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At first I put it down to my intoxicated state as I looked at the ad on the TV screen over the bar. Also, the sound was turned off. But I saw the ad again in a friend’s house and it really does go like this: a well-dressed man gets into a taxi where he is regaled by the taxi driver’s pearls of wisdom, ending with something like “you should invest in people.” The man leaves the taxi and walks into a board meeting. It turns out he’s Banker, a Master of the Universe. And what does he tell his fellow Masters of the Universe? You should invest in people. In what country would a bank proudly trumpet the fact that its executives rely on fourth hand clichés overheard from the lips of taxi drivers? In what land would your postman offer you financial advice? What country has never heard the cautionary tale about accepting stock market tips from shoe shine boys? Poland, of course.

One of the banks was kind enough to post a flyer to me advertising their credit card. On one side is written the benefits of using a credit card. Life is too short to read that but the other side has three pictures that say a great deal about the contempt we are to have for each other. Picture one: a man is seen handing his card to the disembodied hand of a shop assistant while talking on his mobile phone. That’s convenience: you don’t even have to dignify the overweight pleb behind the counter with the human speech act: you can save that for the people who count, the ones in your mobile phone’s memory. Picture two is perhaps a little less offensive. It shows a different man and a woman doing their shopping. The same disembodied hand (the shop assistant in all three pictures is identical in his/her anonymity) is accepting the card – from the man of course, not from the woman. In the third and last picture an old woman is paying. In her arms she holds a baby (actually it looks more like one of the oompa loompas in Willie Wonka’s factory). That’s the life: you don’t have to speak to workers providing you with goods and services and your ould one will look after the progeny you spawned with the foxy but penniless chick in picture two.

Well, perhaps the Times Online misquoted him:

‘Dermot Ahern, the [Irish] Justice Minister, said: “Legislation is in place to bring to justice those who may have played hard and fast with the financial security of this country”.’

There’s nothing wrong with playing hard and fast. What Ahern should have said was “fast and loose” but since the border between legal and illegal banking practice is so thin as to be meaningless – well, it’s a mistake anyone – and certainly a politician – could have made.

We have America to thank for what must be or should be or maybe already is a popular new adjective: subprime. Northern Rock crumbled but Poland is safe because as any neophyte knows the market never falls. A brief survey of the advertising of bank loans here:
1. We will not check your credit rating.
2. We will lend you money even if you earn 600 zloties (average pay in Poland: allegedly 3,000 zloties).
3. Your ability to pay is not an issue.

Socialist Realist art (or “socrealizm”) was official dogma in Poland in the late 40s and early 50s and elsewhere for longer. Paintings, architecture and sculptures of the period glorify the working class and the achievements of socialism. Kitsch would be a kind word for much of it. Also striking is the resemblance to fascist art: there is a fascination with strong, healthy young bodies. See here, here and here for examples.

While wandering around an exhibition with its glowing reports of Polish Stakhanovs the other day I cast my mind back to the glorification and celebration of my own struggles for a better, brighter, capitalist future in Ireland. One afternoon the exciting news filtered down from on high that our section of the bank had in one day achieved the norm-busting feat of processing over one million pounds in car loans. We workers had outdone ourselves in the fight for a more car-filled future. Plainly, this extraordinary victory in the war against walking had to be marked and so our brigade leader announced that the following day after work we would go to the pub. The day arrived, another million pounds worth of automobile was put on the road and my fellow workers - women all, for progressive Ireland knew no discrimination - disappeared to change out of their work clothes into their civilian clothes (identical to their work clothes) before meeting in a local bar. Joyless, joyless. Even though the motoring public of Ireland was paying, each worker ordered precisely one vodka and diet coke or similarly emasculated product before trickling home, one by one. Where were the patriotic songs, the laughter, the collective buzz of making common cause? The rousing speeches?

Where was the company portraitist with his easel, painting a picture of me wearing a red tie?