Poll results analysed in the Sunday papers suggest that although Joe Public believes it was wrong for Bertie Ahern to take wodges of cash from well-wishing businessmen, the majority of the electorate thinks the poor man (the victim of a witch hunt!) should stay in his job as Taoiseach. Astonishingly, the Sunday Independent states, “Besides […]
Judging by word of mouth (and not the increasingly obviously phoney bestseller lists bookshops put up by the door to clear out old stock), Leopold Tyrmand’s Z?y (Bad) is the most popular Polish book I know of. Everyone loves this story of a superhero in the grey days of Polish communism. It’s a good few […]
One rarely gets to witness a major political career imploding. It’s not a pretty sight, as evidenced by the footage of a floundering Bertie Ahern attempting to deal with journalists’ questions about a fee (or was it a gift?) he received for “promoting Ireland” at a mysterious gathering of business people in Manchester. (Click here […]
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 […]
There were so many dubious defenses thrown up by Bertie Ahern’s teary performance during yesterday’s television interview, that one would have to devote a dozen blogs to demolishing them. Yet here’s one angle that I have yet to hear amid all the cant about our leader being basically a salt-of-the-earth bloke: can you recall the […]
If we are to believe today’s super serious and responsible Dziennik the European Union is soon to forbid drinking at night. That’s what the headline on page one says anyway but if you read on it turns out that you will be allowed to drink at night. It’s just they plan to make it harder […]
Back from a short break from the blog after a weekend in Berlin: A truly great city, easy to navigate with an excellent U-Bahn & S-Bahn system, and with a laid-back ambience that seems at odds with the white-knuckled atmosphere that sometimes seems to choke Dublin. (Monday-morning rushhour in the German capital seemed positively somnolent […]
Over the last few days Gazeta Wyborcza has been running an excellent series devoted to Komitet Obrony Robotników (Workers’ Defence Committee), to mark the thirtieth anniversary of this, the first open opposition movement in the Soviet bloc and the forerunner of the Solidarity movement. Authors include well known opposition figures and people still prominent in […]
I found this today in the New York Times: We don�t use future tense, we don�t use passive voice, we don�t have long chapters. (We’re not too keen on definite article either.) The speaker is Diane Steele, publisher of the “…for Dummies” guide to stuff. I knew the philistines had it in for the passive […]
This weekend’s Gazeta Wyborcza has a story headlined “Bush agrees to the Geneva Convention.” How good of him to agree to something his legislature signed into law half a century ago. Who would have thought the day would come when the agreement of the US not to torture prisoners would be news? The US! The […]
