More from the censors’ archives: “At the start of December the editors [of the local newspaper] enthusiastically took to rehabilitating Santa Claus. At least one front page article devoted to this oh so important question was planned… The editors’ plan to completely rehabilitate Santa Claus was foiled by the censor. Two articles and three plates […]
Professor Maria Janion, a distinguished Polish scholar, is eighty this Christmas and, Poland being a country which — though it publishes interviews in Playboy with Boris Szyc (pronounced “shits”) where he gets to say rude words a lot — still takes scholarship seriously, this week’s Polityka has a tribute to her. Of the tribute-payers, only […]
Taking Poland by storm right now and for the next eight — no, make that seven — days is one Krzysztof Kononowicz, who ran for president of Bia?ystok. You can watch his appearance on a teevee show if you search around but it’s a slightly unpleasant experience. The question of manipulation comes up and — […]
Sponsorship is an idea that should never have been divulged to the Poles. At the moment there is an ad campaign for hospice care. Posters on bus stops invite you to send a text message to the hospice charity. They tell you how much the text costs with VAT but they don’t tell you what […]
All news is local, they say, so here’s what Poland looks like going by the pages of a classified ads newspaper that comes out twice a week here: Poles love cars. One third of the paper is given over to them. The section marked “hobby” is less than one page long, hopefully because hobbyists have […]
This week’s Nie tells of the predicament of an Armenian small trader in Poland. In brief, he has been refused permission to continue residing in the country because, well yes, he is paying his own way, and yes, he is employing a few Polish people and no he’s no burden on society and he’s not […]
“Ulotki i reklamy prosz? wrzuca? do skrzynki” say the signs outside the doors of the flats on the leafy X. estate in Gda?sk. This means “please place advertisements and flyers in the box” but the receptacle into which the obliging postmen have placed the advertisements and flyers looks an awful lot like a wastepaper basket. […]
Taking pot shots at holy cows without even troubling to study the deeper philosophical issues involved — especially where a recently deceased and well-loved public figure is involved — is a cheap and nasty way of drumming up some publicity, which has a long and dishonorable history. So here goes: two of the most respectable […]
Military coups in Thailand, rioting in Budapest and here in Poland a government falling apart and apparently bribing opposition members to join them. The main opposition party wants to take to the streets… Where will it end? The prospects are grim indeed. This is only a young state – just seventeen years – and some […]
Yes, it’s good to be back in Poland, where pedestrians are inexorably being pushed off the streets by people handing out leaflets (schools, loans) to pedestrians. Turning, inevitably, to the papers, I find one intriguing story amongst the usual mire of vituperation and sleaze. Ludwik Dorn, deputy prime minister and minister for the interior, flew […]
