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January 28, 2007
Eccentricity
In the eighteenth century to be an eccentric you had to worship Satan, gamble, go hot air ballooning, accidentally kill someone, marry a close relative, flee from creditors, be addicted to opium, write and privately publish a pornographic novel, discover one of the elements and have a star, a species of plant or a national dish named after you.
These days it is enough to fail to possess any one of the following: a television, a car, a mobile phone.
Posted by hgrodsk at 03:19 PM | Comments (1)
January 26, 2007
Target Practice
Dziennik (26th January) has revealed that the nefarious soviets had atomic bombs on Polish territory. It's a good thing no one knew about this at the time: their presence would have made Poland an obvious target in any European war.
On an entirely unrelated note, an American general calling himself Henry A. Obering has assured Poland that situating an anti-missile shield on Polish territory would make the country safer and there would be no need for Poland to get any Patriot missiles.
This is a bit of a turnaround: on the radio last week it was announced that America had decided to locate the shield in the Czech Republic. A Polish general (I distinctly recall voting for him last time out) said that never mind, Poland need not give up its "dream" of hosting the American target -- errr, shield. It seems he was right: Poland can indeed dream on.
Posted by hgrodsk at 02:30 PM | Comments (0)
The Big Questions in Local Journalism
Who is to blame for all this snow? This is the question which has been tormenting journalists in local newspapers for the last few days as Poland gets a belated flurry of snow action. Who can we blame for the gigantic tail backs and traffic jams, for the hours wasted by drivers in their cars, for the rash of snow-induced unpunctuality, the awful, awful tardiness? Who? The local authorities are a prime suspect. They are supposed to ensure the roads are passable within three to six hours of the snow stopping. But what if the snow doesn't stop? What if it keeps on and on falling? You clear and grit the road and then a few hours later you have to clear off all that expensive, chemically modified salt and sand and grit the road again. And meanwhile drivers are sitting in their God-given cars fuming. Why isn't my car going anywhere? What's wrong with you people? I demand... I demand something.
I think we can all safely agree that it would be much better for motorists if snow just didn't fall. (The same goes for leaves from deciduous trees.) As for non-motorists – oh, who cares about them?
Posted by hgrodsk at 02:18 PM | Comments (0)
January 24, 2007
How Capitalist is Poland (part five or six)?
There is talk of abolishing the May 1st public holiday. Showing any respect for work here is regarded as dangerous communist deviance. There used to be a lot more streets named after the labour day holiday.
Posted by hgrodsk at 01:48 PM | Comments (0)
History
"On the surface, the Russian motives seemed most noble: they intended to introduce law and order, found schools and put an end to ancestral blood feuds and to robbery. It's just that they wanted to do good by force and make the wild mountain tribes happy by first forcing them into submission." Too bad GW Bush didn't read Wojciech Jagielski's Wie?e z kamienia (Towers of Stone), from which the above quotation comes, before he invaded Iraq. The reference is to Russia's attempts to subdue Chechnia in the nineteenth century.
Posted by hgrodsk at 01:32 PM | Comments (0)
January 18, 2007
Be Afraid
You must understand that both you and your children will have to work harder. Who could have have said such a thing to the Poles in these days of economic growth (around 5 or 6% I believe)? Who would threaten a free people so blatantly? Was it a lesser-known Dickens character? A Dark Satanic Miller? A bloated plutocrat? Perhaps it was that guy with the top hat from Monopoly.
The speaker was Jeremi Mordasewicz of the Polish Confederation of Private Employers, quoted in today's Dziennik along with a few trade union representatives, demographers and dissenting economists. No, I'm only joking about the last three: journalist Magdalena Janczewska sought no alternative views. Only those of employers are represented in her article, which is headlined "Only Immigrants can Save our Pensions," an opinion Janczewska obviously shares, since she writes: "Only arrivals from the east... can save our public finances from catastrophe." Employers, of course, have much to gain from a flood of cheap labour. One workshop owner is given space to moan about how he could not get a visa for a Ukrainian mechanic. The reader is left to assume it was because of bureaucratic hassle (after three months he gave up) but could it have been because the law states that to obtain a work visa for a non-EU citizen the employer has to show that there are no Poles available to do the job. Could it have been that there were Poles willing to work as a mechanic, but not at the wages being offered?
This article is Dziennik's contribution to the scare story about how we are getting so rich that we are poor. The article does not mention Poland's growing wealth, which will to some extent offset the decline in the numbers of workers. However, they do have a quick vox pop (mostly with yuppies) and one of the respondents (aged 48) shows a better grasp of reality than that professed by the employers and their journalist: the state won't go bankrupt; it will find the money somewhere, for instance, from taxes.
A daring, non-conventional voice. He seems to be implying that the Poland of the future will have greater tax receipts than the Poland of the present. But that would mean Poland would have to be experiencing economic growth...
Posted by hgrodsk at 02:26 PM | Comments (0)
January 11, 2007
Censorship
Gazeta Wyborcza has launched a series called "fifteen themes" of the third (i.e. post 1989) Republic of Poland. Part one deals with censorship. There is a photo of a page from the GW of July 10th 1989 in which two cuts have been forced by the censor. In place of the censored information is [----], followed by the reference to the censorship statute. Ah, the bad old days... I won't be quoting any more of GW's meisterstuck on censorship because a notice on the inside cover of the attractive folder it comes in says "?adna cz??? ani ca?o?? dzie?a nie mog? by? reprodukowana bez wcze?niejszej zgody wydawcy" or "Neither the entirety nor any part of this work may be reproduced without first obtaining the written permission of the publisher."
Posted by hgrodsk at 06:34 PM | Comments (0)
January 08, 2007
How Capitalist is Poland? (IV)
"To dzi?ki nami bogaci staj? si? jeszcze bogatsi" is the proud slogan of an investment bank here in Poland. It means "It's thanks to us that the rich are getting richer."
Posted by hgrodsk at 04:29 PM | Comments (0)