Poor Gazeta Wyborcza. Your heart has to go out to them. They must feel like they’re banging their heads off a brick wall in there. Today’s lead story is about how the Polish National Insurance is about to open up its records on 25 million Poles to the CBA (Central Anti Corruption Bureau, in reality […]
Katyń is where the Soviets murdered between 15,000 and 25,000 Polish soldiers and other citizens during the second world war. Andrzej Wajda has made a film called “Katyń,” to which hordes of schoolchildren are trooping off to every day. Here’s Tomasz Sakiewicz of Gazeta Polska on the subject: “The elites of the Second Republic [inter-war […]
Blaming the opinion pollsters (see earlier entry) is usually the resort of the washed-up but sometimes you have to wonder. In this weekend’s Gazeta Wyborcza there are two articles concerning, among other things, mobile phones. Side by side they sit, contradicting each other. Polling agaency CBOS tells us that in a random sample of 903 […]
As you approach Kraków, or any other town in Poland, it becomes clear that when it comes to advertising billboards, anything goes. Confirmation of the abundant evidence of the outraged senses comes this week on the pages of Polityka, from the lips of one Jacek Maria Stokłosa: Several years ago all provisions concerning protection of […]
“Zakłócenia w ruchu powodują zmiany w czasów odjazdu” reads the sign pinned immediately below the summer bus timetables in the Polish town where I have been spending the holidays. Now some old sticks in the mud may tell you this means “Traffic disruption will cause changes in departure times” but there are more efficient, informative […]
“I like it when they beat up students,” he confessed with a smile. I didn’t go so far but I agreed that in America, France and West Germany they had it too good and it wouldn’t do them any harm to get a bit of a kick up the hole. Who could this charming humanitarian […]
With hindsight, I suppose it was inevitable that the ruling establishment in Poland turn its guns on the teletubbies. Inevitable, too, that I would at least mention it, even though Beatroot already has too. The Spokesperson for Children’s Rights, Ewa Sowińska, thinks one or all of them is propogating homosexuality. She thinks they should be […]
It’s the time of year when Polish schoolchildren don suits and take school leaving exams, wrestling with the incompetence of Poland’s Ministry for Education bureaucrats. The reason they dress up like Little Lord Fauntleroys is that until very recently their own teachers examined them and pronounced them fit or unfit for further education, imprisonment, poverty […]
True story: an Irish friend of mine went to the bank in Gdańsk for a loan. Everything went swimmingly until it was time to type in his PESEL, the Polish equivalent of a social security number. My friend only had his Irish number. “How many digits?” asked the clerk. “Nine.” “I’m sorry, it has to […]
Romuald Rytwiński, director general of GM Opel in Poland: “The situation is still far from normal. 600 or 700,000 new cars should be selling on the Polish market [every year], not 200 or 300,000 as is the case now.” Blackadder: “It wouldn’t have anything to do with leeches, would it? Doctor: I had no idea […]
