Naryn will be back, and so will we
Re: Neftchi win title by a point, 63 to 62, as Naryn go down
Your paper gives Naryn Tash-Kömür one line, "finished last on 8 points". May I give it a few more? Eight points is eight points. We drew when nobody expected it, and my son still talks about the afternoon at the Shakhtyor Stadium when we took a point off a side that cost ten times what ours did.
Yes, we go down. I am not going to pretend otherwise. But the First League is eight clubs, not the end of the world, and Toktogul have earned their place up. Good luck to them. They will find the road to our ground is long, and the pies at the Shakhtyor are better than anything in Nurzhan.
To the people who laugh at the bottom of the table: a town of sixteen thousand keeps a football club because the miners' sons need somewhere to shout on a Saturday. We will be back in a year or two. Until then, please print our results in the First League as large as you print the derby.
Rustam Abdullaev
Tash-Kömür
Fields do not wait for a count
Re: A halt on farmland conversion needs a count and a date
I read your editorial on the farmland halt with interest, and I agree that nobody can plan on a word. But I would add something from my own lane. Three years ago the field next to ours, a good irrigated one with a canal share, was sold in pieces to six buyers. Within a summer there were six fences and a path. The canal still runs past, and now my father cleans the ditch every spring for the benefit of people who have never held a spade.
You say a farmer who earns the same on a bumper crop will weigh a cheque for a plot. That is exactly right, and I cannot blame him. Potatoes at two som a kilo do not pay for a new roof. Telling the seller to stop, without telling him why staying in farming is worth it, will only make him sell faster before anything is decided.
Count the land, yes. But count it soon, and tell us who is counting.
Zhyldyz Orozova
Kara-Buura
The editor replies: The Ministry of Economy has set no date for its count and has not said whether the result will be published. The Herald will ask again.
216 this morning, and the school bus is late
Re: Nurzhan air at 87 on the AQI as inversions set in; Talas 73, Iyık Janyl 68
Your report says Nurzhan's air was "moderate" last week. I am glad it was, because this morning it is not. The monitor shows 216, which Gidromet itself calls very unhealthy, and the fog on our street is the colour of weak tea. I could taste it on the way to the stolovaya.
I do not need a forecaster to explain inversions. I have lived in Dastgoh for forty-one years and I know that when the chimneys start in October, we are the ones under the lid. Ms Musaeva is honest that Nurzhan has more things burning than Talas. Fine. Then the answer cannot be "it is a regional pattern".
My neighbour burns coal because the gas never came up our hill, and the city boilers burn coal because nobody has found the money. I do not blame either of them. But I would like someone to say, in plain words, who is going to fund the heat plant's gas conversion and in which year. My granddaughter has a cough that comes every November like the first snow.
Lyudmila Gerasimova
Dastgoh, Nurzhan
The editor replies: Irad Gidromet publishes the readings from all six of its PM2.5 monitors daily; the Herald has asked for the funding date for the gas conversion and will report the answer.
A seat at the table, or an open gate at Dostuk?
Re: Uzbek diplomat to lead Turkic States secretariat; Irad has no seat, though all three claimants do
I read that an Uzbek diplomat will head the Turkic States secretariat and that Irad has no seat. My cousin in Khanabad rang me about it before I had read the paper, and she was proud. I was not sure what to feel.
I sell onions and dried apricots at the Bazar-Korgon border market, and I can tell you what a seat at the table means to me: very little. What matters is whether the gate at Dostuk opens on time, whether the customs hours are the same on both sides, and whether my cousin's husband can bring his lorry without waiting half a day. Mr Kenjeev says nobody has asked us to join anything. Perhaps that is true. Perhaps nobody needs to be asked.
Still, it is odd to read that three of the members claim bits of our country and the fourth will now run their office. Nobody in my family stays awake over it. We stay awake over the price of diesel. I would only say to our officials: go on talking quietly to the neighbours who buy our onions and our power, and do not wait to be invited.
Gulnora Rakhimova
Bazar-Korgon
