Work / Moving to Poland (from the UK) to take a teaching position. Tips? [34]

At least residency is no longer a pain in the butt.

Warsaw - Marks and Spencers food section :) and Kuchnia Świata (cuisines of the world)

No problem with those foods you don't want to do without.

Poles are generally very friendly - much better than Brits!

News / Poles DO return to the UK [39]

Brown had no grasp of economics - to understand this all you have to do is to look at the Public Finance Initiative (private enterprise builds something and makes the public purse pay 10 times over, during 30 years - brilliant!).

He gave family doctors pay rises of 100% by accident!! And they're still unhappy.

He bankrupted the country - economic madness.

True, his decision not to join the euro showed commonsense. There again, he never was one for teams, was he?

Thankfully, he trained up Edward Miliband at the Treasury! Can't wait for when the UK elects him in 2015.

Cameron - why is it that aristocrats are so hard to like? Still, less of an aristo than his wife, Sam, or cousin - Mayor of London, Boris Johnson.

... and I am increasingly interviewing Poles returning to Poland with decent English.

Life / Calendar for a coffin producer in Poland. Boxes for stiffs. [9]

Thanks for the belly laugh!

Life / Poles - what other nationality would you say you are most like? [125]

I think Poles are far, far friendlier than the Irish!

Life / Calendar for a coffin producer in Poland. Boxes for stiffs. [9]

I sort of like the fact that in Poland they put you in a little mausoleum sort of thing, so they can get you out 50 years down the line and dispose of you quietly.

A burial in the ground is so in your face, final, brutal. But perhaps a Zoroastrian Tower of the Dead, where you get eaten by vultures and eagles isn't so brilliant. I mean, they drag your mortal remains all over the place.

History / Warsaw Uprising - The Forgotten Soldiers [117]

Pęcice - last skirmishes in the Warsaw Uprising

My daughter walked a long way through the rain yesterday to attend a commemoration of the fighters who fell at Pęcice, to the west of Warsaw.

Several schools in the gmina attend every year. The usual sort of affair, plus steaming tea and grochówka.

Strangely, I sold my house in England to one of the fighters (who then ended up in Auschwitz as a prisoner of war).

Classifieds / English cuisine week in Lidl shops in Poland [203]

But when are Poles going to produce some nice sausages to cook at home?

Yeah, yeah, you can buy some truly awful sausages in England if you want to buy cheap, but you can't buy good sausages in Poland for any money ... except if you buy from the bloke who produces them for the Irish embassy.

Classifieds / English cuisine week in Lidl shops in Poland [203]

Who needs British week anyway?

Yesterday my wife made me crumpets (yes, you can actually make them!) for breakfast, shepherd's pie for lunch, then a pizza from scratch, you know, flour etc

OK, admittedly, pizza isn't particularly English (!!) but my point is that so many of these things you miss can actually be made at home.

Mint jelly is better made at home (we add some white currants for extra pectin and body), as is every single sort of jam and marmalade. Bread for toasting comes straight out of the breadmaker - better than that sliced stuff they sell in plastic bags here. Apple pie, not apple charlotte! Crumble and custard (OK, we buy Bird's).

We could never get pickle to taste like Branston, though. I mean, how do they do that?

allrecipes - the best cooking website. For the best of British food, there's nothing like American expertise!!

Classifieds / Warsaw Speed Dating Event [34]

My, the pressure!

Are there any build-up events? I mean, sweaty armpits time or what? Job interviews are bad enough, but this ...

UK, Ireland / Ed Miliband, new Labour leader, talking about Polish immigrants yesterday [62]

Good one Barney.
"Buttery butter" as they say in Polish.

UK, Ireland / Ed Miliband, new Labour leader, talking about Polish immigrants yesterday [62]

Poles needn't be used as a scapegoat for the UK's self-imposed problems.

Polish immigrants have been better value for money than, say, Bangladeshi or Somali immigrants, and have a history of fitting in, unlike, say Pakistani immigrants - but it's the Poles who are the only ones mentioned by Ed Miliband as being trouble to society at large and a policy mistake.

No other groups got mentioned at all.

Love / Unmarried couples in Poland = pathology [310]

Not at all - simple statistics borne out time and again.

Statistically, married couples have a better chance of staying together. Statistically, children from married parents have better chances of positive outcomes on various levels.

Naturally, statistics are not individual cases - ask any cancer sufferer.

