If we are to believe today’s super serious and responsible Dziennik the European Union is soon to forbid drinking at night. That’s what the headline on page one says anyway but if you read on it turns out that you will be allowed to drink at night. It’s just they plan to make it harder […]
Over the last few days Gazeta Wyborcza has been running an excellent series devoted to Komitet Obrony Robotników (Workers’ Defence Committee), to mark the thirtieth anniversary of this, the first open opposition movement in the Soviet bloc and the forerunner of the Solidarity movement. Authors include well known opposition figures and people still prominent in […]
I found this today in the New York Times: We don�t use future tense, we don�t use passive voice, we don�t have long chapters. (We’re not too keen on definite article either.) The speaker is Diane Steele, publisher of the “…for Dummies” guide to stuff. I knew the philistines had it in for the passive […]
This weekend’s Gazeta Wyborcza has a story headlined “Bush agrees to the Geneva Convention.” How good of him to agree to something his legislature signed into law half a century ago. Who would have thought the day would come when the agreement of the US not to torture prisoners would be news? The US! The […]
It must be great to be an artist. You get to puncture pretentious ideas about art and literature and no one has any come back because you’re the one doing the art, not just talking about it. Here is Beksiński in conversation with Henryk Brzozowski: Zna Pan na pewno te wszystkie komunały, które od lat […]
Andrzej Lepper, leader of Samoobrona, a farmers’ party, has left the coalition government. Primesident Kaczy?ski accused him of warcholstwo – brawling, troublemaking. In response, Lepper called this accusation “chamstwo,” which might be translated as “boorishness” but has also been translated on occasion as “assholeishness.” Although “warcho?” (troublemaker) may seem innocuous enough, the word has interesting […]
Yes, it’s good to be back in Poland, where pedestrians are inexorably being pushed off the streets by people handing out leaflets (schools, loans) to pedestrians. Turning, inevitably, to the papers, I find one intriguing story amongst the usual mire of vituperation and sleaze. Ludwik Dorn, deputy prime minister and minister for the interior, flew […]
As you might have guessed from the long gaps between posts, I am on holidays — holidays in dial-up land, also known as Ireland. Here, without links or diacritics, are some random observations: As the number of Poles in Ireland continues to rise, journalists continue to make no attempt whatever to spell their names right. […]
In their article in Gazeta Wyborcza the three young economists offered up the following statistic: in 1960s Poland for every retired person and invalid in receipt of welfare there were 12 people working and paying taxes. Turning to this week’s Sunday Times I read that in Ireland in the 1960s there was a tiny 1.4 […]
Western readers will notice something peculiar about the stern and impressive Stefan Chwin’s latest novel and other works of fiction from this part of the world: the unashamed name dropping. I mean brand names. starannie ogolony i spryskany O… S… carefully shaven and sprayed in O… S… W supermarkecie A… In A… supermarket niczym dostawca […]
