News / What are your 10 fave things about Poland? And 10 least favourite? [130]

I love girls with the name "Iwona" - it's far and away the most attractive Polish name!
Now, I've got that off my chest ...
Mushrooms? Excellent picking in Scotland - much better than in Poland ... no competition from fellow pickers!!
Architecture. Hmmm a tough one.
Warsaw is so ugly, which together with the undrinkable water, is why I don't live in the city but just outside - between Pruszkow and Podkowa. Leafy, green, fresh air, can drink water from the tap ...

Lifestyle made possible by the WKD train line - Warsaw earnings and country living. Eeeh, it's grand!

Oh Iwona, Iwona - you won't get a state pension at all - your private one may be very good, who am I to know?

The retirement age in the UK is set to go up to 68.
I'll say that again - 68.
No teacher would ever make it!!

I'm concentrating on getting as filthy rich as I can now, then sitting back and teaching English part-time just for the social aspect.

Life / The strangest things in Poland [468]

Wearing my wedding ring on my right hand took me a bit of getting used to - then I ditched it because it just kept on getting in the way!

What I find strange is how younger people round where I live are so much more polite than the miserable oldies. I go for a lot of walks along a path on which cyclists go - when I get out of the way for an oldie they almost never say thank you. There seems to be a cut-off point aroung 45 where Poles become old grumps (and, coincidentally, seem unable to drive without aggression or in a straight line).

UK, Ireland / Poland saves Irish way of life on island! [16]

In Wales they say that you're not true Welsh unless you speak it.

Life / I'm Going to start a Revolution In Poland [10]

Fortunately I live near Warsaw, where most escalators either don't work or are as turned off as the general driver's brain in this country.

History / What does it mean to be Polish? [46]

You have to speak the language and internalise the culture - it's not possible to be truly Polish without being born and brought up there. I know people who were born to Polish parents abroad, speak perfect Polish, declare themselves to be Polish and yet are not due to the way they think and facets of, say, English culture that they have made their own whether by choice or osmosis over a long period of time.

My children are neither Polish nor English, but feel at ease operating in both cultures and languages.

UK, Ireland / Polish Education Grading and Uk Edu. Grading? [73]

My info is out of date, but probably still relevant.
I assume your girlfriend took matura ...
Everything should be acceptable as A-level equivalents with one God-Almighty exception.
English.
If she wants to get anywhere job-wise, she must get GCSE English. All FE colleges offer it cheaply, and it's usually available as a one year evening course. Without it she would always have her hands tied behind her back when job-hunting.

It was the best thing I ever forced my wife to do in England. No Cambridge Certificate is worth half as much, even if they are more difficult to get. UK employers want UK qualifications they can easily understand, not something foreign they'd have to stretch their brain around.

Life / Well-educated Polish modern slaves abroad [35]

There's nothing wrong with going abroad and having an adventure for a year, but real life has to start sometime. A career path is a career path, wherever you live.

UK, Ireland / Polish Education Grading and Uk Edu. Grading? [73]

My wife's qualifications in language teaching were recognised in the UK - and that was back in 1991.
But they would have been worthles without her English GCSE (mała matura)

UK, Ireland / Crime in london versus Crime in Poland. [24]

And car crime is much higher in the UK too.

A report has just come out on the declared motivations of muggers. The answers are alarming - status and fun were geater motivators than money. A recurring theme was pleasure in inflicting emotional and physical pain. Many wanted to provoke the victim to a fight, for which obviously they were at a disadvantage.

And, being perfectly frank, this is what comes from the typical Afro-Carribbean family set-up where there is no father in sight plus the massive chip on the shoulder of being looked down on because they're black. Vicious circle of racism plus hatred towards authority and self-improvement.

So why is it that black Africans don't react in this way?
While we're at it, Somalis have a brilliant reputation of being easily the worst young thugs in London - at my wife's school in Wembley they would take their knife out and use it with a moment's hesitation. Civil war mentality, you see.

Oh, successive British Governments have been so dumb ...

