On the back page of today’s Dziennik is a short piece about the EU’s “You control climate change” campaign. The slogan is translated as “Kontroluj zmiany klimatu,” which means “Monitor changes in the climate.”
Our Man in Gdańsk
Our Man in Gdańsk is a blog on Polish politics, culture and society, written by one H.Grodsk
By popular demand…
Tuesday, May 30th, 2006The Doctors Plot
Friday, May 26th, 2006Today’s Wyborcza takes rival newspapers Fakt and Dziennik (both published by Springer Verlag) to task for their hysterical coverage of the doctors’ strike. El?bieta Cichocka comments that for several months she has been hearing with “przera?enie” (terror, dread) how doctors have been discussing the use of “miners’” tactics – i.e. physical, violent protests. Miners and [...]
Petulance, the dangers of
Friday, May 26th, 2006A short passage from Marcin Swietlicki’s new novel, Dwanascie (Twelve), should give pause to all internet posters except me. A brash Varsovian kicked out of a Krakow pub thinks on his way out that he’ll destroy the business by writing about it in his blog. The blog entry he thinks up: avoid the “Office” on [...]
Won’t somebody please think of the children?
Thursday, May 25th, 2006“Terrorists” reads the headline in today’s Fakt (in English: Fact – I present this information without a trace of irony). Beneath it are photographs of the terrorists in question: about half a dozen doctors, who are on strike at the moment in Poland (80 hospitals out). The tabloid whips itself into the usual frenzy of [...]
World’s shortest characterisation of Poles?
Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006He was a typical Pole, who said “no” to everything Slawomir Mrozek describes his father in the autobiographical Baltazar.
Shadow and Substance
Monday, May 22nd, 2006This weekend’s skittishly unpredictable Gazeta Wyborcza has an intriguing article on the always fascinating subject of the European Union by Judit Kiss, a Hungarian economist. The article is built around a tortuous analogy between the EU referendum and the Merchant of Venice as yet another technocrat tries to perusade us that they read literature too. [...]
That’s my Life
Friday, May 19th, 2006In the previous post I mentioned how a line in a Langston Hughes poem was changed in communist Poland from “And the slime in hotel spittoons: / Part of my life” to “The slime in hotel spittoons / That’s my life.” As it happens, “That’s my life,” is a phrase that might reverberate with some [...]
Chavez, the Guardian and Rzeczpospolita
Wednesday, May 17th, 2006Todays’s Rzeczpospolita has a translation of part of yesterday’s Guardian editorial. Interestingly, Rzeczpospolita leaves out a few sentences from the Guardian piece without following the convention of putting in ellipsis to mark the ommission. Also, the Polish newspaper translates the original “the old left” with the words “extreme left-wingers.” The Guardian suggests that Chavez is [...]
Ridiculousness breeds ridiculousness
Wednesday, May 17th, 2006Quote 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 [...]
Who’s the Boss?
Monday, May 15th, 2006Sometimes you have to admire Poles their openness. The new head of the state TV channel is the right wing Bronisław Wildstein. In the puling adolescent west the new boss of a TV station or newspaper might be expected to trot out some feelgood cliches about how he does not intend to interfere in anyway [...]
