commitment to the public good and an enforceable code of ethics.

The medical profession does quite well with the first two, the commitment to the public good cannot however be monitored and validated by just the medical profession, the General Medical Council (GMC) serves the purpose of ensuring that a doctor who treats the public can cultivate the trust of the public.

Where this ability to maintain and cultivate trust is compromised, the license to practise comes under review and it can be revoked.

Saving the medical profession

Whilst there was an uproar in the medical fraternity when Professor Sir Roy Meadow was struck off, the public good was served and is what esteemed profession failed to recognise.

The GMC continues to save the medical profession from a mounting crisis of public confidence which is critical to the practise of medicine.

The commentator laments the dearth of paediatric expertise since the incident at Alder Hey Children's hospital where consultants removed for storage organs of dead children without the consent of the parents.

For the advancement of child medicine there is probably a case for removing the organs but definitely not without consent.

The bane of intellectual arrogance

Sometimes, hubris and seeming unassailability can becloud the ability for professions to recognise their moral responsibilities in a public setting and the public is getting fed up with intellectual arrogance being displayed and acted out in dictats from on high.

We might not have the knowledge or expertise but we all have access to information and these compete for attention in order to make personal quality decisions in our lives.

This is the challenge that faces the medical profession and it is one they would have to embrace from the student to the emeritus professor if they are to suffer lesser vexatious scrutiny and keep out of court or present themselves to a GMC hearing.

On closer inspection the loss of two children to cot-death was a great tragedy regardless of the class demographic; the case that followed was a travesty considering what further information made the sentences handed out unsafe; the ensuing court battles revealed a fundamental debacle and error of judgement in accepting ideas outside the professional purvey of an expert on the whole, neither medicine nor the public good was properly served.

The death of Sally Clark was the sorry end to the clash between a proud and almost arrogant profession and the public they serve.

The many tragedies of Sally Clark

Experts indeed

The function of an expert is not necessarily to get it right, but to get it wrong for more sophisticated reasons. This should be attributable since I read it from I think the Economist many years ago, I cannot remember who made the statement.

I am sure there are many who have lived that credo when met with a situation they as experts are supposed to offer some authoritative opinion and the client ends up being baffled with science, confounded with jargon and assuredly made to feel inferior for not appreciating or understanding that opinion, in the end, obfuscate with atrocious statistics skewed to validate your point.

The death of Sally Clark

This comes about when I read with sadness that the mother who had been convicted and then acquitted of killing her two baby sons had died suddenly and unexpectedly.

This woman can only have been Sally Clark, and so great a tragedy had befallen her and her family too many times to mention, but for those who followed her travails, she died a victim, a martyr, a crusader and a sacrifice; sacrificed to appease the gravitas of an expert.

Cot death theories

As fate would have it, this woman suffered the death of two children within weeks of their birth just about 2 years apart in what has become known as cot deaths. Now cot deaths have been attributable to all sorts of circumstances but no clear indication as to why babies suddenly die in the comfort of their cots, the more scientific term is Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).

Sadly, in Sally Clark's case, this happened to her twice, where experts should have dispatched their sense of duty and ethical responsibility to represent the truth fully without reservation, they suggested that she might have murdered her sons.

The case for the prosecution was then built on corroborating this suspicion and creating the seeming judicial fact that she had in some evil concupiscence shook her babies violently till their lives could no more abide their bodies and they died.

The expert witness

Enter the Expert Witness - Professor Sir Roy Meadow, a consultant paediatrician who had gained prominence from the seminal study of cot deaths which he postulated were mostly caused by child abuse through that he termed - Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy - a situation where a person makes a victim of another to gain attention, usually their wards or children.

Certain coincidences allowed for this theory to take hold and become part of the assessment of understanding why certain families lost their young children as the professor postulated with statements like "There is no evidence that cot deaths runs in families but there is plenty of evidence that child abuse does". This sealed Sally Clark's fate such that other evidence that one of the children might have died of a bacterial infection never got to the police, the defence or prosecution.

Debunking the expert

The weight of professorial gravitas allowed for incredible statements which suggested that the possibility of two cot deaths happening in one family was 1 in 73 million; this got the Royal Statistical Society quite miffed that they contended that there was no statistical basis for this assertion.

However, these assertions lead to a number of convictions for murder where the children had suffered cot deaths which might have been related to other un-researched phenomena, but everyone bought the expert opinion of Professor Sir Roy Meadow who had been knighted for his services to child health.

Sally Clark spent 3 years in prison, lost her first appeal because the overwhelming evidence of the professor was indisputable but such was the confidence of her family in her innocence that they appealed again and this time with new evidence and the debunking of the professor's statistical whammy.

With her release came the review of other similar cases especially where the professor had been called as the expert witness making those cases and convictions unsafe, as the women were freed the professor's reputation began to unravel.

Of sorrow and sad most despairing

One cannot begin to imagine the amassed tragedy of having lost a child and then having the ordeal of being accused of killing your child, leading to a trial, conviction and prison.

I am sure there might have deep dark times when Sally Clark might have almost believed that she did indeed kill her sons, despair, despondency, dejection and depression all colluded to weaken her resolve, which in the end could have contributed to her death at 42 even though she had been freed for prison for quite a while.

The expert however, whose intellectual arrogance allowed him to project postulations and suppositions as realities fights for his reputation having been struck of the list of doctors had to seek legal redress to be reinstated, he however is yet without remorse about how he completely destroyed the lives of grieving mothers to the enhancement of his career.

The expert's cardinal responsibilities

An expert has a duty of care to be honest, frank, informative and truthful, the ethical dimension to this expects that the expert understand that there is a responsibility when entrusted with listening ears for your opinion whilst that should be tempered with understanding the consequences of the proffered views and how that impacts on people and circumstances.