News / New Mayor for Warsaw [8]

I like the other guy, shame he was from the socialist party (PiS).
This woman is into mortification of the flesh, isn't she? I mean - Opus Dei ...
Sounds kinky, is there a video of her doing it somewhere?

News / New Mayor for Warsaw [8]

PiS is a socialist party which is merely politically incorrect.

It believes in the strong economic role of central government, high taxation, sucking up to the Silesian miners, as many subsidies for the poor as possible (while taxing them with the other hand).

Like I said, socialist.
SLD is more right wing than PiS.

What is confusing here is the role of history in people's perception of political shade. PiS is the true left-wing alternative in Poland, just without the crap of PC and anti-clericalism that you get in Western socialist parties.

Life / The strangest things in Poland [468]

Milk is rightly seen as bad for you in Poland.
It's for small kids only.

For older people, well, where do I start?
Saturated fat - bad
Casein - that's used in glue (skin on top of heated milk)
Insulin-like growth factor 1 - implicated in breast and prostate cancer
Calcium - implicated in causing prostate cancer and OSTEOPOROSIS (yup - you heard me right: calcium is BAD for your bones)

But it's good for little kids though - milk is designed for infant mammals. What a surprise, that one. I mean, when was the last time you saw an adult woman attempting to breastfeed from another except in some rather late night movie?

News / Weak US dollar in Poland and other countries... [180]

PLN 280 000

Buy a nice big plot of land through your Polish wife. Keep it for a minimum 5 years, then build a house on it. Live in it for a few years, then sell. You will have a fortune - the next property boom in Poland is in houses just outside Warsaw.

as for selling your dollars - keep hold of them for now. Here is a forecast for GBP/USD.

Currency Spot (29-11) 1-month forecast 3-month forecast 6-month forecast 12-month forecast
GBP/US$ 1.9515 1.9560 1.9085 1.8105 1.8220

Life / Under 18 curfew in Poland [16]

The fascist Giertych said curfews would only be imposed after local referenda.
It's a good move - would you want to be hounded by little thugs?

News / Weak US dollar in Poland and other countries... [180]

Iwona - someone in the construction business told me that flats would stagnate. I don't know - my take on it is that if you need a place to live, then buy.

Are you renting at the moment or living with your parents?

Of course, the best idea is to marry a rich man with property in several places!

Life / What's the weather like in Poland? [81]

I haven't seen the new 3-month forecast for Eastern Europe yet, but the UK is set for a slightly warmer and wetter than usual Dec-Feb - which tends to suggest that the cold weather fronts from the east will be less intense this winter.

Life / Under 18 curfew in Poland [16]

My locality doesn't need it either, thankfully. Some places might, though.

Life / The strangest things in Poland [468]

I have a little fridge, but a big larder - could double as a bedroom if my wife got serious with her threats!

Life / Cancer, diabetes. Diseases in Poland and other countries. [7]

jncicancerspectrum.oxfordjournals.org/statistics/iarc/?view=iarc

You'll see that some cancers are lower in Poland than the States.

The obvious one is prostate cancer, as that is the cancer most affected by any diet. In this case, the obvious factor involved is dairy.

There are various ways dairy causes prostate cancer:
(i) calcification of the prostate caused by excessive calcium in the diet
(ii) increased IGF-1 growth hormone in the body caused by excessive dairy consumption

Dairy's not bad for you - have it in your coffee, I love cream cakes! But I have soya with my cereals.

Life / Polish people have low self-esteem? [80]

The British media has not had decent coverage of Polish affair since Tim Sebastian got expelled in 1981.
I have been massively interested in Poland over the last 20 years for various reasons, but I have never been able to read anything accurate or incisive apart from the occasional Economist article. All correspondents were fed their lines by sources with their own differing agendas. You can't recognise the country from the media coverage it receives.

BBC reports on Poland come direct from ... Berlin. Occasionally, the correspondent crosses the border for a spot of shopping!!

Life / How many people really know English in Poland? [53]

I'm just so happy the (school) teaching methods are so crap nowadays that most kids end up knowing very little.
It'll keep my bilingual kids in the money all their life!
State education in Poland is going downhill so fast it might even catch up with Britain!!

