Insincerity of a non-purpose

A cause without a rebel

As one comes to the end of another project, one is in a quandary about how much has been achieved in the last few months.

My suspicions of the sincerity of purpose linger without respite.

As one was hired to help introduce a best practice methodology for a scheme that was implemented by personnel whose knowledge and experiences of an earlier version beclouded their ability to see the new features of the later.

That is excusable until the pressure of usage reveals tell-tale signs a sophisticated old version or a poorly implemented new version.

That management had identified part of the problem was significant and laudable, at least that is why one was hired.

Sacred cows for roast beef

However, once the job started of analysis and recommendation, endless meetings of consensus seeking validation stifled progress mostly through the resistance of the earlier implementers whose sacred cows were about to be massacred.

My candid opinion was that the system as it was could be improved upon and there was no need for a radical overhaul and design.

Others were hell-bent on a complete redesign, whilst the incumbents had the agenda of trying to revalidate their failing implementation time and time again by bringing in the vendor to vet all documents.

In the end, we have a repository of position documents, logged hours of debate and analysis but changed not one single thing – 5 months down the line.

Just talking the talk ONLY!

My questioning of the sincerity of purpose stems from the fact that a rationalisation is already happening without having put anything in place.

It looks like management is seeking to have some modicum of due-diligence done but have no intention of implementing any change.

Meanwhile, the lessons one has learnt would go far and can be codified into the following lessons.

• Never offer your organisation up to be an early-adopter of any technology; you end up having to do it all over again 18 months down the line.
• Master the technology at hand before implementing alternatives, other experts might wonder at your lack of fundamental knowledge.
• Just because you are good at an automation process does not mean it would work for all applications.
• The debate about implementing technologies once concluded at management level in terms of strategy and financing should be left to experts to carry forward.
• Once a technology is adopted, decisions should have expert delivery not democratic consensus.

Documentation is not completion

There are more lessons to learn in terms of the pace of change, but there is a delusion that documentation is fulfilment rather than it being the first part of an agreed process.

It is very likely that this time next year, the same old issues would still be the issues being discussed.

Does gay marriage affect your marriage?

Spoof interviews

The spoof news programme called the Daily Show – Global Edition relayed on CNN International in the weekends sometimes brings an interesting light-hearted perspective to current affairs.

One such instance was the spoof interviewer tackling serious issues with the main proponents of their vested agenda.

Gay marriage happens to be one of the hot-button issues in along with abortion rights and stem cell research; however, putting gay marriage on the ballots along with the presidential election in 11 swing states was part of what clinched the second term for Dubbiyew.

The Democrats should have addressed the issue better and had it moved out of focus, but then there are more problems with being labelled a liberal than being a conservative, but then if a coin ever had two sides in, one side always seems to be bigger and wider than the other minor side – go figure!

The question

Anyway, the clincher question in the interview was – Does gay marriage affect the relationship between you and your wife? – The interviewee did not think that was a serious question.

In my mind, that is probably the most important question on this gay marriage issue and the activism that it entails. Exactly, how does one Adam and Steve couple stop the other Adam from getting on with Eve in another relationship?

In these modern times, whilst procreation is probably now the nominal consummation of a marriage, companionship and partnership seems to have gained ascendancy too.

Marriage as it stands

The whole furore about marriage really boils down to having ways of recognising an enduring partnership from which partnership rights by law should and must accrue if there is any justice in this world.

Any long term relationship social, business or nominal should eventually have some sort of acknowledgement, even so it could be legal and made legally binding – marriage in a general sense should be no exception.

Back to the question, if everyone has the right to partner with whomever they desire and the attraction amongst or between sexes leads to some fulfilment, then everyone should have the let to confirm their relationship without a majority trampling over the yearnings of a minority.

Other statistics

In this case, the minority is not the group having the highest divorce rates or involved in the abortion fracas, to blame the societal ills of failed and dysfunctional heterosexual partnerships on the advent of alternative partnerships is disingenuous to say the least if not downright dishonest.

The sanctity of marriage is between the primary partners, it is not a communal sectarian diktat to be imposed on everyone and withdrawn from those who happen to be different in their choices which are neither criminal nor offensive to the level-headed and reasonable public.

