« July 2006 | Main | September 2006 »
August 30, 2006
Progress and Regress - the Irish version
In their article in Gazeta Wyborcza the three young economists offered up the following statistic: in 1960s Poland for every retired person and invalid in receipt of welfare there were 12 people working and paying taxes.
Turning to this week's Sunday Times I read that in Ireland in the 1960s there was a tiny 1.4 members of the workforce for every dependent. Nowadays that ratio is 2.2 to 1. Ironically, this healthier dependency ratio is attributed by the author (Ciaron Hancock) to a lower birth rate. The current scare in Poland is that there are too few people being born...
Hancock talks of "dependents" while the Polish authors talk of "retired people and invalids" so this definition-difference could account for some of the gaping difference in dependency rates in 1960s Ireland and Poland but 12 to 1 and 1.4 to 1?
The Answer: children. The Polish three do not count children among dependents.
Posted by hgrodsk at 02:18 PM | Comments (0)
August 24, 2006
Name Dropping
Western readers will notice something peculiar about the stern and impressive Stefan Chwin's latest novel and other works of fiction from this part of the world: the unashamed name dropping. I mean brand names.
starannie ogolony i spryskany O... S...It's hard to know what is going on here. Is Chwin entirely innocent of the wiles of advertising and marketing? Poland is new to that whole ball game and there is a gear and gadgets magazine on sale here proudly flying in Naomi Klein's face called Logo. It is hard to imagine a serious western writer (and Chwin is a serious writer) taking the same pains as Chwin does to name the (random, anonymous, entirely incidental to the plot) fast food restaurant used by the protagonist.
carefully shaven and sprayed in O... S...
W supermarkecie A...
In A... supermarket
niczym dostawca wody mineralnej V..., innym razem wbiega? w szarym, postrz?pionym swetrze od H...-M...
like a V... mineral water distributor, another time he ran in in a ragged, grey H...-M... sweater
Another passage suggests he is being ironic:
Trzej kr�lowie o imionach G..., K... i L...But it is the only one that I have been able to find that suggests any criticism of or disillusionment with brandname led consumerism. A third possibility suggests itself. There are characters in the novel obviously (a little too obviously) based on real people. Perhaps the book is a response to fellow Gdansk man Pawe? Huelle's novella M... B... (M... B...). (Hint: it's about cars.) Chwin's novel is entitled Z... P... (The G... P...) and is the brandname of a pen.
The three wise men G..., K... and L...
Posted by hgrodsk at 03:26 PM | Comments (0)
August 14, 2006
The Sincerest Form of Flattery
I blame Bia?oszewski. For the short sentences. In fact, fragmentary. Sentences, that is. Very annoying. He wrote a book once. Famous.
Pami?tnik z powstania warszawskiego.
It was called.
Miron Bia?oszewski wrote short, abrupt sentences in a sometimes successful attempt to capture and reflect the urgency and chaos of Warsaw during the uprising. Polish lends itself to this style, having many impersonal, one word constructions like "ciemno" (it is dark), or "cicho" (it is quiet). The novel is very highly thought of in Poland, as is witnessed by the numerous imitations of his style (see Marcinkiewicz's blog), but it's a long way from the high drama of the Warsaw uprising to the rather less exciting world Warsaw's rising housing costs and short sentences just don't cut it. Here is Magdalena Szwarc in today's colour supplement to Gazeta Wyborcza writing about the apparently newly-discovered phenomenon of borrowing money to buy one's home:
Heatwave. Marta looks into the cupboard. She could do with buying some tee-shirts. Not much of an expense, you'd think, but six or eight comes to a lot. She'll wait till next month.For more of the delightful and pleasant style of giving each sentence a paragraph all of its own, see the BBC news website.
It pains her a bit.
...
The foreman shows them up to the fifth floor. Dust. The damp smell of concrete. It's quiet because it's Saturday. No one is working.
Ania has been nauseous all morning. She is pregnant.
They walk through the kitchen of their future neighbours at number 15 and through number 20's living room. It's dark. There are no windows.
...
From the third floor up the flats are cheaper
There will be a lift.
They go to see.
Posted by hgrodsk at 11:47 AM | Comments (3)
August 12, 2006
Scions
On Thursday, in the sleepy provincial city of Lublin, things got exciting. A motorist noticed that the driver of a Cherokee jeep (price: around 150,000 zl -- you can buy a flat for that) was behaving erratically, weaving all over the road and stopping and starting for no reason. On calling the police he was advised to confiscate the ignition keys next time the jeep stopped at a junction. This he did, only to be threatened with a gun by the drunken driver of the jeep. When the police arrested the drunk and searched his apartment they found, in true journalistic cliched style, a "veritable arsenal" of pistols, machine guns and rifles.