History / Jews...and their Polish experience [520]

The Irish Republic has no monuments to the thoudands of brave Irish who died fighting the Nazi threat.
Why is that?

An interesting little anecdote here.

My wife's great uncle was a bit of a "wide boy" who managed to keep a successful private business going throughout the Stalinist era and beyond. OK, although he was an AK leader in his country district with Communist "friends" no-one could work out where he got his protection from ... until he decided to tell his story on his deathbed 5 years ago. He hid a Jew all through the war, and that Jew went on to become a high-ranking security apparatchik who felt a debt of gratitude towards his friend and saviour.

Of course, the favours didn't all go one way after the war - the relationship favoured both parties. Business is business, but the link was forged in wartime.

Moreover, without going into detail, the Kaczynskis' idea that lustracja will rid Polish public life of its Communist hangover is wrong-minded, as that man's grandchildren are still benefiting from the "virtues/sins" of their grandfather.

History / Jews...and their Polish experience [520]

Perhaps it's a question of numbers that's at issue here.
No reasonable person would call you anti-semitic for saying 5 million died instead of 6.
The holocaust happened.
6 million Poles died, of which half were Jews. You could argue the numbers of course.
Profiteering by lawyers continues to happen.
Dishonest politicking happens too.
Liars and extremists aren't in short supply either.

UK, Ireland / BEWARE when coming over UK [363]

Amathyst - shame on you, you wind-up artist!

History / Poland has paid £68 Million for helping UK in WW2 [168]

And just tell me how much Poland paid for every French soldier that died fighting the Germans at Verdun?
French military valour, not forgetting the British and Commonwealth troops slaughtered in Flanders, bought Polish independence in 1918.
French military advisers, including De Gaulle helped you keep it in 1920.
What do Poles think about the French army? - Bunch of cowards!
Wrong! Their military strategists in 1940 were as bad as Poland's were in 1939 - when the Poolish army put in a terribly poor performance. No-one, mind you, likes to tell the Poles that with the army they had they could have done 10 times better against the Germans, because it's history and you can't change it. Poles do love to distort things though!

History / Poland has paid £68 Million for helping UK in WW2 [168]

David_18 made my point more eloquently than I could have.
Verdun is something of which you are completely ignorant.

The French did not fight for Polish independence, but without the slaughter fighting the Germans at places such as Verdun (in WW1, for the historically challenged) Poland wouldn't have become independent.

It is this level of fundamental ignorance that is shown whenever a Pole glosses over the enormous Western bloodshed, which as an absolutely necessary part of Poland getting independence, and concentrates solely and exclusively on the tragedy of WW2.

And if you're saying that France had a year to mobilise for WW1, then you're wrong.

History / Poland has paid £68 Million for helping UK in WW2 [168]

I've invested heavily in Poland, for my own personal profit.
I just hope the historically-illiterate such as Belka's ex-secretary, who now passes for a Foreign Affairs minister, will stop joining in with her twittish intellectually-midget twin bosses in shouting "Boo-hoo, everybody hates us and is always stabbing us in the back!"

UK, Ireland / Anti-Polish sentiment of England [253]

macdee - perhaps you generally feel aggrieved because you lack education.

You wrote, "I would just like to say to all you polish beggars in the Uk Go home your not wanted"

Using your eloquent wording, this should have read, "I would just like to say to all you Polish beggars in the UK, "Go home, you're not wanted."

"Polish", with a capital "P". Otherwise you put it on your shoes: shoe polish.
"UK" denotes the United Kingdom, not the United kingdom.
"Your" denotes possession. "You're" is the shortened form of "You are".

There are many subsidised English courses for the functional illiterate in the UK - I suggest you take one of them and invest in yourself, and not in vitriolic abuse.

Phew, re-reading that I hoped no-one would notice my punctuation mistake (deliberate, of course).

News / Where in the US/UK live most Poles? [46]

Doncaster must be improving with this influx of decent people to counteract the poor-quality locals!
On the subject of Donny - is it really true you have the most corrupt socialist council in the whole of the UK?