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Trade union membership in this country which owes its existence to trade unions is 14% of workers. Nie has a cover story this week about Solidarity’s disgraceful behaviour during the recent miners’ strike. In brief, a profitable mine was joined with a much less profitable one where the miners earned more, having recently received a pay rise. The “new” miners wanted their pay raised to the level of their less profitable colleagues. One Solidarity activist called for the state to intervene to stop the strike. As can be expected, membership of Solidarity in the mine plunged.

Meanwhile in the Catholic University of Lublin we have the extraordinary spectacle of the management – Catholic clergy – being more tolerant of gays than the Solidarity trade union, headed by one Alina Rynio. Solidarity – you might want to read this twice – has called for the striking from the work regulations of a clause calling for tolerance. A clause, which, nota bene, is taken nearly word for word from the law of the land.

Hence 14% union membership.

(For non-Polish readers, the title of Rynio’s books are:
Raising/Rearing the Young in the Teaching of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński and Intergrated Rearing/Raising in the Thoughts of [inevitably] John Paul II)

With hindsight, I suppose it was inevitable that the ruling establishment in Poland turn its guns on the teletubbies. Inevitable, too, that I would at least mention it, even though Beatroot already has too.

The Spokesperson for Children’s Rights, Ewa Sowińska, thinks one or all of them is propogating homosexuality. She thinks they should be investigated. The best comment must be that of Leszek Miller, former Prime Minister, who suggested Sowińska call in the psychologists to examine her rather than the tubbies.

Quote from a Polish politician who shall remain nameless:

The overwhelming majority of mafia members in Poland and abroad are heterosexual.

This was in response to the real nut-job of the piece, Wojciech Wierzejski, a member of the current, democratically elected Polish government, who has demanded in parliament that links between homosexual organisations and the mafia (a catch-all term used to mean organised crime) be examined. It is a fact, according to Wierzejski, that the majority of gays are either secret agents or worked with the secret police.

The Christmas edition of Polish current affairs magazine Polityka contains a fairly typical look back on the year in photographs. Internationally, the year is sombre to say the least: New Orleans, the London bomb attacks, race riots in Sydney, the earthquake in Kashmir, violence in Iraq… There is no room for levity in the captions.

And then there are the events of the year in Poland. A picture of the Kaczyński twins (one the president of Poland, the other the chief of the ruling party) carries the ironic remark “Poland is again blazing new trails for democracy.” The caption under the picture of a rearing horse bearing a riot policeman breaking up a pro-gay equality demonstration ends with the weary words: “It appears that thinking in this matter has been banned too.” (Poland’s minister for the Interior and Administration, Ludwik Dorn, described the police actions as a “exemplary”.) A photograph of the prime minister, who is widely dismissed as the puppet of his party boss (Kaczyński), bears the legend “…he promises little and keeps his word.”

And so it goes: tragedy in the world at large; mere farce in Poland.