Gramophone needles stuck in grooves
HOW many, reading this headline, even know about gramophones and their vinyl records, and especially how the needles which dug out the sound from the records might get stuck in cracks on the record grooves? The needles needed yanking forwards to re-start.
By John Nagenda
HOW many, reading this headline, even know about gramophones and their vinyl records, and especially how the needles which dug out the sound from the records might get stuck in cracks on the record grooves? The needles needed yanking forwards to re-start.
Your humble columnist is proud to be that needle, when it comes to being stuck in the groove of singing the praises of Our Hero, Moses Kipsiro, and his glorious gold double of 5,000 and 10,000 metres at the Commonwealth Games in India. This particular double was last achieved (when they were called Empire Games: how time rolls on!) in the year of my birth, 1938.
Judging by the aches and pains of my body, how enormous a gap, before Our Man did his stuff! I hope Uganda will do the same and shower a prize on Kipsiro, a house for preference. But, as suggested here last week, when he had only (only?!) won the first race, there is something more which Government can do, by a stroke of the pen, to move the Lugogo Stadium from the ministry of Local Government to Education and Sports.
The ludicrous and sinister fees being feverishly demanded for by Kampala City Council (under Local Government) would now in effect be retained by Sports. There is enough space at Lugogo (although some was stolen to build the Lugogo Shell petrol station) to build a high rise for rent, the money going directly to Sports.
Mr. President, heed our prayers! By so doing you would, in one go, contribute massively to the health of Sport in this country, producing more Kipsiros, Akii Buas and Inzikurus. It correctly highlights Kipsiro’s deeds, as also of our football team in Nairobi last week. The talent has always been there. With better funding it would burst into a flood. Let’s do it!
****************
It is uncanny how Government finds ways to showcase its “enemy†Kizza Besigye in every lead-up to the presidential elections. You would think the retired Colonel bribes it to do his bidding. In the last months it seemed as if Besigye had vacated the country, so little did he feature in the news. But don’t worry, your government is here, people, and so it proved this week.
On a smaller scale internationally than the Chilean miners’ release from their underworld 70-day incarceration, doughty Besigye was catapulted into national limelight when his sister’s book was confiscated at Entebbe Airport. Why and how? Thursday’s Daily Monitor’s front page headline reported: “Govt says it won’t free seized booksâ€, quoting Internal Affairs Minister, Kirunda Kivejinja.
Referring to The Correct Line? authored by Besigye’s sister, Dr Olive Kobusingye, the minister admitted before Parliament that the book was seized because it contained “security connotationsâ€. Oh boy! If in doubt, pull out security, hoping it will blank out any further consideration of the subject in hand. Of course it does the opposite! Nor is it limited to “developing countriesâ€. Ne Bungereza bibaayo (Even in Britain it happens).
Recall instances when that mighty land’s government, tried, as in Don Quixote, to stop windmills: in cases of the publication of books. In most egg covered its face. Here, too, if Government does not soon see the light, which I dare say it will, most embarrassingly, the Constitutional Court will sit and, after an hour’s deliberation, rule that this book be let out to be read and internalised by the Ugandan public. What’s more, no fires will be lit in our streets by a crazed public, no foreign security agency will be any the wiser by its perusal, and Government can carry on along its merry way. Millions of shillings will unfortunately have been spent (misspent) on this caper.
As in the way of The Singeing of the Spanish King’s Beard, this will be called The Silly War of the Shooting of its Own Foot by Government of Uganda. What a waste of a bullet!
Reader, having been availed of this tome by its author, I am reading it and will report to you on its contents and how they are carried. Hopefully I shan’t be locked-up for endangering the security of our nation! For the moment let these things form my Cinema of the Week.
****************
“Chilean earthquake: Not many dead†is coined in journalistic studies as the anti-bathetic way to misuse a headline, the inference being, that it cannot have been much of an earthquake, so why headline it? And also, that “not many dead†is an anti-climatic way to end a sentence. Regardless, life has a way of imitating art, and, in August, a group of 33 miners in Chile were boxed into a corner by a fall of rocks. Occasioned by a Chilean earthquake, perhaps? For a long time they were presumed dead, until dramatic news came that they were alive. How to get them out? Bright minds, daring to hope, thought it might be done, and by Christmas! The world held its breath. Now it has happened, not a drop of blood dropped, 70 days before the Birth of Christ. The new slogan becomes, Chilean Mine Disaster: Everyone Saved!