When you are confronted with the gay marriage issue again, just wonder how that business really does impact on your own particular affairs, if it does not, then let sleeping dogs lie. What does not affect your relationship does not affect your relationship, if you can accept that as truth.

Dancing on their warm graves

Another week of events are consummated in this posting having lost the work-time link to the sudden uneasiness of some malevolent who found that a useful service to external consultants was just a too good thing to have.

Somehow, the Bayesian filters on the firewall links this blog site to a sexuality issue and hence gets blocks.

How it arrived at that conclusion escapes me, but there goes when you offer what should characteristically be within human judgment to some sophisticated software robot.

Aping your politicians

However, what has been nagging me all week is the commemoration of the 11 victims of a fire blaze in an Immigrant detention centre at the Amsterdam Schiphol Airport.

As the story goes, a fire started with the responsible personnel adopting the hard-line indifferent stance of the hard-talking politicians of ignoring a critical issue till it had moved beyond desperate.

Well, before the inquiry set had submitted their report on what went wrong, both the Justice and Interior ministers had commended the staff for having acted adequately and appropriately.

The loss of human life be that criminal or victim had paled into insignificance for intemperate analysis and the hardening of resolve in terms of the actions rather than the actors.

This in the light of the fact that it was revealed that the alarm systems were faulty in some parts, switched off in others and too sensitive at the fire doors that they were not opened when people needed to get out of danger.

As the poor “criminals” raised alarm, their cries were probably ignored by idling guards swilling you know what and smoking what you may not desire and the “criminals” perished such that the prevailing intemperance in this rather so tolerant country concurred that criminal life might just be of no value.

Just as the bodies were released to the families of victims who in the majority were ethnic European, a service of remembrance took place with the Justice and Interior ministers crying crocodile tears of compassion and concern.

Before their graves were dug, they already had the indignity of someone dancing on their graves, it is just so despicable.

Being your public

Just as that nasty chapter closed, another minister who had approved more early aircraft activity in a nether region which involved deafening fighter aircraft flyovers got woken up at 5:00AM with the sound of such aircraft relayed to her well-appointed home far away from her disconnected approval.

My heart bled with empathy when she first expressed shock at the noise and that it could happen near her home at all. No! Never!

Well, if that does not inform everyone of the fact that politicians are beginning to come out of a gene pool of people who are not everyday people then what else?

The problem nowadays is about people who make decisions so remote from the realities of what and who would be affected on some objective premise as if human consideration does not matter.

Similarly, last year, my neighbourhood had 5 bus services withdrawn in anticipation of a tram service that was to start in over 6 months after the service was withdrawn.

The computer model might have been fine, but the reality was 40,000 people deprived of a useful service just like that. They probably consulted the neighbourhood before making the decision, but what use would that have been if the consulted rode bicycles or drive cars?

Over the last few weeks, the Interior minister has been spat at in the main street and had a projectile thrown through her office window, not that I condone any of this activity, but frankly, the mean streets of our nation are beginning to arrive at the doorsteps of the people who should be preventing the mean streets from becoming our ultimate destination socially and politically.

As someone commented in my last posting, the police are measured on the wrong set of parameters such that more time is spend issuing fines on spitting spatters and protesters over noise injustices than fight real crime.

These politicians have the police at their beck and call, well, hopefully, somewhere along the line the police would realise that they have a public duty of protecting the majority without privilege than the cocooned minority who are far from reality, purpose and ideas.

Solve the crime and stop the idle talk

The spate of killings that pervaded the Netherlands underworld did not go unnoticed last week.

Whilst many may say, it was some sort of score settling between rival fiefdoms of ill repute, the killing happened in our streets and one in far off Thailand within days of each other.

The public in general might have been in grave danger with one of the killing happening quite near a school, thankfully, we were spared that greater horror.

Even so, we all have the right to be very concerned and probably even fearful that such lawlessness could be on our streets with the police just given to speculation rather than crime-solving.

That statement might be considered unfair, but not in the light of the absurd bureaucracy which classes general crimes along with crimes against the person.

One would contend that reporting a crime like a theft or burglary should be made in the appropriate police district, however, when one has suffered actual bodily harm that has resulted in visiting the nearest first aid/emergency clinic which happens to be outside the police district where the crime happened, the police station nearest to the clinic should be more obliging.

