Nie reveals that one of the creditors of the Academic Clinical Hospital in Wrocław, one of the hospitals facing the bailiffs, is a company called Greenhouse. The big cheese here is one Tomasz Tokarski, a CASE (Socio-economic Analysis Centre) expert. CASE is the organisation that advocates the introduction of additional, voluntary health insurance.
Average Polish pay, 1997: 1,000 zł Average Polish pay, 2005: 2,500 zł Mimimum wage: currently about 935 zł (Some organisations define poverty as an income of less than half the national average.)
Advertisers are easy enough targets at the best of times: a car manufacturer is trying to persuade gullible Poles that its new car can see around corners. (Cretinous slogan: “C’mon” – in English of course, though it’s a German firm operating in Poland.) But when they supply the ammunition themselves… Here’s the slogan of one […]
The centre-right opposition parties could scarcely contain their glee last night, as special panel shows were hastily put together to discuss the unfolding crisis. And who could blame them. A consistent line was taken, as if the election campaign were already underway (something that is far from certain). Across the board spokesmen for Berlusconi’s Forza […]
While Berlusconi was in power, particularly for the second time, the usual question asked by non-Italians, was ‘how could you have voted for such a government?’, headed by a man with a shady past, with court cases coming out of his proverbials, not to mention his tendency towards Bernard Manning-style improv-comedy on the world stage. […]
Romano Prodi’s government has fallen, having lost a vote in the senate on a proposed renewal of Italy’s mission in Afghanistan. It’s unclear exactly what will happen – as consulatations start tomorrow to see whether the numbers can be found to form a new government, or whether new elections will be held. Mediaset shares, in […]
The children of the movies have seen our world destroyed a hundred times–we can accept the apocalypse, even guiltily savour it, but we want the smouldering ruins to have grandeur.
Fabio Fazio, presnter of the talk show Che tempo che fa, interviewing Eduardo Sanguineti, one of Italy’s leading poets, asked the sixty-million dollar question: Are reality-shows, like Big Brother, the modern translation of tragedy? Sanguineti, scarcely missing a beat – and without paying much attention to the fact that Che Tempo Che Fa is itself […]
Brilliant. Cesare Previti, lawyer and one-time right-hand man of Berlusconi, sentenced to five years for his role in corrupting a judge during one of Berlusconi’s many trials and tribulations, has had his sentence changed, yet again, thanks to the swings and roundabouts of a legal process that has never been short of controversial and highly […]