Three Monkeys Online - the free current affairs & arts magazine

After the revelations about the government’s plans to privatise higher education there was a storm of debate on the pages of Gazeta Wyborcza – no, not about education, about something called the Hausner plan. Unless I miss my guess this is the second plan to be named after this Hausner person.  This one concerns public funding of the arts, or to be more precise, cutting public funding of the arts. Surprisingly enough, the government wants to hand over arts funding to the private sector. Corporations are to be allowed write off 1% of blah blah blah. GW has had articles on it every day and every day they printed a summary of the plan’s main points, as if you couldn’t guess to within 99.9% accuracy what a plan dreamed up under the auspices of a right wing neoliberal government consisted of.

Now I think puppet theatres and poetry and what-have-you are important but I am amazed at the complete lack of interest in Kazimierz Stępień’s expressed desire to remove the constitutional guarantee of free study. Propose getting rid of the requirement to do a post-doctoral degree and there is an uproar. Propose cutting poor people out of third level education and nothing.

The other thing that has been occupying the mainstream media of late is who gets to be called boss of the European Parliament – Jerzy Buzek or some Italian guy. We’re all supposed to be glued to our seats with our fingers crossed for Buzek even though we’re constantly told that the EU is about partnership and putting the interests of the community above the interests of individual nations. That’s all very well, it seems, but wouldn’t it be nice if Our Lads got some nice (”prestigious”) jobs out of it? At the risk of being drawn into the pointlessness of it all, here is some background information on Jerzy Buzek: he was not a very good prime minister of Poland for a few years, during which time one Marian Krzaklewski, trade union leader, was the power behind the throne. Krzaklewski also ran for the European Parliament but didn’t get in. Well it looks like he may soon get his old back seat back.

The recent political sex-scandal here has brought the primitives crawling out of the woodwork. We have been reminded of such pearls of wisdom from the Polish political classes as “how can you rape a prostitute?” (In fairness to Poland’s backwoodsmen, no one has quite equalled Putin’s congratulating of the Israeli president.) But such primitivism is not limited to a few unenlightened ape-like creatures from the parliament.

Recently I had a rare opportunity to revel in the unmitigated delight that is Polish televsion. Oh, the wonders… I could fill an entire beermat with them. But one ad in particular caught my attention. It features a young Polish actor called Boris Szyc (it’s pronounced “shits” so he’d better make hay while his Polish sun shines: he won’t break Hollywood that easy). In it he and someone else are racing cars at great speed and with reckless abandon on public roads in a glorification of dangerous driving that was banned years ago in more civilised countries. For some reason the other boy racer ends up in the backseat of Szyc’s car, handcuffed to Szyc’s headrest. Szyc starts up the engine and indicates to his be-balaclava’ed prisoner that he should fasten his seatbelt. The prisoner shakes his handcuffs to show that he can’t. Szyc just grins and hits the accelerator.

So we hit a tree (pedestrian etc) and you die screaming? I’ve got an airbag and a seatbelt. Tough Szyc.