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It looks like I took a bullet for the team. That quarter-page ad for a college that guaranteed an MA degree in two years was a cunning Gazeta Wyborcza hoax. They say the interest generated by the ad was enormous, with people from all corners of Poland. I’m not exactly sure what GW thinks this proves. That employers have an obsession with certificates and papers (supposedly a thing of the communist past)? But everyone knew about that. It seems strange that GW, such an outward looking, western-orientated newspaper, needed to enlist the help of half of Poland to find out about the existence of qualification inflation, which has been known about for years in the West. If they can’t read English in there, well any young Pole looking for work could have told them about it. In fact, Gazeta Wyborcza itself carried a story about how Poznań was looking for a public toilet manager with a university education and several years’ experience.

Saturday’s paper prints reader reactions to the big campaign and it is fair to say that this battle the newspaper decisively lost. One student, for example, wonders why she is supposed to feel ashamed or inferior for writing her MA thesis (on Warsaw) in Polish. Enough. No doubt the war on free education will be won with or without the GW’s fifth column.

Yesterday’s Gazeta Wyborcza had an article about the decline of the Irish economy. It’s headlined “Womens’ Spendthriftery Caused The Crisis” and consists of quotable quotes from people affected by the depression in Ireland. Among them is one Newton Emerson, Irish Times columnist, who is quoted as saying “In the majority of marriages it’s the woman who decides about spending. Unlike men, they cannot stand saving and go shopping much more often than men. Their oestrogen runs wild. Women were the driving force leading to Ireland to its downfall. In my opinion sacking women would blunt the effects of the recession. It will reduce their appetite for spending and men will find work which will enable them to maintain families. And they will finally regain their wallets.”

Awful stuff, isn’t it? Too bad GW didn’t do a little background reading. Emerson is a satirist. He published this article way back in February, exciting quite some controversy at the time.
(I used my own translation from the Polish because the words quoted by the GW do not correspond with what is on-line at the Irish Times.)

Polish workers (among others) are required by law to play the stock market with at least part of their pension savings. I hardly need to go into what has happened to the stock markets of late. Gazeta Wyborcza had a cheerful lead story on Thursday: The Shares Slump is Devouring Pensioners (a very free translation of “Bessa zżera emerytom”). It turns out that half of the gains made by the so-called “open pension funds” since they set up shop in 1999 have disappeared in the last few weeks (GW corrected their earlier report that 100% of the gains had been wiped out). It’s a complicated and dull subject – unless you are a woman facing retirement next year. In that case, I would imagine, it is gripping to say the least. By some quirk of sexism, demographics, life expectancy, incompetence and blind adherence to free-marketeering ideology, women (but only old ones) will come off worst, though the situation is not all that bad, as a part of pensions benefits are and will continue to be paid out by the boring old state body, ZUS (also notoriously inefficient, lest I be accused of bias). Still, real people will see real reductions in their real pensions starting in a few months because of the crisis (that’s what they’re calling it here: the crisis. Have another vodka.) GW’s article is accompanied by a commentary from the pen of Dominika Wielowieyska. In a sudden rush of good citizenship I have decided to provide here an interlinear translation into English of the reassuring words of wisdom from the ramparts of Gazeta Wyborcza:

Nasze składki w OFE są po części inwestowane na giełdzie.

Our pitiful savings are gambled on the geegees.

W 2007 r. fundusze chwaliły się, że pomnożyły nam pieniądze o kilkadziesiąt procent.

In 2007 the tipsters boasted that they had made us a tidy cash profit.

Dziś z powodu bessy kilkadziesiąt procent zmalało o połowę!

Now, as a result of a losing streak, I could really use three squares and a cot.

Już w przyszłym roku pierwsze osoby dostaną emeryturę, której część - na razie nikła - pochodzi z OFE.

This is going to be one tough winter.

Ich emerytura będzie o kilkanaście złotych niższa, niż wydawało się kilka miesięcy temu.

Your pension’s going to shrink by 10, maybe 20 zloties a month.

Niby niedużo, ale dla ubogich liczy się każdy grosz.

It’s no big deal but when you’re a deadbeat every penny counts.

A dla nas wszystkich liczy się poczucie emerytalnego bezpieczeństwa - podczas turbulencji bezcenne.
And we all need chumps to keep putting their dole money on horses.

Winne są trzy ostatnie rządy SLD, PiS i PO - ich skandaliczne zaniechanie.