In this case, that police station is just opposite the door to the emergency clinic, and when they refused to take the report, the crime went unreported.

In the light of the killings, the deputy police chief has attributed the events to a criminal investigation which got some hoodlums scared to the point of liquidating those who might talk.

Then the police have offered a sop to other likely targets of safety if they would talk too – absurd does not begin to describe the logic behind this, my vested interest is in the fact that the police have always excelled in losing the respect of their public with such crass analysis.

There is a long caseload of unsolved gangland killings stretching over 15 years and this does not augur well for anybody. However, you are more likely to see the police nabbing fare defaulters on the Metro than actually seeing to real public safety.

Ones candid advice is to get down to the job of real crime solving, especially those intractable ones even if it involves getting a few smarter guys to run the investigations.

As for the police chief’s comments, I have heard quite a few excuses in my time but this one is just too lame to warrant any quality of stipend.

For now the sorry state of affairs lies with the hapless activity of speculation and inaction.

Reference

Investigation prompted underworld killings: top cop

Gangster John Mieremet killed in Thailand

Aborted by non-abortionists

Lessons from the news

The last week became another week of interesting assertions as the news started with the tragedies of loss of life through accident and misadventure in Nigeria and climaxed with a resignation in the midst of the White House.

Not too much is known about the victims of the air crash but it warranted 3 days of national mourning in Nigeria, this compounded with more revelations about the fact that the President’s wife, now laid to rest did indeed die from the consequences of cosmetic surgery offered by the “exclusive” Molding Clinic in Marbella, Spain.

There are lots of lessons to be learnt from the need to establish better air craft maintenance regimes to the inordinate quest for youth through surgical augmentation – which some commentator ascribed to the cultural colonialism engulfing Africans of means.

Toupee or to shave

My own resolve was to shave my head completely the moment I noticed signs of emerging baldness, it was easier to manage, accept and handle, and not an iota of my confidence or esteem was affected by that decision.

We just have to accept some aspects of nature, or what I mean in the generally quoted prayer is the courage to know what to change, what we cannot change, knowing the difference and moving on.

Mired after conception

Back to the by-line, Harriet Miers the erstwhile nominee to the post of Associate Justice in the US Supreme Court withdrew her name from consideration by reason of the unrelenting opposition from conservatives who thought besides the issue of gravitas, she had not made clear her stand on the issue of abortion.

Law and politics in America has this strange litmus test of being judged or pre-judged on the issue of abortion, that apparent cornerstone of constitutional law of protecting the unborn over considerations of the already living and existing is almost bizarre to the extreme.

This is besides the fact that Ms Miers belongs to an evangelical communion which would most definitely be opposed to abortion.

A manager is a manager

However, the grating part of this nomination was exemplified in another nomination for the post of the chairman of the US Federal Reserve where some commentators had offered that Mr Bush’s bank manger could as well be in the running.

That had become the basis for levelling a charge of cronyism on a president who was supposed to clean out the Aegean stables of the office of the Presidency after the peccadilloes of the Clinton years.

However, if the bank manager were nominated, Mr Bush could easily have said he was a good bank manager and what needs to be managed is a bank, albeit the bank of the largest economy in the world and that quite convincingly in his almost dronish voice.

Scooter the Hobbler

We had not heard the last of the clean-out as we had run out of breath waiting for the indictments of the special prosecutor on the leaking of a covert agent’s name in order to discredit her husband.

By the time we heard that the Chief of Staff to the Vice-President had been indicted from perjury and obstruction amongst other charges – 5 in all – the only quote of the day that stuck was about such charges defiling the office of the president.

The President in his folksy almost smiling demeanour offered that there was work to be done and moved on to Camp David, but the special prosecutor has only shot the first salvo – a resignation from any staff of the White House is probably the rarest sight, but that scalp might just be the first on this matter.

There might be more heads bowed in shame, but Scooter which is the nickname of that functionary did not scoot out, rather he hobbled off on crutches.

The only hope for the next week might just require a confident walk that makes the last week the tipping point into new expectations. Even onlookers have to have to live to be spectators as live passes on around them.

