Part of the government’s master plan, enthusiastically supported by Gazeta Wyborcza (boring the country where the main serious media agrees with the government), is to put an end to early retirement in Poland. Keep cracking the whip over the backs of aging proles: that’s the ticket. Perhaps, to give the neo-liberals their due, the system has been overly generous: miners and policemen could retire early on the justification that their jobs are particularly dangerous, but so too could journalists.

But although the state is saving money on pensions, there’s a slight problem, which no one – not even Alan Greenspan – could possibly have foreseen: where are all these old folks going to find work in a country with 8.8% unemployment? I mean, a million or two have packed up and left but it’s still a tough market out there. Who are you going to hire? Some oldie who, due to destructive, deeply-engrained habits, may expect to be treated like a human being? Someone who has maybe got used to living on meals not concocted by adding boiling water, who has a proper flat with real bills to pay, perhaps a few children still left to feed, clothe and educate? Somebody who, in short, needs a decent wage? Or some easily exploited young buck who lives with his parents and can therefore can devote all of his weekly pittance to nice shiny things? Some poor idiot straight out of school who thinks any wage is better than pocket money and has never heard of workers’ rights? The choice is clear for any capitalist, which is why the taxpayer has had to step in with cash to make employing old people realistic.

Hence the signs that have been appearing around Poland advertising, as usual, education as the answer to economic problems. One billboard advertises the “50+ manager” scheme to turn your ma into a key account manager or whatever they’re called nowadays. But my favourite so far is the free training (245 hours!) being offered to people over the age of 50 that want to become security guards. At last, something Donald Tusk and I can agree on: when we get caught shoplifting or smoking hash behind the bike sheds, neither of us wants some itchy-fingered teenage punk reaching for his baton to deal out some law and order.