It’s all the fault of the last three hot tips: Hallo Dundee, Fancy Lady and Santa’s Little Helper.

Do tej pory nie ma bowiem ustawy o funduszach bezpiecznych, w których towarzystwa lokowałyby nasze pieniądze, gdy do emerytury zostało nam niewiele lat. Fundusze bezpieczne - bo nie mogłyby inwestować w papiery ryzykowne, np. akcje.

If only the government had listened to us when we were proposing our 100% failsafe, foolproof, guaranteed, waterproof System, available to the discerning turf connoisseur on recept of cheque or postal order.

Wybierałyby obligacje skarbowe.

If they had listened to their One True Turf Source, they would only have picked Sure Things, and not donkeys.

Chroniłyby nasze oszczędności przed giełdową sinusoidą.
This would have protected your savings from the eventuality of it coming up mud.

“Gazeta” kilkakrotnie wzywała do ich utworzenia.

We often called for betting on form and breeding, And the man that did that could never be burst.

Bo twórcy reformy słusznie założyli, że na giełdzie zarabia się w długiej perspektywie, najlepiej kilkudziesięciu lat.

The tote investors and the bookies take the long view that the house never loses.

Jednak to założenie nie zdejmuje z rządzących obowiązku chronienia ludzi przed momentem, gdy giełdowa huśtawka jest najniżej.

But we know how to beat the odds and profit by laying off long shots against each-way bets at off-course bookies and exploiting the resulting vig differential.
Niech się politycy wytłumaczą, dlaczego o to nie zadbali.

It’s time the politicians adapted our patented, guaranteed System.

Niech parlament szybko naprawi ten błąd, by chronić kolejne pokolenia oszczędzające w OFE na starość.

Parlament should send a cheque or postal order to Gazeta Wyborcza without delay to learn the secrets of the turf trade that guarantee a retirement in clover.

Witold Gadomski of Gazeta Wyborcza is beginning to sound desperate. Today’s front page story in his newspaper is that the crisis is at hand. Ukraine and Hungary are in serious trouble and for foreign investors there is really no difference between all those East – sorry – Central European statelets. They’ll pull their money out of the whole region en masse, even if, say, Poland is actually in good shape. Already the zloty lost 18 groszy to the euro. But Gadomski on page two is of good cheer. A recession is not pleasant but it’s no catastrophe, he tells us. On condition that the economy quickly hits rock bottom and then bounces back. What is it that economists of a sardonic bent say, again? Oh, yes: even dead cats bounce. But for me the real gem of his piece is the following statement: “Almost everywhere in the world banks have stopped trusting their customers…” Bad customers! Bad customers! You may have thought customers had stopped trusting banks but you didn’t win a prize for defending market economics, did you, thicko?

Okay, so the US is not Poland but still I find the Onion more reassuring than Gadomski.

Witold Gadomski is plainly relishing the opportunities the current financial troubles offer for a fight. Here he is in last weekend’s Gazeta Wyborcza, telling us all to calm down, calm down. There is no cause for alarm. The system works.

He quotes Stiglitz: “The fall of Wall Street has shown the world that a certain way of economic functioning is unsustainable. What is happening is a sign that the calls to liberalise the financial markets were mistaken” (a back translation into English). Gadomski comments that Stiglitz cannot decide if he is an academic or anti-globalisation ideologue. I won’t pretend to know what’s going on – pretending to know is the job of Henry Paulson – but Stiglitz’s words strike me as being very cautious and handily borne out by the collapsing right and left of banks. Then again, Gadomski has in the past won an award for “defending the principles of market economics”- regardless of how dismally they fail. It’s funny how talking up the markets is practically a patriotic obligation while talking them down is a dastardly act of treachery.

“Police had to use force yesterday to disperse demonstrators” reads a photograph caption in Friday’s super libertarian Gazeta Wyborcza. How do they know?

In the absence of two independent, named sources (or is that old hat in the old media?), should the caption not read: “Police used force to disperse demonstrators”?

This was published hard on the heels of stories about the conviction of ZOMO (a kind of auxillary police) officers for killing 9 miners three days after the declaration of martial law in December 1981 in the “Wujek” mine. Would anybody like to bet the communist authorities did not use the expression “were forced to” when describing the actions of the ZOMO?

