The prosecutors in Poland’s most highly politicised prosecution service (Warsaw) have had enough. Exclamation mark. They are rebelling. Exclamation mark. Nine or ten of them are resigning over the political interference in their work of putting criminals where they belong. Oh yes. Up with this they will no longer put. It’s pretty easy to resign, […]
Word comes my way of a book by the name of There’s an Egg in my Soup by one Tom Galvin describing his experiences as an Irishman in Poland. It sounds awful but that may well be the fault of the publicity machinery behind the book. Here’s the cliché ridden summary on the publisher’s website: […]
I don’t know. Actually, I do: administration and marketing with some broken English in case a multi-national corporation should become aware of your existence and deign to give you a job. How different things were in 1918, when I was a boy, taking my school leaving exam with Aleksander Wat. I won’t divulge my own […]
The people of Poland woke up this morning slightly dazed, slightly confused, by the million-strong army of industrious party activists who were busily engaged in removing and ecologically disposing of the election campaign posters that had appeared over the last six weeks of intense but cheerful campaigning. Battered but proud, ex-prime minister Jarosław Kaczyński spoke […]
According to the latest Polityka Rafał Antczak has a new job. Antczak was one of the three authors of an article in Gazeta Wzborcza about how we can’t afford to be so rich. I was later able to reveal (i.e. I read the paper) that the think tank Antczak worked for (CASE) received funding from […]
Yesterday’s entry on Beata Sawicka’s corruption charges was a little hurried. Here, for those with strong stomachs, is the sleazy story in more detail. In January 2007 the CBA (Anti-Corruption Office) agent meets Sawicka on a training course. He poses as the representative of a western property developer. On October 1st Sawicka is arrested for […]
Where to begin? Beata Sawicka, an opposition party deputy was caught red-handed by the CBA (Anti-Corruption Office) a week or two ago accepting a bribe in connection with the sale of land. A CBA man had gone undercover as a developer and elicited the bribe from Sawicka in an operation that lasted months and months […]
Here’s Sławomir Sierakowski in the latest Polityka: In a country where according to official statistics more than half of Poles live below the social minimum but discussion of economics usually begins with the flat tax and always ends with lowering taxes populists are bound to win.
Gazeta Wyborcza has a regular feature in which they ask the same set of questions about tourism of various people. You know the type: “I left my heart in… [answer]”; “My best holidays were in… [answer]”; “My favourite hotel… [answer].” This week the respondent was a Daria Pawęda, described as a journalist and traveller. Her […]
Aleksander Wat was a precocious young fellah. He wrote “JA z jednej strony i JA z drugiej strony mego mopsożelaznego piecyka” (I from one side and I from the other side of my little herring-iron oven) at the age of 14 and a short story “Lucifer Unemployed” in his early 20s. With a title like […]