It turned out that the driver was the son of an influential figure in the shadowy world of medicine. And you thought maybe this was the drunken, ill-disciplined 19 year old brat offspring of a gangster and his moll? Oh no. This is Poland. The man in question is doctor "Jacek K." a 48-year old surgeon in the General Surgery and Transplant Clinic of the Medical Academy of Lublin. His father used to be the head of same clinic.
Posted by hgrodsk at 12:11 PM | Comments (1)
August 11, 2006
Why, oh why
Today's Gazeta Wyborcza has an interview with Lorenzo Vidino, an Italian terrorism expert, about the recent near-attack on trans-atlantic aeroplanes. The interviewer is the ever incisive Mariusz Zawadzki. The headline is "Why Great Britain Again?" It is quite a puzzler, alright. Vidino is able to help: he says that Britain is perceived the world over as the USA's most important ally and it has soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. Perhaps Zawadzki missed that one but in fairness the obvious questions have to be asked too. But Zawadzki is still mystified. How come there are so many al Qaeda sympathisers in Britain, he asks. "There are more Muslims in France and one hardly hears of terrorists." He really chooses his words carefully. ("We Francji jest wi?cej muzu?manów, ale prawie nie s?ycha? o terrorystach.")
I was disappointed when Vidino did not simply repeat his answer to the previous question. Instead he attributes the state of affairs not to the absence of French soldiers in the middle East but to greater restrictions in France on extremism.
More:
British Muslim leaders also state the obvious to a "dismayed" Downing Street.
Posted by hgrodsk at 07:21 PM | Comments (0)
Think Tanks and Banks
I wrote a few weeks back about an article -- nay, an appeal -- in Gazeta Wyborcza written by three young economists and claiming that Poland was facing a dependency-rate crisis (i.e. too many leeches like the old, the young and the sick and not enough worker drones). Among the authors of that article was one Rafa? Antczak of the Centre for Social and Economic Research (CASE). I did some bone-lazy research into the funding of the think tank (i.e. I visited their home page) but didn't find anything interesting. Then in today's mainstream media GW the following headline caught my eye: "CASE Reveals Payments from Banks." CASE is headed by the wife of Leszek Balcerowicz, head of the National Bank, and for this reason is being investigated by a commission. The long and the short of it is that we now know, courtesy of a leak to Gazeta Finansowa, that CASE has received money from Rabobank (300,000 zl), Pekao Bank (550,000 zl), PZU group (550,000 zl) and BRE Bank (over 800,000 zl).
Point five in Antczak and his co-authors' "appeal" was reform of the health service, to include:
... wprowadzenie dodatkowych dobrowolnych ubezpiecze? zdrowotnych.
... the introduction of additional, voluntary health insurance.
The "additional," "voluntary" health insurance could be provided by, oh, for example, PZU.
It should be noted that according to CASE only a very small percentage of CASE's funding comes from banks. However, Gazeta Finansowa points out that the payments from PZU were made when an investigative committee was examining the privatisation of the insurer.
Posted by hgrodsk at 06:47 PM | Comments (0)
August 09, 2006
The President Speaks
During a visit to a rescue team in July President Kaczy?ski was introduced to a sniffer dog. The dog's handler said: "Ira siad!" ("Era, sit!"). Poor Lechos?aw is reported to have said "Irasiad jest bardzo zdenerwowany" ("Erasit is very agitated"). I won't say I wouldn't have made the same mistake.
Posted by hgrodsk at 09:09 PM | Comments (0)
Telling it like it is
Asked by Niedziela ("Sunday," a Catholic weekly) if he was in favour of withdrawing Polish troops from Iraq, Lechos?aw Kaczy?ski, primesident of Poland, replied:
We have gained a few things thanks to it [our engagement in Iraq]. It's completely senseless, Polish soldiers have died there -- that's the most important thing because the life of any person is worth much more than any money. A lot of money has been gone on our action in Iraq. It costs a lot and we are financing it ourselves. It would be like investing and then withdrawing from the investment and losing everything.
(Quoted in Nie, nr. 32, 2006)
Even Bush can generally be relied on to mouth something about nation-building or weapons of mass destruction or terrorism or whatever his prompters tell him the reason of the day is.
Posted by hgrodsk at 06:34 PM | Comments (0)
August 08, 2006
Road Signs
They did things differently in the past. Road signs in Poland did not always strictly conform with the strait-jacketed expectations of west European motorists. For instance, there are at least two different signs to indicate pedestrians crossing! How many accidents has that little fanebrium caused? One shows a girl (she has a pony tail) and a boy running across the road. Another shows a girl (she has pigtails) crossing the road with an outsized lollipop in her hand. Both signs are black on a yellowish orange background. The Germans too were not immune to these outbreaks of wilfulness: their sign showed a solid citizen with a pipe and a hat crossing the road.
Fortunately, this foolishness is being phased out. A bland and sexless eurostickperson with a head the size of a pea in familiar blue and white colours now bestrides more and more pedestrian crossings in Poland so that even the dullest-witted car-hire patron can figure out what's going on around him without being subjected to culture shock.