The front page of today’s Gazeta Wyborcza - apart from the strange claim that a 46.7% voter share for the left wing candidate in France’s presidential elections is a “crushing” defeat - re-runs the pensions time bomb scare story. The story is expanded on in the economics section and commented on by Witold Gadomski on page two, so it’s obviously Quite Serious. To recap: people aren’t screwing each other enough and they’re living too long so in a few years there will be no one left to support all the old folk. Poland’s population is predicted to fall to 30 million by 2030.

Unusually, the newspaper does mention the small matter of economic growth (or “increasing wealth”). However, rapid economic growth will not last and anyway it means that in a few years time there will be a shortage of workers in certain sectors. Are you following this? I amn’t. Something called the Institute for Structural Research says that increasing the length of time people spend with their noses to the grindstone is essential: the alternative is to raise taxes to pay for pensions. Given the choice, I’d pay more tax myself, but what the article does not mention is that it takes ever fewer workers to generate the same amount of wealth.

A trade union you may have heard of (Solidarity) commissioned a report sometime back from a French company. The report was titled “Niskie płace barierą rozwoju Polski” (Low pay is a barrier to Poland’s development). It is not referred to in GW. No trade union or anyone that might be reasonably said to represent working people is quoted in the article. The report found that from 1995 to 2000 “wydajność pracy” (literally, “work output”) increased by 58.3%. From 2000 to 2005 it increased by 19.5% (Nie 17-18/2007). That’s a lot of extra revenue to splash around on - oh, I don’t know - say, pensions for people who live longer than economists would like them to.

Unilever’s campaign for real profits continues. A full page advertisement appears in the women’s supplement to Gazeta Wyborcza. It includes a picture of the masterminds of this operation. In case the irony is not abundantly clear, I’ll put “masterminds” in inverted commas. These are in fact the Polish drones, acting on instructions from Higher Up, in Western Europe, or possibly the States, wherever it is those clever people from Unilever think up their schemes. Six women are pictured. They are, from left to right, the “face” (but don’t worry, the pic includes her body too) of the campaign, the product’s PR woman, the campaign’s “ambassador,” two marketing bods, and Katarzyna Figura, a Polish actress. The point of this campaign is to stress that fat, ugly and old people can also contribute to Unilever’s shareholders’ dividends by buying chemical potions and slathering them on their sagging, flabby and inferior skin. And it’s true, the ambassador is quite rotund. But the rest of the plain ordinary, not particularly beautiful folk? In a radical departure from type the two marketing women are young blondes with – I’m just describing what I see – large busts. The PR woman might, at a stretch, if you were particularly mean, be described as merely “okay.” The “face” of the campaign is a stunner (in the spirit of accepting herself for what she is, she has changed her hair colour since her picture was put up on the campaign’s homepage). And Kasia Figura? This is Kasia Figura. Hideous, isn’t she?

Not one of the pictured women could by any violent gymnastics of the imagination be described as “old” or “ugly.” Unlike you, you tubby old boot.

It’s always been a matter of some surprise to me that I have never been busted for tax evasion. I’ve worked in a dozen countries under a kaleidoscopically variegated set of tax systems (Poland alone has at least three different kinds of employment contract) - none of which I have ever understood. A snotty letter did come from the British Virgin Islands but I dealt with that. And now this bombshell, dropped on me by Gazeta Wyborcza: “Every investor has to fill in a special ‘capital gains’ tax return. What’s worse, you also have to pay tax.” And I thought it was only people who worked for a living that had to pay taxes.

After extensive research (one and a half minutes on Google) I have been unable to find the source for “no matter who you vote for the government always wins.” It’s certainly true here in Poland, with local elections just over and a government still firmly in power.

An interesting difference of opinion has come out in the media, though. Today’s super Fakt tabloid says the turn-out was “marna” (miserable, lousy), while Gazeta Wyborcza says excitedly that it was “?wietna” (splendid, excellent). Fakt announced a turn-out of 34%, GW of 45-49%. Piotr Pacewicz, in GW, actually writes

Serce ros?o wraz z rosn?cymi w ci?gu dnia szacunkami frekwencji wyborczej. Na pewno b?dzie o kilka dobrych punkt�w wy?sza ni? w wyborach parlamentarnych 2005, kiedy przestraszyli?my si?, ?e z udzia?em w g?osowaniu b?dzie coraz gorzej.
The heart has swollen along with the increasing turn-out estimates during the day. It [the turn-out, not the heart, presumably] will certainly be a good few points higher than in 2005’s parliamentary elections, when we feared voter participation would be ever worse

Yes, he really wrote that, and he’s a grown man.