UK, Ireland / Ed Miliband, new Labour leader, talking about Polish immigrants yesterday [62]

I'm not racist against anybody. But I do hate the treachery and support for mindless Stalinist thuggery that surfaced time and again in the Miliband family in the past.

Anyway - they turned their back on the Polish language, so presumably on Poland too.

Love / Unmarried couples in Poland = pathology [310]

Rules are invented to be broken! Marriage was invented to keep society working - not to make people perfect. Nobody in their right mind would try to deny that broken families can produce well-rounded children or vice versa.

HOWEVER, from the point of view of society functioning properly divorce has to be kept to a minimum, because dysfunctional homes have a greater tendency to produce dysfunctional children and a whole host of related nastiness.

So, what are we discussing here? Morality? That's a personal thing - though I'm Christian. No, I take the moral stance that I want:

i) A greater chance of hapiness for children
ii) Higher academic success by children
iii) Less anti-social behaviour

Children born in wedlock have a better chance of a happy life. So, why not go for the best option?

Language / Is math in Polish different than in English? [59]

Everyone's child deserves to be beaten up and deprived of a real education, so they can have the privilege of meeting "real people" - as opposed to the opposite!

Language / Is math in Polish different than in English? [59]

The real massive differences occur at age 16, where in the Polish system you compete for places in grammar school and are thrown into a highly academic atmosphere.

Amazing what you can achieve when the "real people" leave your classroom. The matura exams at age 18/19 are not up to much though. Both Platforma and PiS are hell-bent on destroying the education system. All in the hope of getting better statistics. The results are plain to see already, even at places like Warsaw University - where standards have declined according to a well-placed academic I know.

Life / Confirmation / Bierzmowanie experience in Poland. [5]

Catholic now - apart from the atheist, that is!

Real Estate / If you own a property in Warsaw, you don't own the ground it stands on! [9]

The difference with Warsaw is that the so-called "right of perpetual usufruct" (99-year lease of publicly-owned land) affects the whole city, which was nationalised under the Warsaw Decree of 1944.

Citizens who had friends and could bribe their way round administrative problems managed to reclaim their land in a few years for a minimal lease fee. Others were not so lucky. Restitution cases started after independence in 1990, but the success of former owners (or rather, their descendants) depends on legal skill, surviving documentation, attitude of judges in the past etc etc - and if the council has sold the land on to a third party (often Party members) in the intervening years then the option is to go for compensation - a fraught process.

Things get even more complicated if the former owners/descendants did nothing to assert claims earlier due to emigration.

Life / Things we enjoyed as kids in Poland [140]

I have fond memories of chanting GE - STA - PO at the Zomo lined up opposite Warsaw University.

Life / Confirmation / Bierzmowanie experience in Poland. [5]

Grandfather confirmed by the Anglican Bishop of a capital city, grandson confirmed by the Catholic Bishop of a capital city.

How times change.

And my CofE father having 2 Catholic sons (one emigrating to Poland) and one atheist banker.

Language / Is math in Polish different than in English? [59]

re. billion - Brits use the US version and have done for as long as I can remember.

Punctuation is a real pain. This is a real problem if you are, for example, a German locum doctor working in the UK at the weekend. There's a massive chance of getting ten times the correct dose. I just hope Polish nurses in the UK have worked this out.

Maths is different in Polish schools. I know, my kids go to school in Poland!

Just pity my sister-in-law (a maths teacher in Poland) - she has a Jamaican in her class and communication is difficult.

UK, Ireland / A polite request for your help re: your personal experiences in the UK [8]

Do you know someone called Kumaran?
Serious question.

Love / POLISH WOMEN THE MOST SEXUALLY ACTIVE IN EUROPE...! [54]

The story behind the headlines is that this figure includes MARRIED women - who get a whole load more sex than single women. More Polish women marry early and this figure was about young women (to the age of 24).

Sexual liberation? Don't think so. Most people's parents had more sex ... how sad for the "liberals".

Life / Do Polish People steal a lot? [330]

My experiences:

Direct:

The fence episode involved a poor person.

Dumping of garden waste and stealing (digging up) a tree - a rich engineer neighbour.

Indirect:
Parents-in-law - pensioners with a small farm, their peasant neighbours stole chickens and fruit ... and anything that wasn't tied down.

The septic tank episode was a trick performed by a well-off retired army colonel - on my brother-in-law.

So that's pretty much a cross-section of Polish society.