News / Racist text book for Polish schools [130]

Would a Turkish question about drowning Poles be funny or is Turkey a racist country?

News / Racist text book for Polish schools [130]

This argument is not about WHO makes what claim, it is about whether there is a maths textbook that makes comments about drowning Turks and whether or not this kind of treatment of a nationality is reasonable, especially in the context of educating the young.

The alleged maths question doesn't entirely make sense - I have met at least one atherist Turk and I used to work with a Turkish Christian convert. The question is supposedly about Christians versus Turks.

If this whole situation were the other way around - a textbook in Turkey using an example of Muslims versus Poles, how would anyone here react?

News / Poland..wake up to a multicultural world [1059]

Moldova is ethnically very mixed (Romanian, Bulgarian, Gagauz, Russian, Ukrainian). There very low crime rate idea falls down in part due to the high levels of corruption, the riots that occur when the communists get elected again, and the breakaway Transdniestria region, over which the central government has no control. Try reading "Beating the Moldovans at Tennis" by Tony Hawks for a first hand account of Moldova.

News / Should Poles become a minority in Poland? [150]


You've been reading Seanus and his ruminations on "the English". The English aka one occasional forum poster on PF.

Food / POLISH "CHEMICALISED" CONVENIENCE FOODS [23]

Only fresh ones with no additives. I'm sure that if more people ate carrots on their own (the carrots on their own, not the eaters necessarily), they would sell carrots individually wrapped in clingfilm with an expanded polystyrene tray. They'd sell carrots with added vitamins. Extra double scrubbed carrots. Even carrot-on-a-stick.

Life / Latinos/Hispanic people in Warsaw or Krakow [34]


Speakers of Latin. Mostly linguistic academics, devout Catholics with a taste for the liturgy, people interested in interpreting old laws, readers of some the the classicss of the latter-day ancient world.


Of or pertaining to Spain or the Iberian peninsula.

Food / POLISH "CHEMICALISED" CONVENIENCE FOODS [23]

My girlfriend's kids seem to eat a lot of rubbish, although certainly one of them is partial to carrots. Another example is that whereas I only ever buy fresh fruit juice, they always buy stuff that's made from concentrate with added chemicals (I'm not just talking about vodka).

Language / Polish Language Pronunciation - Example Words and Phrases [178]


nazz drov yeah

Say it before downing a drink, after someone sneezes or both if they happen at the same time.

History / Partitions and Modern Polish Culture [26]

Use PF's search tool, browse the politics and history threads and see who has posted what and try to work out who is really Polish, who is pseudo-Polish and who isn't Polish at all. That may give you some modern reflections. Remember to search messages rather than just topics as this will give much more results. Some good search terms may be things like "second republic" (without quotation marks). Stuff might turn up all over the place if you're lucky, maybe even in food or language threads. If you can't find what you want, post something controversial and someone will pounce on you.

News / Polish minority abroad and minorities in Poland [71]

It could be tricky. How far back do you look? If Poles who were moved west from Poland's old territories in the east which are now in Belorus and Lithuania want to claim back their lost property, can Germans claim back property in western Poland?

News / Polish minority abroad and minorities in Poland [71]

I've worked with Russians from Lithuania and Gypsies from Slovakia. Almost all nice people, almost all hard-working people. Even when there are troubles at home, being in the EU can help, even if it's not the greatest solution. It can mean, for the Poles of Lithuania, that the two countries' governments are on the same path as eachother and on reasonably friendly terms. For the others I mentioned, the right to work and live in other countries can mean leaving behind many of the prejudices their own countries have against them. As I said, this is not a great solution - people should be able to live in the country of their birth without prejudice or persecution and having to leave is not the answer, although in individuals' cases, it may be an answer.

UK, Ireland / Poles claim UK benefits after working only one year instead of going home [156]


You defend yourself, therefore you're defending at least one scrounger.

Law / Collecting cans in Poland - how much per can? [14]

I'm waiting for the price of copper to go up. (Actually I'm not really keeping an eye on it). I do have a load of copper pipes in my shed and I also have the ability to do a bit of plumbing here and there and replace copper with plastic pipe, but that would feel a bit like selling the family silver. Not that I inherited the stuff directly.

