They say all news is local so here’s a taste of Poland from the pages of a typical urban local paper, a weekly freshet. There are three headlines on the front page and each of them is an order: “Close this alley,” “Talk to the president” and “Fight the Horse Chestnut Leaf Miner.” Poles are very attached to the horse chestnut tree, which is associated with young love, and is under attack from a kind of moth as well as the motorist lobby which wants all trees on the sides of roads chopped down so that people who drive too fast, too drunkenly, too carelessly etc. will have a better chance of survival if and when their cars leave the road. The talking to the president is the media’s idea of participatory democracy. The president in question is the mayor, not the president of Poland. The alley our local hacks want closed attracts boozers and undesirables and it seems cannot be lit.

Elsewhere we learn that John Paul II still lives in our hearts and minds, a bus driver was caught smoking in his bus, it’s time to change your tyres, schools will not in future be allowed to turn away asthmatics and other sickly nuisances, there’s a jazz festival coming up, there’s a lot of property for sale, having to change buses in the centre of town when travelling from one end to the other is a pain and someone found cat.

Three orders…