Zyta Gilowska has been removed from the post of minister for finance because she is being investigated on suspicion of having lied when she declared that she had not worked with the secret services in Communist Poland. (The process is called “lustracja” in Polish.) She is feeling aggrieved. She has said that she has less […]
A few weeks ago I mentioned in passing newspaper reports that the president of Poland was displeased at the continued rule of a lefty in PZU, a state controlled insurance company. The incumbent was duly sacked and his successor was announced by treasury minister Wojciech Jasi?ski. The lucky man, whose appointment is still to be […]
Quote from a Polish politician who shall remain nameless: The overwhelming majority of mafia members in Poland and abroad are heterosexual. This was in response to the real nut-job of the piece, Wojciech Wierzejski, a member of the current, democratically elected Polish government, who has demanded in parliament that links between homosexual organisations and the […]
Sometimes you have to admire Poles their openness. The new head of the state TV channel is the right wing Bronisław Wildstein. In the puling adolescent west the new boss of a TV station or newspaper might be expected to trot out some feelgood cliches about how he does not intend to interfere in anyway […]
I know little about Rafał A. Ziemkiewicz but he seems to think along my lines so he is clearly a genius. Here is an article he wrote about intellectuals and ignoramuses for those readers who speak Polish. I’ll just translate (clumsily) one sentence: Lepper is the effect, not the cause, of the blurring of the […]
Sometimes you have to laugh (or if you’re Henryk Grynberg, sneer) at decadent Westerners who have never experienced totalitarianism. In Gazeta Wyborcza (May 6th) a page (actually, many pages) is given over to the threat to democracy posed by ignoramuses Andrzej Lepper and Roman Giertych, the coalition partners. Some choice quotes from Lepper and Giertych […]
A coalition government for Poland has finally been agreed. This time it even has a majority, as the LPR (League of Polish Families) got onside when (because?) an extra three ministries were created to ensure jobs for the boys – errr, a meaningful input from the coalition partners into matters of national policy. Thus, Roman […]
A coalition government has been formed in Poland. Well, not really. At the last moment someone pulled out so the coalition is still in a minority. It’s just that now it has lost every last shred and tatter of repsectability. Here’s the BBC on the subject. How the writer refrained from adding the words “by […]
This post is a straightforward lift from the current issue of Nie (the by-line is “MB”), but it is irresistible so here goes: in the district of Jarocin the balance of power on the 19-strong district council is held by a dead man. Until the sudden death four months ago of a councillor Mieloszyk the […]
Following in the footsteps of Teresa Lubińska (kicked out of the ministry of finance for speaking the unspeakable) comes Stanisława Okularczyk, until recently the deputy minister for agriculture. While down in southern Poland she had the audacity to tell her voters: The Warsaw set is laughing at you. Minister Jurgiel [her boss] does not understand […]
