Fine headlines and rotten information

The News Junkie gets a fix

Nothing annoys me more than to read the news and find that it adds the suspense of some detail that never gets revealed. The reporters might be very seasoned journalists but if any topic is introduced, it should be properly covered.

When on holiday, I have to check news sources mainly from the BBC and the expatriate English news of the Netherlands. Sometimes I venture further afield with the World News and CNN, usually if what I have read has not provided much stimulation.

My best friend once called me a news junkie, maybe I am.

I am not planning to change the world, but I like to know what is happening because all sorts of information, news, events and detail have ways of impacting on you and not necessarily for profit.

I have also once commented that I do not really want to be the 'first to know', but then I want to know what could be relevant to my situation.

Nowadays, a situation halfway across the globe can have far reaching effects locally, like war, disaster, unsettled markets, imports and exports along with political issues.

If one cannot prevent at least one knows and can prepare for eventualities.

So, on BBC News, I surf the general location based stories, look at business, entertainment and then sport.

Sometimes there is a big caption that one can click on from the main page.

I usually follow, tennis, football generally, snooker and then events that are newsworthy.

Following the headline

So, I read on the homepage Racing: Dettori wins richest race, Yippee! I click on the link and I am given the title Electrocutionist takes Dubai Win - So, now we know the man, the name of the horse and it is in Dubai. Aha! I have seen adverts about the Dubai World Cup - Click!

I read through the whole copy, it is Dettori's second win, it was trained by Godophin, some other races had winners and all that trivia about six-legged races. Fine, the page has to contain something, reporting from Dubai does not come cheap.

Nowhere in all that copy do I find the prize. Come on! We've been told it is the richest race, that will excite anybody's curiosity - How much?

Then I clicked on the Dubai World Cup link on that page, and I tell you if it were in a horse race, it would have come home the next day - I did not get the information we were sold in the byline of the news we were presented with in the first place.

For now, I cannot be bothered to find out what the prize was, but you can understand, I am quite noticeably irked.

The Pen Pushers Posse Pogrom

The equines of time

Pressure at work emanates from a disconnect between what needs to be done and who can achieve it within the strictures defined outside one's control.

Usually, project managers, the harbingers of the technician's heartache, heartburn and consequent heart attack control the parameters of time that have one as bellows in a accordion.

The compression and extension producing melodious music to the ears of kamikaze management promising what they cannot deliver on the blood of their underlings drowns the cries of pain, as the music is the accompaniment to a frenzied foxtrot.

Beaten at their rotten game with integrity

It ought not to be so, just as brinksmanship is used to force the impossible into reality, a master equestrian can arrest the megalomania of micro-project objectives that titillate the Project Manager and redefine in terms that lay bare the achievable over the downright absurd within your timescales.

Except if 12 hours can be wrung out of eight normal working hours, additional resourcing is required the absence of which simply introduces a temporary setback allowing an opportunity to deliver late based on technical reality rather than project idealisms.

I am no hamster

One being at a point of being pressured unduly by escalations of multiple priorities drawing on one's reserves, the flustered man obtained an open cheque to estimate times to delivery.

So one did, liberally and sensibly, to their chagrin. The equestrian's mastery is in understanding the horse so that it does the bidding of the rider without hesitation, in the manner, one played for time and gained the reprieve that put the blood pressure within the confines of health young man.

One would deliver when one can, if needed faster, the Project Manager would have to shop for a hamster in a wheel.