I would not be moved if the professor's profession titles are rescinded and his knighthood revoked, his handiwork has done nothing for the promotion of child health, rather he created a branch of study that allows the subjective assessment of circumstances to visit great misfortune on hapless grieving mothers.

The professor is an example of what an expert should not be, very much like the many Nigeria professors in ministerial positions doing nothing.

The disabling ignorance of experts

The words of Peter Drucker come to mind about what an expert should meditate on - discover where your intellectual arrogance is causing disabling ignorance and overcome it - it is sometimes difficult to appreciate intellectual arrogance in oneself, it is also a sign of strong character, principles and humility to accept your expertise is not all so encompassing that you have answers to everything or cannot go back and review your data and fact before offering an opinion.

An expert offers an opinion, that opinion has authority, with authority comes influence, usually indirect influence because someone else has to make decisions which might be solely based on this opinions, decisions that affect direction, strategy, missions and purposes, consequently, lives and livelihoods.

If you thinking you are just part of the chaos continuum, a butterfly flapping wings here and unsure of where the earthquakes would occur, think again, you might just be that extra force to push on either the brake or acceleration pedal.

Think before you pontificate

For every responsibility, there is a matter of consequence, you have to be ready to face up to the consequences especially if what you have proffered would surely destroy people's lives, Professor Sir Roy Meadows was the expert from Hell for Sally Clark, Trupti Patel, Angela Cannings and the Gays - I hope those left do get help beyond a gross miscarriage of justice being judicially restored; for Sally Clark, they say, she never really fully recovered from her ordeal, not many people can.

Rest In Peace - Sally Clark; if you do find the good life in the thereafter, I hope that you are comforted with seeing your sons again.

News, Opinions and Propaganda

Why I do not want to be the first to know?

Gone are the days when you were able to listen to the news and be informed of what is going on either around you or around the world. Now, you listen to news programmes and have to decide when it has moved on from news to editorial opinion and then outright propaganda.

I would present is typical scenario. The news is - The Queen had tea today; that should be enough, but the new networks now have to fill in time and turn this piece of information into an experience. For that bit of news, you end up with analysis from the following quarters.

The Royal correspondent [explaining why the Queen having tea is worthy of a slot on the news programme].

An expert on teas [suggesting why tea is healthy, what teas are best and which particular brand of tea the Royals drink, also what to have with your tea and what constitutes a tea as a meal].

Finally, from a think tank an expert [explaining why the stocks on all teas would rise, and those on coffee would fall. How the Queen adds value to the corporate balance sheets of tea companies. Then a list of tea companies with a royal warrant. In addition, fair-trade initiative that allows for a good proportion of tea profits to go the development of farming communities]. Cut to a newsbreak - PG Tips advert!

Seeing this whole development of an experience based on the simple information of the Queen having tea has moved from news to opinions to a subtle brand of propaganda promoting teas. Not every bit of news gets this kind of treatment but many do have varying degrees of extremity falling into all those camps.

The Correspondent - news networks now expend so much in having someone on the ground where the news is breaking; never missing the opportunity to reinforce what you just heard the newscaster say.

Some networks use local correspondents and others fly in a correspondent. Then there are different correspondents depending on the issue, more like a correspondent for every major government department like trade, health or education and other general issues or functions like political, royal, war, sports or European.

However, being on the ground does not mean you get to hear the truth, what we get is still subject to the editorial slant the news network wants to portray.

The Expert - that now seems to be common currency for any issue - this person seemingly has experience on the topic in the news as a participant, authority or observer.

Experts are supposed to lend gravitas to a topical issue and create the impression that you cannot question what they say. We know that in some cases experts do not necessarily represent the truth, rather a perspective and strong opinion on which they are ready to stake their credibility for a price.

For other light-hearted issues, the expert becomes a "rent-a-quote" purveyor of one-liners to punch through a thought. Who selects the expert? Someone involved in the editorial process.

The Think Tank - a definition that saw its first use in 1959 - an institute, corporation, or group organised for interdisciplinary research (as in technological and social problems) sometimes also called a think factory.

My take on this is - consider the workings of a water closet (WC), the tank fills up and is not emptied till the toilet is used, and for as long as the toilet does not need cleaning by reason of usage, the water stays in the tank a ready resource for bacteria and other organisms to feast on.

Using that analogy, a think tank is that last place anyone should go to for ideas, which are stale, rehashed, or at variance with reality. I would rather work for a think river and if that resource needs to be harnessed, then work for a think pipe - there is a need for flow, renewal and ditching old concepts.

A river of thoughts would always be refreshing.

The two most popular global news networks belt out slogans like "Be the first to know" or "Demand a broader view", I really just want the news and I would make up my mind about what I have heard in the context of what I know.

Now if I really want analysis of an issue, then I would like to tune in to another channel that calls in the correspondent, the expert and the think tank, but keep them out of the news.

Being the first to know is only of value if the information gives you some particular advantage over those who were not the first to know, but with millions in that category you can you can only appreciate it if the news what specifically tailored for your hearing, but broadcast with your permission to others.

A broader view

I would like to demand a broader view after having heard the news and then require additional detail. This week the world celebrates 100 years of flight - that is the news.

The broader view is another programme on the progress and developments in aviation over the last hundred years that one company is being favoured over another for contracts to build some new flight belongs to another programme allowing the flourishing of subtle propaganda.

I used to be a news junkie, I still like to hear the news, but use the Internet nowadays to catch-up. The hyperlinks from those news pages to other related issues develop the news into the experience I am interested in, but I am in control of what I want to read.

I get my news from these sites.

The BBC

English news for expatriates on Mainland Europe

Nigerian News

The World News Network