Things are all a kerfuffle in Polish politics at the moment. The president backed out of an international summit a few days ago because he had a pain in his stomach. Before that a German newspaper made some unpleasant jokes about him and Poland. Then every former Polish foreign minister wrote an open letter condemning […]
It’s 30 degrees in the shade and you need a cold drink. Into the shop with you so, up to the counter, out with the money and what is there to drink? If it’s to be cold it has to be fizzy. The fridges here are filled with the products of one company and that […]
I haven’t seen a copy of the Sunday Times in a pleasantly long time but I presume their coverage of science is as top-notch as ever: gushing articles about the latest and bestest weapons for British soldiers made by British scientists. I was reminded of this by today’s Dziennik, which has a page given over […]
Przekroj has an interview with a satirist, Krzysztof Piasecki, who is faced with a problem at work that many would envy: it’s too easy. I start a sketch, I start repeating what politicians have said and I don’t have to add anything because everyone’s already splitting their sides laughing…. I quoted deputy Pi?ka and people […]
How does one measure the intellectual capital of a person? I came across this intersting philosophical/rhetorical question while looking over the shoulder of a fellow bus passenger the other day. How indeed? Well, it turns out from my studious passenger’s lecture notes (photocopied, inevitably) that there is a mathematical formula. I think there was a […]
Congratulations to Witold Gadomski, economics features writer for Gazeta Wyborcza who has just won a prize for fearlessly upholding the general right wing status quo in economics. No, really, I mean it. The prize is funded by the avowedly apolitical Polish National Bank, the assuredly neutral Association of Polish Journalists and the totally objective Reuters […]
Zyta Gilowska has been removed from the post of minister for finance because she is being investigated on suspicion of having lied when she declared that she had not worked with the secret services in Communist Poland. (The process is called “lustracja” in Polish.) She is feeling aggrieved. She has said that she has less […]
“He left the office and submerged himself in the crowds on Kampmannsgade, heading west across the Jorgen So and on to Danasvej. He turned right on Vodroffsvej before taking a left and winding up on Sankt Markus Plads where he bought a newspaper at a kiosk near the church. He continued up Julius Thomsens Plads, […]
On the evidence of the almost readable Sons and Lovers, David Herbert Lawrence is a truly dreadful writer. You could argue that his constant contradictions and endless revisions are an attempt to capture the complexity of the subconscious or you could argue that he did not know what he was on about and never re-read […]
Tadeusz Konwicki (80 years old today), author of Mala Apokalypsa (Minor Apocalypse, translated by Richard Lourie), is a very good writer indeed, on a par with DH Lawrence. Set during the war, Kilka dni wojny, o ktorej nie wiadomo czy byla (literally: A Few Days in a War About Which it is not Known if […]