Note: I had to rephrase the above as after another day's research on the by-roads of Poland it appears that lollipop girl warns of a pedestrian crossing and pigtail girl warns that child pedestrians might be crossing. I'm sticking with "fanebrium," though, word or no word.
Posted by hgrodsk at 07:46 PM | Comments (1)
August 07, 2006
Mr. Nice Guy
Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz used to be the (quite popular) prime minister of Poland. For reasons not entirely clear to me ("wasn't in that day, sir"), he stepped aside so that the president's twin brother could take over. He is now the president of Warsaw, according to his blog. (I was under the impression that he was the acting president, but he should know who he is.)
He has a blog, source of much merriment but also suspicions among doubting Thomas types that it is written by PR people. Well, it does have a lot of short sentences. Punchy. Occasionally coherent. Yes.
It's normal and natural. I'm not deceiving anyone. I'm saying the same thing only in different words.On the other hand, it does have some of the K-man's trademark phrases, like "I am convinced..." (that I can do it) and "I am certain..." (that we can achieve it). The author also throws in the occasional bit of Marcinkiewiczian English, writing "I’m 47. Can I dance? Yes, I can, I need, I love."
It's the cucumber season here so I will indulge myself by mocking a misprint. Unfair, I know. Dangerous, too, since my own spell checker long since gave up the ghost and was never able to deal with Polish anyway but here goes:
Mi?o?? rozwija ?wiat. Jakim by?by ?wiat bez mi?o?ci? Nie, nie b?d? nawet o tym my?la?. ?wiata bez mi?o?ci by nie by?o. I jak jaj zabraknie, b?dzie jego koniec.Love develops the world. What would the world be like without love? No, I won't even think about it. There could be no world without love. And if there are no balls, it's all over.
"Jaj" (balls, cojones) should be "jej" (it, referring to love)....
There's an anti-blog here (in Polish).
More words of wisdom from Marcinkiewicz here (though I have to take the translation on trust, not knowing the original).
Posted by hgrodsk at 08:34 PM | Comments (0)
August 04, 2006
The finest legal brains
Another journalist is in trouble for insulting a government member. This time it's Mariusz Ziomecki, who called a League of Polish Families deputy a "babsztyl" (big fat aul' one) and a liar in a tabloid, and is now being investigated for "defaming a public functionary." The prosecutor's office called him in for questioning. What interests me here is -- no, not the attack on free speech: that's the order of the day in Poland now -- but the questions the intrepid McNesses will put to Ziomecki over the course of their lengthy, detailed etc. investigation. What's to ask? He published the "defamation" in a mass-circulation newspaper. It's there for all to see.
Posted by hgrodsk at 02:09 PM | Comments (0)
August 02, 2006
Colour
I went up the country. It turns out that not all life in Poland revolves around pubs and discos. Out there the centre of social life is the shop -- the only one for miles around -- sometimes open on split shifts: 6 to 10 in the morning and 6 to 10 in the evening. On the bench outside the locals gather to drink -- beer if their alcoholism is not so far advanced; otherwise fortified wine. Out there, away from the roads connecting cities, there are no cheery roadside bars serving pub grub. Nor are there little mom and pop restaurants tucked away in the oddest corners. You are more likely to find the ruins of a collectivised farm and perhaps an accompanying four-storey block of flats, incongruous in the rural surroundings. It's not quaint. So people sit and drink outside the shop. "What do you do with yourself?" a friend asked two of them at one stopover in the scorching heat. The one who could talk said "I sleep a bit, I drink a bit." The other felt his unshaven jaw with his invalidity pension-winning thumb-stump as if wondering who it belonged to. This is the Poland not so much left behind as ignored altogether. "What do you think of the politicians?" The depressed countryside is prime vote-harvesting land for Andrzej Lepper's Samoobrona, the farmers' party, target of much urban derision. "Thieves." Even the one who couldn't talk for fear his lower jaw might fall off if opened for any purpose other than to pour alcohol into his mouth joined in on that chorus. "And Andrzej Lepper?" "A madman."
Posted by hgrodsk at 11:55 PM | Comments (1)
August 01, 2006
Reasonable Price Increases
"Nie podnosimy cen bez powodu" says the startling sticker on the door of a kiosk near my house. It means, translating freely, "we won't raise prices for no reason." The campaign bears the imprimatur of those noted advocates of centrally planned economies Gazeta Wyborcza and the Polish National Bank. In a free market am I not free to gouge as much as people will pay? And what on earth do they mean by "for no reason"? Is the desire to earn more money a legitimate reason to raise prices?
In case the irony above is missed, GW is a tireless defender of the "free" market. It just seems they don't understand it very well.
Posted by hgrodsk at 12:46 PM | Comments (0)