The missing exam parcel and the loss of Neal Butterworth

MAYBE it's the modern world, perhaps it is the increasing pressure we are all facing, but sometimes I sense we're a lot less smarter than we used to be.
Initiative seems to have become a thing of the past, as we've given up thinking to become a tick-box society.
Here's an example. I set, mark and moderate exam papers for journalists. It's a small step outside my normal job working in a newsroom, yet rewarding and challenging.
The latest bunch of sports journalism papers have been marked and were recently sent to me for moderation. Unfortunately, even though I moved home from Hampshire to East Sussex a year ago, the exam marker was given my old address and so sent the exam papers to Portsmouth by registered post.
That's okay, because surely when the package turned up at my old address the current tenants would ensure that the papers were returned to sender. But no!! They signed for the package even though they later told me they'd lost my forwarding address. Why, oh why?
So last weekend, I drove round to my former home, left a note since no-one was around and received a phone call 24 hours later to say that the package were passed on to the landlord. They had no explanation for why they signed for the registered package in the first place.
A call to the landlord discovers that like a game of pass the parcel they passed the package onto a third person who has now gone on holiday to Turkey for two weeks!
Total muppetry in motion.
The end result is that the exam papers are currently lying on a table at this person's home while he is sunning himself abroad - so the students won't be able to discover their exams results for another two weeks.
A total catalogue of errors which makes you despair.

Journalism lost a good man this week.
Neal Butterworth was a former editor of the Bournemouth Echo who died of bowel cancer aged just 55. He was editor in Bournemouth between 1998 and 2011, and had just begun a new life with his wife Julie in Spain when he was diagnosed with cancer last summer.
I never worked directly with Neal, but we would speak and meet up on quite a few occasions when I was deputy editor with the Southern Daily Echo in Southampton. Whenever I popped into the Echo on Richmond Hill, he would always spare the time for a chat to catch up on the latest gossip.
He was the first to congratulate me when I took on my first editorship in Swindon and Neal was always very generous with his advice. Editing a newspaper can be a lonely place, but always go with your instincts, he told me.
We had exchanged quite a few messages since he left Bournemouth when, ever the optimist, he admitted that despite the challenge of cancer, he was going to battle the cancer head on.
Neal was a fantastic editor who held the respect of the newsroom and the community at large. He produced wonderful newspapers, had a vibrancy and energy about him, and as a person he always had time for you. Neal was a really decent man.
http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/10415067.Former_Echo_editor_Neal_Butterworth_dies_of_cancer_aged_55/?ref=nt