Changing pictures of news

More analysis than fact

Developments from yesterday’s news stories about Nigeria have been myriad. When the last dispatch came through, the crash site was in another location with the possibility of over half of the passengers being survivors.

By which time, credit was being paid to the kind of pilot skill that allows for there to be survivors from a plane crash.

At the same time, on hearing the news of the death of the president’s wife in Spain from the complications of an undisclosed surgery, speculation became rife about why it was in Spain and for what ‘ailment’ in particular.

Crashing close seeking further

Looking at the facts of both events, if the plane was lost from radar 3 minutes after take-off and the Boeing 737 has a cruising speed that ranges from an economical 796km/h to a maximum cruising speed of 943km/h then the plane would have been between 39 to 47km away from Lagos as the crow flies, putting it some 100 km or more South of the initially suggested crash site.

Where the idea of survivors came from one cannot tell, but it appears that it was hope against adversity to help fill the gap between actual event and getting the real facts – a rather cynical ploy of rumour mongering for nobody’s benefit than the responsible agencies that should have shown more competence.

Now, it appears the plane crashed at speed creating a deep crater and leaving no survivors. We await evidence from the flight recorders if they are ever found to reveal the truth of those circumstances.

Heart Surgery is not a Marbellan speciality

On the case of the death of the “First Lady”, the puzzle with all deference to Spanish medicine and their health care system is why any rich Nigerian would go for surgery in the coastal resort of Marbella.

Germany, the United States or the United Kingdom seem to be the usual choices.

A simple search on Google with the words Marbella and Surgery can be rather revealing. If the death certificate reads, “Death by misadventure”, well, many things do carry the risk of death.

The speculation however gathers around augmentation rather than therapeutic – a new YOU in death really does not make good reading.

I suppose the reasons for surgery would remain undisclosed.

References

Airliners.net: Boeing 737-100/200

Giving news a picture

Errors from Nigeria

Being a Nigerian of convenience rather than purpose, I find that I usually have a passing interest in events happening in the country or affecting their people.

Today, however, news coming out of Nigeria has been quite sad on two counts.

As one is almost always sentenced to accessing news feeds off CNN when one is away from home, just about 04:00 this morning in Antwerp the breaking news announced that a passenger aircraft had gone missing having taken off well over 8 hours before for a 50 minute flight.

What was most interesting about that announcement was that the news anchor linked up with the local CNN correspondent in Nigeria and as they were talking about the take-off from Lagos – the commercial capital of Nigeria – to the right of the screen was the map of Laos a country in Asia.

News from Nigeria

It took the best part of 2 minutes for that error to be corrected, but that exudes the fallibility of man and his systems.

As the plot thickened, it was not clear if the aircraft had ended up in the Atlantic Ocean and by the time we knew it, there was a brief reference to the oceanographic currents in that area which might have dragged the plane to some unknown Davy Jones’ locker.

As they surmised about the weather, the weather girl was drawn in to give a idea of the weather conditions 7 hours before – I suppose at times one does not need a weather forecast and we plumb for weather forensics.

As fate would have it, the aircraft did crash on land and it is a commendation of pilot skill that it appears there were survivors of the crash and probably up to half did survive, but there is no confirmation of numbers at the moment.

Sadness from Nigeria

The other piece of saddening news is the announcement of death of wife of the president and position of megalomania in Nigeria accorded the title “First Lady” – that topic would be addressed in some consequent dispatch.

Sadly, due to complications of surgery in Spain which was first confused with Germany – by CNN again – she lost the battle for life and died.

What is more concerning about this event is that a few years ago, the Defence Minister took ill and part of his recuperation therapy was the recommendation that he spent at least two weeks in the French Riviera.

If paid for, a life of such untrammelled opulence can just be the tonic one needs, though these rich Nigerians have plumbed the depths of excess too legendary for mention albeit without prejudice.

Situation from Nigeria

For a country that offered so much promise, awash with oil wealth and prodigious talent, the convenience of going abroad for treatment comes readily to the privileged, signifying not much has been done to raise the quality of access and service in the health industry.

As we mourn the First Lady and those who perished in the plane crash of whom number a few dignitaries, we hope that any other news out of Nigeria change in tone and context for good things.