One of my vices is that I drink expensive coffee that comes in aluminium tins. I was saving these up until a certain someone threw a year's worth away without me noticing until it was too late. It still builds up fairly quickly. People tell me to recycle. I'll send glass off to be recycled, but certainly not valuable metals.

News / Should Poles become a minority in Poland? [150]


Surrounded by black Slovakia, the black Czech Republic, black Belorus (looks like a contradiction, I know), black Lithuania and the Baltic which is also predominantly black these days... or am I just posting at night?

News / Poland..wake up to a multicultural world [1059]

Matthew Henson, Samuel Coleridge Taylor, Ira Aldridge and Queen Charlotte never had CCTV footage taken of anything they got up to. If you don't know who any of them are, you could use the internet. It is right in front of you right now after all.

Love / SOS!! I feel a little hopeless with my Polish husband... [58]

The internet isn't just something on its own - there are games and fun stuff, there are music and films, there's even p'nography (apparently), and in this case: online gambling. Some of these things are okay, some aren't. Some can even be quite addictive, particularly when not wanting to deal with the real world. Another problem is that lethargy breeds lethargy, and sitting in front of a computer for hours on end is quite a lethargic thing to do.

Sorry I don't have any great solutions. There must be a way, though, to find something else to do as well, preferably for him, something that doesn't involve doing too much work because that might only frighten him back to the computer.


Nearly ten o'clock in the morning, Poland time. You were here quite late last night (past two in the morning). I wonder how long it will be until you read this.

News / Should Poles become a minority in Poland? [150]


But if you have kids in Poland or in Scotland, then what are they? Or what if you were to move somewhere else entirely and have kids? Hang on a sec - kids are baby goats, not baby sheep.

News / Should Poles become a minority in Poland? [150]


Almost. A few miles adrift but still working outdoors on the land. Polish girlfriend just to help keep any unpleasant inbreeding phenomena from occuring in the next generation or two, but if they do have kids, I'm sure at least one will be whatever the future equivalent of a farm hand will be, most probably in the Buntingford area.

News / Should Poles become a minority in Poland? [150]

One of my workmates had had his family tree traced.

Father: farm hand somewhere near Buntingford.
Grandfather: farm hand somewhere near Buntingford.
Great grandfather: farm hand somewhere near Buntingford.
Great great grandfather: farm hand somewhere near Buntingford.
Great great great grandfather: farm hand somewhere near Buntingford.

So many greats, it just shows who has made this country great.

News / Should Poles become a minority in Poland? [150]


Apart from the Hugenots, Palatine Germans, Flemish, Jews, the Irish, the Irish and more Irish...

News / Should Poles become a minority in Poland? [150]

I went for a curry the other night with my Mauritian friend. That's quite British. Very British if I mention the cup of tea I had before going out.

Many cultures like to adopt new things and adapt to surroundings. This can happen with immigration - curry, reggae, the wheel and so on. There are immigrants who move culturally when they move to a new country - like Poles who put milk in their tea or my Mauritian friend who tastes are distinctly European. What comes out of this is that everyone changes - we know that culture is not static. But there are people who migrate, who seem not to change in the slightest, even having a hatred for the country they live in, which can be seen in some second generation people.

I do believe that there are countries to which Britain owed a debt, especially at the end of colonial rule. I also believe in the freedom of movement and right to work for EU citizens, but without pointing any fingers at any particular group of migrants, it seems this country has gone too far.

So if you're Polish in Poland, don't point and laugh. Take this is a lesson. We've had bizarre comments from politicians in countries like Finland with no colonial past, saying they need more random immigration from around the world. You can see that freedom to work in other EU countries has helped Poles in many ways, but it doesn't always work that way around.


Black people have been in Britain for a lot longer than just the 1950s. To a limited extent, you can take that year back by at least another hundred or even more than that.

News / Should Poles become a minority in Poland? [150]


The key thing here is the word net. There has been immigration, welcome or otherwise for a very long time indeed. Longer than recorded history. I just think that these days there is a complete lack of rational policy.

