A week or two ago a bunch of sociologists published the shocking (to Poles) results of a survey they took among Polish academics. They cautioned that the study was biased because mostly those who were frustrated responded. Gazeta Wyborcza ran with it all week and judging by the latest cover, Wprost is taking it up […]
In the late 1960s, in a bold and unorthodox move, the government of Ireland introduced the free milk scheme for primary school children. Under the terms of the scheme, pushed through an unwilling Dail by the socialist minister for education, every child aged from 4 to 7 and in full time education would be supplied […]
A momentous time has come to Poland. For my eldest daughter it was time to take herself to the “hundred days ball” – a kind of a disco in gladrags held one hundred days before the school leaving exam. People will tell you it starts with the pupils dancing a Polonez but this is not […]
Watching a God-awful soap the other night I saw somebody pay for two or three items in a supermarket. The cost was exactly four zloties, which aroused my suspicions. Those suspicions were confirmed when the money was simply received. If you can’t be bothered faithfully reproducing simple things like the fact that everything costs 3.69, […]
Janusz Głowacki used to smuggle criticism past the censor by dressing it up as extravagant praise, comparing favourably, for instance, the since-forgotten socialist realist book Głupia sprawa (A Silly Matter) by Dobrowolski with the publication of the first Polish translation of Ulysses. He says he got letters from some readers saying: you know, that Głupia […]
“Don’t worry, trade unionists. The government is not going to change the law to emasculate you.” “What? The government is going to change the law to emasculate us?” “No, no. You misunderstand. The government is not going to change the law to emasculate you.” “But why would the government want to change the law to […]
Government by opinion poll is probably not the best way to run a country: bye bye art, culture, education; hello football, soap operas and institutionalized bribery – no wait, that’s not what I was trying to suggest. Hang on… But surely you can’t ignore the public all the time? For instance, this week’s Polityka reports […]
Trade union membership in this country which owes its existence to trade unions is 14% of workers. Nie has a cover story this week about Solidarity’s disgraceful behaviour during the recent miners’ strike. In brief, a profitable mine was joined with a much less profitable one where the miners earned more, having recently received a […]
Or a fragmentary synopsis of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West derived from some of the English and Spanish words I had to look up:bistre; chine; tang; jornada; jacal; pritchel; frizzen; bungstarter; vadose; vernier sight; lobo; sotol; tapadero; felloe; duledge; monocline; kerf; rebozo; almagre; carreta; escopeta; legbail; pauldron; ocotillo; squail; […]
Poles are slowly realising that plastic bags are an unsightly, long-lasting non-biodegradable blot on the landscape – no, sorry. They’re realising that a cheap PR buck can be made by pretending to be concerned about the environment. Spotted on a typical plastic bag from a multi-national supermarket company operating in Poland: “This bag is environment […]
