Strange case of the dead burying the living

Closing the accounts before year-end

I believe it is customary for media organisations to have draft obituaries or prepared documentaries for prominent society figures such that at the demise of such people, only cosmetic changes are required to the drafts and that is out to press.

A case in point was the recent passing of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, the long and glowing obituaries were out within the hour of the announcement, the BBC literally had hours after hours of rolling commentary and documentaries about him, it all had to have been pre-planned and produced in readiness for his death.

On the 17^th of June 2021, Kenneth Kaunda, the 1^st President of Zambia died at the age of 97 and soon after the Guardian had published a 2,000+ obituary written by Guy Arnold, a British explorer, travel writer, political writer and specialist in north-south relations, according to his Wikipedia page. [The Guardian: Kenneth Kaunda Obituary]

When the dead speak

I learnt much about Kenneth Kaunda in secondary school because his political autobiography titled Zambia Shall Be Free was one of our required literature texts in my second form. When I travel to South Africa, place names that appear on the navigator maps look quite familiar, Kitwe and Livingstone, seem to have that déjà vu quality and now I realise why.

Anyway, back to the original point of canned obituaries. It is one thing for the living to read of their obituaries to which Mark Twain on reading his own obituary sent a cable from London with the message, “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” It is quite necessary to have a good sense of humour at the premise of death. [Dictionary.com: Mark Twain]

However, it becomes a bit disconcerting if certain words ascribed to Jesus Christ in Luke 9:60 begin to fetch true. “Let the dead bury the dead.” For indeed, we have a strange case of the dead writing obituaries of the dead. As it transpires, Guy Arnold who penned the obituary of Kenneth Kaunda, died on the 4^th of January 2020, a good 530 days before the person he eulogised. I would expect the estate and survivors of Guy Arnold will receive payment for this publication.

Just the way it is

It is very likely Guy Arnold had written the obituary many years ago when there was some anticipation of Kenneth Kaunda’s death as he passed the 3-score-and-10 threshold into his 80s and 90s, with a few edits and updates depending on the news.

Guy Arnold himself was no youth, he was just 8 years younger than Kenneth Kaunda when he died at 87. The Guardian might have done some editing prior to publication, but the bulk of the copy had been completed by the dead.

Strange one, but should not be allowed to go unnoticed.

Guardian obituary of Kenneth Kaunda authored by someone who died 530 days before.

Nigeria: Broken news and integrity deficit

The news of old habits

Tragedy struck the grieving and compounded their anguish this morning as there was an air crash in Lagos, Nigeria.

Social media was set alight with news of the event and as more people contributed, rumour, speculation, conjecture and controversy gained more readership for apparently non-existent facts.

Twitter is like a wildfire, what it takes is two clicks of the mouse button or a tap on your trusty tablet device and you propagate a falsehood and inexactitude or 140 characters to manufacture the news about something you know little about.

Such disasters leave no allowance for cool and measured engagement; many want to feature as news breakers and there the flux of traffic obfuscates the reality of the event.

Derelict and irresponsible

These are times when one expects professional news media to arrest the descent to fable, fiction and feeding frenzy of recognition at the expense of the unfortunate – one cannot say the state media have acquitted themselves well in this regard as lies usurp the throne of facts for popularity and effect.

We should always temper our curiosity with discrimination and discernment; we should be smart about where we allow ourselves to be led down in search for the truth.

Only when I am in it

In my view, the only time I want to be breaking the news is if I am making the news or part of the news event. Whilst scoops can make you famous, when such broken news is debunked or proved false you risk greater infamy.

When an event happens in Nigeria, it is very likely that the village-rag gossip websites will pick it up first without verification or corroboration, maybe some do exert themselves to a modicum of excellence but I do not consider them authoritative enough for me to stake my reputation and my integrity on giving their copy a platform.

The platforms we trust

We have mainstream Nigerian news media; I wait for their despatches and reports by their correspondents, though the foreign media appears to get the goods first. Even as the local outfits are slow in getting the news out and might even get it wrong, on balance they are at greater reputational risk as professionals than I am as a consumer and disseminator of their material.

Meanwhile, misinformation devoid of humanity, nuance, restraint or decorum rolls through our timelines ever tempting us to engage with increasing rage at the calumny of others.

In the midst of this is the guerrilla news agency, those who publish pieces the mainstream media are scared to touch, they sometimes do not have corroborated sources but they stimulate debate, get people talking and have others asking questions.

The patronage system in Nigeria makes this vehicle essential even though those with ulterior motives to disseminate falsehoods and fallacies at times abuse that platform – they are unavoidable against greater odds.

Opinions are free, we can wait

It is not a case of being wise after the fact; we have every opportunity to share our opinions about the event when the news has truly broken with the facts and other investigatory evidence that would include detail and specifics.

When it comes to breaking news, I can wait, I can wait to understand what is really happening, I can wait to appreciate what really happened, I can wait to hear the truth, the facts, the reality and the reports of those directly affected.

Don’t give in

Anxiety will not help situations much as urgency does not mean you can do anything with the information once obtained, I do not want to insert myself into anyone’s moment be it the news, the success or the tragedy, it is the gentlemanly thing to patiently elicit fact from fiction and only be present to propagate the truthful and the verified.

If you are unsure, do not be a purveyor; if in doubt, leave in out; if you are not the source be sure you do not present yourself as authoritatively the oracle and fount of wisdom from whom all knowledge can be sought.

Please think before you join the crowd of rumourmongers.

AKO is hardly the best at rush hour

Shopping time for the commuter

In the commuter world, the station is a place where everyone should appreciate the context of time and the instant gratification required by customers to get in, grab something, catch the train and relax in a seat fiddling with whatever was acquired.

I have however come to the conclusion that many shops in Amsterdam Central Station have no idea of the setting in which they are based.