Why should anyone in the world today be punished for something others did in the past?
Why should anyone get a free lunch, supposedly for something that was done by someone else in the past?

I detect a bit of schadenfreude going on around here from some.

News / Should Poles become a minority in Poland? [150]


Have I denied Britain's past?


That is not entirely true. There were no policies to try to convert the entire population of the Indian subcontinent to C of E. You would have thought that the popularity of tea would have been a head start though. The actual policies (rather unpleasant as they were) were more of a kind of "we're better than them but leave them to their peculiar antiquated ways". There seems to be a habit of looking at history through a filter of other things that have happened much more recently.

News / Should Poles become a minority in Poland? [150]

It is odd that so many people from countries with no historical connection or cultural commonality with Britain end up coming here.


Any country should have control over who enters. Immigration here isn't about a few Anglophilic Indians, Jamaicans who were a kind of British invention to start with and some similarly minded Poles. It's about letting anyone in who feels like it. Worthy of a chuckle?

News / Poland-Turkey Relations, a youtube comment [84]

In Brussels, they wear neither burqas nor togas. It's not a Viking thing either - I see no horned helmets around the EU mindermasts.

News / Poland-Turkey Relations, a youtube comment [84]

Poland was one of the very first countries to adopt the Gregorian calendar in 1582 along with Italy, Spain and Portugal. If that's not a Latin-type thing to do, I don't know what is. It took until 1918 for Russia to change and until 1926 for Turkey. Orthodox churches still use the Julian calendar, but the countries where this is used, civil calendars are all Gregorian. It took a while for harmonisation to complete.

Language / is the correct term pol or pollok [14]

Neither? The correct term for what?

UK, Ireland / (NO RASISM OR STEREOTYPING BTW) WHO IS POLISH IN THE UK AND ON BENEFITS? [46]


Amongst friends, I'm sure people help eachother out. I just haven't seen anything on the kind of scale other people have. With things like insurance, getting her passport back from the home office, dealing with the DVLA with the registration or tax or whatever of a car that blew up in Tescos car park, and plenty of other things, I have had to try to help my girlfriend and her family because of their poor English skills.

One example was to do with and M&S insurance account. They wanted Pan X. to phone them to sort out some details. It wasn't possible to do any of this online, so we phoned them up and I spoke to them (after going through the options - for this press 1, for that press 2...) Because Pan X. had to speak to them personally, I could only assist so far. We had to constantly pass the phone fro and to, with the woman on the other end constantly telling me to pass the phone back to Pan X who could follow a few things she said, but not enough. I asked if any of this could be done by post. No. How about online? No.


Let's face it - buying some stuff at the supermarket is a lot easier than dealing with the consequences of a car catching fire being written off. The easier it is, the more likely it is that there will be help.

UK, Ireland / (NO RASISM OR STEREOTYPING BTW) WHO IS POLISH IN THE UK AND ON BENEFITS? [46]

I went to Slough's CAB (Citizens Advice Bureau) the other day to try to help my girlfriend with a few things to do with official paperwork. They were closed, but the waiting room was still accessible, so I had a look round at what notices were up on the walls. There seemed to be plenty of help on offer for people who speak Urdu, Gujarati and so on, but no mention of Polish. Maybe this is because Poles have come here to work and only in very recent times, whereas speakers of these other languages have relocated with families and have had much more time to set things up to be able to support eachother without the need to speak English.

There are two sides to this: one is that Poles are being pushed harder to use English to get by so this could make some things much harder for them. On the other side, this will push them into the community as a whole rather than ghettoising or enclaving them. It does make things into more of a sink or swim situation rather than having an extra safety net run by their own community ontop of the welfare system.

Food / How to Cook and Eat an Artichoke? [32]

I find artichoke to be a bit too rich. I once bought artichokes in olive oil with herbs and my uncultured stomach just couldn't take it. It was like giving a dog a whole black forest gateau. Cardoon is a kind of artichoke, and its young flowers can be used as a rennet substitute in cheese-making.