In a world where we read on Thursday that thugs in Uganda murdered owners to steal their vehicles, how wonderful to hear of this Chilean miracle.
HOW many, reading this headline, even know about gramophones and their vinyl records, and especially how the needles which dug out the sound from the records might get stuck in cracks on the record grooves? The needles needed yanking forwards to re-start.
Your humble columnist is proud to be that needle, when it comes to being stuck in the groove of singing the praises of Our Hero, Moses Kipsiro, and his glorious gold double of 5,000 and 10,000 metres at the Commonwealth Games in India. This particular double was last achieved (when they were called Empire Games: how time rolls on!) in the year of my birth, 1938.
Judging by the aches and pains of my body, how enormous a gap, before Our Man did his stuff! I hope Uganda will do the same and shower a prize on Kipsiro, a house for preference. But, as suggested here last week, when he had only (only?!) won the first race, there is something more which Government can do, by a stroke of the pen, to move the Lugogo Stadium from the ministry of Local Government to Education and Sports.
The ludicrous and sinister fees being feverishly demanded for by Kampala City Council (under Local Government) would now in effect be retained by Sports. There is enough space at Lugogo (although some was stolen to build the Lugogo Shell petrol station) to build a high rise for rent, the money going directly to Sports.
Mr. President, heed our prayers! By so doing you would, in one go, contribute massively to the health of Sport in this country, producing more Kipsiros, Akii Buas and Inzikurus. It correctly highlights Kipsiro’s deeds, as also of our football team in Nairobi last week. The talent has always been there. With better funding it would burst into a flood. Let’s do it!
****************
It is uncanny how Government finds ways to showcase its “enemy†Kizza Besigye in every lead-up to the presidential elections. You would think the retired Colonel bribes it to do his bidding. In the last months it seemed as if Besigye had vacated the country, so little did he feature in the news. But don’t worry, your government is here, people, and so it proved this week.
On a smaller scale internationally than the Chilean miners’ release from their underworld 70-day incarceration, doughty Besigye was catapulted into national limelight when his sister’s book was confiscated at Entebbe Airport. Why and how? Thursday’s Daily Monitor’s front page headline reported: “Govt says it won’t free seized booksâ€, quoting Internal Affairs Minister, Kirunda Kivejinja.
Referring to The Correct Line? authored by Besigye’s sister, Dr Olive Kobusingye, the minister admitted before Parliament that the book was seized because it contained “security connotationsâ€. Oh boy! If in doubt, pull out security, hoping it will blank out any further consideration of the subject in hand. Of course it does the opposite! Nor is it limited to “developing countriesâ€. Ne Bungereza bibaayo (Even in Britain it happens).
Recall instances when that mighty land’s government, tried, as in Don Quixote, to stop windmills: in cases of the publication of books. In most egg covered its face. Here, too, if Government does not soon see the light, which I dare say it will, most embarrassingly, the Constitutional Court will sit and, after an hour’s deliberation, rule that this book be let out to be read and internalised by the Ugandan public. What’s more, no fires will be lit in our streets by a crazed public, no foreign security agency will be any the wiser by its perusal, and Government can carry on along its merry way. Millions of shillings will unfortunately have been spent (misspent) on this caper.
As in the way of The Singeing of the Spanish King’s Beard, this will be called The Silly War of the Shooting of its Own Foot by Government of Uganda. What a waste of a bullet!
Reader, having been availed of this tome by its author, I am reading it and will report to you on its contents and how they are carried. Hopefully I shan’t be locked-up for endangering the security of our nation! For the moment let these things form my Cinema of the Week.
****************
“Chilean earthquake: Not many dead†is coined in journalistic studies as the anti-bathetic way to misuse a headline, the inference being, that it cannot have been much of an earthquake, so why headline it? And also, that “not many dead†is an anti-climatic way to end a sentence. Regardless, life has a way of imitating art, and, in August, a group of 33 miners in Chile were boxed into a corner by a fall of rocks. Occasioned by a Chilean earthquake, perhaps? For a long time they were presumed dead, until dramatic news came that they were alive. How to get them out? Bright minds, daring to hope, thought it might be done, and by Christmas! The world held its breath. Now it has happened, not a drop of blood dropped, 70 days before the Birth of Christ. The new slogan becomes, Chilean Mine Disaster: Everyone Saved!
In a world where we read on Thursday that thugs in Uganda murdered owners to steal their vehicles, how wonderful to hear of this Chilean miracle.