The shops may very well know they have a market but they do not understand their customers, the characteristics of shops in the high street are quite different from those in a train station and very different from those in an airport.

The psyche of a shop

In the high street, you have time to browse and flit around in perpetual indecision till you end up with something really expensive that you never really needed.

When you shop at the airports, the purchases could be impulsive or based on the need to acquire gifts for those back at home – you may not have as much time, but you would hardly be in a panicky rush to get on your plane, except where you do not arrive on time to check-in, in which case you would hardly be shopping.

Corner shops or late night shops are a different genre; they are open until just that time when ghosts have finished putting on their makeup; they are that last refuge to interact with retailers because you have missed the regular shops and just need a quick TV dinner or something that prepares you for the next body engine trouble.

Rush-hour in tardy shops

When in comes to station shops, it requires a completely different mindset and business model – those shops are in premium rent areas, the customers hardly have the time and they definitely want prompt and efficient service, at least, that is my opinion.

For three days now as I have half-rushed to catch my train to work in the rush-hour at because of the newsagents in the station, the experience has left me quite seriously annoyed.

First off all, these newsagents has three shops in the station and somehow have failed to get it right for all sorts of reasons.

A Knock Off

For the want of controversy, AKO [Source: AKO.nl - Online boeken bestellen – In Dutch, the online site of the store] which prides itself as the best bookshop in the Netherlands seems to be failing in its prime purpose at Amsterdam Central Station.

It is almost unimaginable that at 8:00AM in the thick of the rush hour the all the newspapers are yet to be stacked up, at the most accessible store at the East side of the station, half the papers are still on the trolley in cellophane wrapping and chance has it that the one I want is in the pile.

One can go to the West side but the queues are just interminably long, with much more variety, the choices are their to keep you there for longer than it healthy for your heart; further down near Platform 14, the papers are staked up but the price scanner cannot read the barcode, forget the queues, they are long too.

Poor staff management

It is absolute chaos at times, as you find staff that should be at the tills doing other things around the shop and the queues stretch out into the concourse – I would presume the customers have another hour before their train.

In my case, I only have minutes and by the time one has walked to perimeter of the station for what should have been available 10 metres from the entrance of the station, one is almost running for the train – it is utterly beyond the pale.

The other day, they put a greenhorn on the till, he spent minutes charging the wrong price and giving out excess change along with his obvious state of discomfiture, I heard enough of the Dutch in the customer’s frustration when he cursed about how they could have put an inexperienced lad on the tills in the rush-hour.

I do wonder if these stores realise that people who pick up a newspaper really have no time for food parcel queues – in fact, I have seen setups in London where on trust people are able to use a paper dispenser, saving time for them to catch their trains with dignity.

Today, it was the Platform 14 store, a queue 10 deep and just one till available whilst the other staff were stacking shelves with non-essentials, I just could not wait 10 or more minutes to pay for the paper so I put it back.

They can sort this thing out

I am incensed that I ended up having to travel an hour without my paper just because there are three shops in the station that cannot seem to be managed properly with a clear knowledge of their setting.

These shops probably have to open earlier to stack up their shelves in time, they definitely need to have staff manning all the available tills in the rush-hours, the greenhorns should only do the quiet hours, in the meantime they can be stacking shelves if necessary and the prices of all major international newspapers should appear on a price board, just in case the scanner cannot decipher the barcode.

Thankfully, I am not the regional manager of that group of stores, else a good few heads included mine might have rolled for what is just gross incompetence and the lack of attention to the possibility that customer impatience could have lost them a good deal of business.

Newspapers - Is it still my country?

Internet Renewal Pains

I was having a chat to one of my colleagues after having renewed my subscription to The Economist over the phone. I could have easily done this over the Internet but it appears this service had been out-sourced as capitalists do to some outfit that made the job of renewal quite fraught, all sorts of errors that would make Einstein rethink the Theory of Relativity.

I then wrote to the Economist's Subscription office complaining about the problem and rather than resolve it and consequently invite me to use the service again, they automatically extended my subscription for a year without checking if that was what I wanted to do.

In fact, I was fed up of the yearly routine that I had decided to go for the 2-year deal; a second email upbraided them first and then requested an amendment to the subscription details, this elicited an apology, but I still had to arrange to pay for the deal.

Movable times

When I called at 09:10 yesterday morning, the call centre should have been running for at least 10 minutes in the UK, but I got the overnight message still running on the outgoing message system, I also realised that international calls were still barred on my home phone as a result of Bacchus's visit in March.

Anyway, my colleague was of the opinion that the Economist was quite left-leaning, though I can understand that they have attacked a few right-leaning people not so much for being right-wing but for their actions which could be inimical to progress and justice in their countries - Berlusconi and the twin brothers of Polish politics come to mind.

It was however interesting to note that I read the weekly Economist which my colleague considered left-leaning and read The Daily Telegraph which is quite conservative in its copy and opinion.

What do you read?

It reminded me of an analysis of readers of British newspapers in the 1980s as opined in the political satire drama of that time called Yes, Prime Minister.

In the A Conflict of Interest episode, the Prime Minister had this to say of the papers. "Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers: The Times is read by the people who run the country. The Daily Mirror is read by the people who think they run the country.

The Guardian is read by the people who think they ought to run the country. The Morning Star is read by the people who think the country ought to be run by another country. The Independent is read by people who don't know who runs the country but are sure they're doing it wrong.

The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country. The Financial Times is read by the people who own the country. The Daily Express is read by the people who think the country ought to be run as it used to be run. The Daily Telegraph is read by the people who still think it is their country". And The Sun's readers don't care who runs the country providing she has big tits.

Hmmm, I do wonder if this still fetches true 20 years on, mind you, we did not have the Internet then.