“Everyone knows the key to building wealth is through saving and investing” begins one of those newsoid articles that internet portals use to pad out their pages. Written by God knows who at the behest of God knows what financial institution, the opening line at least has the merit of ditching that ridiculous myth about […]
I came across an ad in a current affairs magazine today. Here it goes: “Most women put quality first! 100% fewer hot flushes, 94% less excessive sweating, 98% less sleeplessness. [brandname]. Active extract SE 2000. Choose [brandname] medicine whose [sic] effectiveness and safety have been confirmed by scientific research!” Phew, I thought. Those other medicines […]
Last week’s Polityka has an article on that most intrusive of the arts: architecture. Like their fellow members of the ??e-elity at the Gazeta Wyborcza, they seem think it a terrible shame that Poles are so backward looking. They just don’t appreciate the efforts made by thrusting, forward-looking engineers — errr, I mean architects of […]
A few words on the political situation here. The coalition is broken and PiS is looking around for MPs it can persuade to jump ship and join them. How to persuade them? Well, with the promise of jobs of course – a secretary of stateship for you, for instance. A PiS official was secretly filmed […]
Taking pot shots at holy cows without even troubling to study the deeper philosophical issues involved — especially where a recently deceased and well-loved public figure is involved — is a cheap and nasty way of drumming up some publicity, which has a long and dishonorable history. So here goes: two of the most respectable […]
Judging by word of mouth (and not the increasingly obviously phoney bestseller lists bookshops put up by the door to clear out old stock), Leopold Tyrmand’s Z?y (Bad) is the most popular Polish book I know of. Everyone loves this story of a superhero in the grey days of Polish communism. It’s a good few […]
Military coups in Thailand, rioting in Budapest and here in Poland a government falling apart and apparently bribing opposition members to join them. The main opposition party wants to take to the streets… Where will it end? The prospects are grim indeed. This is only a young state – just seventeen years – and some […]
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 […]
