ISLE LIKE NO OTHER
THE LITTLE BLACK DRESS: GOD’S GIFT TO WOMEN!
March 11, 2020
TOM JONES SET TO TOUR…AT 80
March 12, 2020
Missing the bus
ON
LOUD
MUSIC
I recently heard some welcome news. It was not announced on radio, which has a certain irony to it. But the message was plain to hear: “Govt. has decided to provide buses with a playlist of songs while transporting passengers from 1 January 2020 as a part of the government’s efforts to prevent loud music being played on buses.”
That is a mouthful – even for a state communiqué. With that said, the point being made is loud and clear: noise annoys!
If the poet Shakespeare had been on board, he may have expressed his feelings thus: “’Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.” To read on social media the re-sponse of relieved commuters makes one believe the powers that be may be onto something. “This is a great move,” tweeted one happy traveller, adding: “Only bus passengers know this headache.”
Er, no. Only everyone who has ever been in a bargepole’s reach of noisy buses knows. What are these tin can contraptions – popular conveyances or public nuisances? I mean to say, Iraj’s musical styling on top of belching exhaust pipes and klaxons with decibel levels that would put an airport on its busiest day at the runway level to shame! That’s simply adding insult to injury
So yes, although I am not a major fan of big government – being conservative in more senses than one – I’m in favour of this ban on loud music where it hurts. My question is: why stop at buses? How about those highly irritating ‘choon-paang’ trishaws that play blessed Beethoven’s Für Elise over and over again – even while parked to dispense their blasted comestibles and especially when in the near vicinity of someone (ahem) taking his Sunday siesta?
Of course, as with many if not most good ideas by government, there will always be the naysayers.
“Why,” asked one aunty tremulously, “can’t the state mind its own business?” Said another: “Our ministering angels must be jobless if the first thing they order is a change to the menu of musical items on buses!
“Aren’t there more pressing problems to address?” enquired a supercilious sophisticate who wouldn’t touch a bus with a bargepole even if a bargepole were available and all the BMWs in the world had died and gone to some Teutonic heaven. I can empathise to some extent. After all, what will our governing pundits come up with next?
Maybe they’d want us to mind our Ps and Qs at parties or on the cocktail circuit, so much so that they would supply event managers with a list of acceptable topics of conversation?
Perhaps ‘party politics’ will take on a whole new meaning if revellers were forbidden to talk about (oh let us say) elections or commissions, or election commis-sioners, at social functions? The possibilities – a Ministry of Social Media – boggle the mind, don’t they?
All things considered however, the regulation of loud and toxic noises in public places is long overdue. One can only hope the state will come to its senses about a plethora of other noisy nuisances as well.
For instance, those early-morning hour parades and processions through residential precincts threaten to disturb more than the peace and give a laid-back phi-losophy a ruinous name. And let me not start on the loudspeakers that ram their religion in vain through your eardrums into a volubly protesting brain. God is not merciful at 120 decibels!
Now don’t get me wrong. I for one have no issue with any blessed islander practising his or her faith. But it’s only bores and boors who do it, loud and long, and lamentably insensitively.
And while we’re on that topic, how about curbing the public nuisances some of us – well certainly, not all of us – are going to elect to high office? Can I pro-pose a ‘toxicity meter’ that will courteously invite all racists and other chauvinists of their ilk to kindly shut up and sit down?
The people have spoken – loud and clear
Missing the bus
ON
LOUD
MUSIC
I recently heard some welcome news. It was not announced on radio, which has a certain irony to it. But the message was plain to hear: “Govt. has decided to provide buses with a playlist of songs while transporting passengers from 1 January 2020 as a part of the government’s efforts to prevent loud music being played on buses.”
That is a mouthful – even for a state communiqué. With that said, the point being made is loud and clear: noise annoys!
If the poet Shakespeare had been on board, he may have expressed his feelings thus: “’Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.” To read on social media the re-sponse of relieved commuters makes one believe the powers that be may be onto something. “This is a great move,” tweeted one happy traveller, adding: “Only bus passengers know this headache.”
Er, no. Only everyone who has ever been in a bargepole’s reach of noisy buses knows. What are these tin can contraptions – popular conveyances or public nuisances? I mean to say, Iraj’s musical styling on top of belching exhaust pipes and klaxons with decibel levels that would put an airport on its busiest day at the runway level to shame! That’s simply adding insult to injury
So yes, although I am not a major fan of big government – being conservative in more senses than one – I’m in favour of this ban on loud music where it hurts. My question is: why stop at buses? How about those highly irritating ‘choon-paang’ trishaws that play blessed Beethoven’s Für Elise over and over again – even while parked to dispense their blasted comestibles and especially when in the near vicinity of someone (ahem) taking his Sunday siesta?
Of course, as with many if not most good ideas by government, there will always be the naysayers.
“Why,” asked one aunty tremulously, “can’t the state mind its own business?” Said another: “Our ministering angels must be jobless if the first thing they order is a change to the menu of musical items on buses!
“Aren’t there more pressing problems to address?” enquired a supercilious sophisticate who wouldn’t touch a bus with a bargepole even if a bargepole were available and all the BMWs in the world had died and gone to some Teutonic heaven. I can empathise to some extent. After all, what will our governing pundits come up with next?
Maybe they’d want us to mind our Ps and Qs at parties or on the cocktail circuit, so much so that they would supply event managers with a list of acceptable topics of conversation?
Perhaps ‘party politics’ will take on a whole new meaning if revellers were forbidden to talk about (oh let us say) elections or commissions, or election commis-sioners, at social functions? The possibilities – a Ministry of Social Media – boggle the mind, don’t they?
All things considered however, the regulation of loud and toxic noises in public places is long overdue. One can only hope the state will come to its senses about a plethora of other noisy nuisances as well.
For instance, those early-morning hour parades and processions through residential precincts threaten to disturb more than the peace and give a laid-back phi-losophy a ruinous name. And let me not start on the loudspeakers that ram their religion in vain through your eardrums into a volubly protesting brain. God is not merciful at 120 decibels!
Now don’t get me wrong. I for one have no issue with any blessed islander practising his or her faith. But it’s only bores and boors who do it, loud and long, and lamentably insensitively.
And while we’re on that topic, how about curbing the public nuisances some of us – well certainly, not all of us – are going to elect to high office? Can I pro-pose a ‘toxicity meter’ that will courteously invite all racists and other chauvinists of their ilk to kindly shut up and sit down?
The people have spoken – loud and clear
