Well, perhaps the Times Online misquoted him: ‘Dermot Ahern, the [Irish] Justice Minister, said: “Legislation is in place to bring to justice those who may have played hard and fast with the financial security of this country”.’ There’s nothing wrong with playing hard and fast. What Ahern should have said was “fast and loose” but […]
Amongst the many half-baked explanations for Dublin band Something Happens’ inexplicable lack of global success, back in 1990, with the superb Stuck Together With God’s Glue is one that focusses entirely on lead singer Tom Dunne’s paisley shirt collection. There may be some truth to it (take a look at the video below), but it’s […]
As February draws to a close, and this blog’s ‘to read’ pile of books is increasingly resembling babel, it’s worth taking some consolation – knowing that a too-high percentage of these books will remain, forever, merely glanced at – offered up by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his rightfully acclaimed The Black Swan: The writer Umberto […]
Sylwia Chutnik again: “All the time the old gits are blowing their big noses into flannel handkerchiefs and snorting the leftover phlegm back into themselves, into their lungs. Maybe it’ll come in useful later? Maybe, when that rainy day comes, you go for the phlegm and eat it for dinner.” Chutnik easily avoids the intellectuo-philosophising […]
The government assigned me to a pension fund (the one that was stung by Bernie Madoff) run by one of the big banks here. In their very first letter to me, an unwilling and forced customer, the managers of my money write: “In the attached prospectus you will find the conditions of your membership.” Oh […]
Olga Tokarczuk, my most favouritest writer of them all, has an article in the latest Polityka. It’s travel literature, my most favouritest genre of them all. She’s been to China: “His [Mao’s] face is found in the most unlikely places: on the walls of buildings–” Hold on, hold on a minute there. The wall of […]
Sport is a subject I neglect somewhat so in an attempt to redress the balance and bring all readers up to speed on what’s going on in the wonderful world of noble sportsmanship, here’s a quote from yesterday’s Gazeta Wyborcza: “Former Polish Football Association observer and umpire ethics lecturer Wiesław K. has been arrested by […]
Sylwia Chutnik, who has been looking out at us from numerous magazine covers and newspaper interviews over the last few months, is a feminist and a radical. She also likes punk and wrote a book called A Pocket Atlas of Women, which is actually very good. Depressing as all hell of course but a welcome […]
As we all know, if it were easier to fire workers, capitalists would hire more of them. But what about tenants? The law regarding rented accommodation in Poland is being changed. In short: it will be easier to evict tenants. “And what’s in it for tenants?” asks today’s Gazeta Wyborcza. “Thanks to the reduced risk […]
When the zloty was strong a lot of people took out mortgages denominated in other currencies, especially the Swiss franc. In a so-broad-as-to-be-meaningless sense any loan is a gamble of course, but this seems to be a double hazard: (1) I will be able to pay off the loan and (2) the zloty will not […]
