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Posts by JonnyM  

Joined: 9 Mar 2011 / Male ♂ 		Last Post: 15 Mar 2012
Threads: Total: 11 / In This Archive: 9
Posts: Total: 2607 / In This Archive: 2054 		From: Warszawa!
Speaks Polish?: tak

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JonnyM   
27 Jan 2012
History / Why are Jews pestering Poland for "proper" WW2 monetary restitution/reparations? [750]

to get a clear picture we should listen to what Germans/Nazis have to say

It's all been through the wash, the murderers' motivations were in print long before they did it and discussed long after. A few are still alive even now. Adolf Eichmann at his trial said that he did what he did because he had been told to.

the truth will be most likely in between.

'In between' what?

I don't believe that such sophisticated and civilized nation as Germans would gas humans with diesel fumes without a reason.

Their reason was evil, insecurity and hatred with a heavy dose of paranoia and racialistic/nationalistic pseudoscience. They didn't only use diesel fumes, they used a whole host of foul methods, including Zyklon B and and shooting men women and children, to murder 6 million Jews all across Europe. As Hans Frank, the governor of Poland wrote in a letter about the Birkenau Death Camp not long before he was caught "we can explain away a lot, but not this".
JonnyM   
27 Jan 2012
History / Why are Jews pestering Poland for "proper" WW2 monetary restitution/reparations? [750]

Kinda hard to believe that the Jews were innocent

In the matter of the holocaust, to which you refer, they were entirely innocent.

bad Germans,oops sorry,Nazis

Entirely the same. They believed that behaviour was somehow predicated by race or nationality. Science knows that to be false as did good people back then.
JonnyM   
27 Jan 2012
News / Poland now soft-pedalling ACTA signing [107]

If you don't like ACTA, don't forget to sign the avaaz petition.

One of the weirder things is that the ACTA legislation allows extradition to the US and trial under their dreadful legal system. They aren't the policeman of the world, but this is certainly an attempt to become so. Their manufacturing industry has died, their financial sector belongs to others and they are trying to promote this shabby piece of legislation to bolster what international income they've still got.

It would be a great shame if Poland (and indeed anywhere) were to subordinate protection of their citizens to protection of foreign commercial interests.
JonnyM   
27 Jan 2012
Travel / Big Feet in Poland? [11]

There's more than one of them??

If you go down to the woods tonight, you're in for a big surprise....
JonnyM   
27 Jan 2012
Travel / Big Feet in Poland? [11]

In Poland we call it:
Wielka stopa

And in English, Bigfoot rather than Big Feet! ;-)
JonnyM   
27 Jan 2012
Study / Shocking! Test standards in Polish schools. [165]

there are no commercial breaks during films on Polish public TV

There are actually many - sometimes only a minute from the end of the film :-(
JonnyM   
27 Jan 2012
Study / Shocking! Test standards in Polish schools. [165]

Both languages have evolved over the years - English further from Dutch and Dutch closer to German. The closest language to English is probably West Frisian.
JonnyM   
27 Jan 2012
Study / Shocking! Test standards in Polish schools. [165]

I don't think Dutch language is the closest relative of English - grammar-wise Scanadinavian languages seem closer to English

Dutch is much easier for a British person to learn and to read without learning.
JonnyM   
27 Jan 2012
Study / Shocking! Test standards in Polish schools. [165]

The lessons in school could be carried better if teachers were not too lazy to give a task for kids of learning 30 new words for each lesson

Actually 8 is a better number if you want them to actually understand what they're remembering. More than that and it's just meaningless rote-learning. Especially since the English language has a lexis that is richer and more subtle than most with a whole variety of meanings for some words depending on how and when they are used.
JonnyM   
27 Jan 2012
Genealogy / Why Polish aren't white?? [272]

not in polish parliment

That's true. He's a Warsaw councillor. For now...
JonnyM   
27 Jan 2012
History / Why are Jews pestering Poland for "proper" WW2 monetary restitution/reparations? [750]

By the way, Marku, I never once called YOU personally an "anti-semite."

On the basis of a fair few post here, you would have been more than justified in doing so.

One gets the feeling that to Dessie suicide bombers are not part of the problem but instead part of the solution (the final solution).

It looks that way.
JonnyM   
27 Jan 2012
Study / Shocking! Test standards in Polish schools. [165]

In the past the books for English language were devided into below levels:

That looks great, but doesn't transfer to reality when the level of teaching is incoinsistent.

Do they teach you latin in middles school? May I ask what for?

Me too. As an academic discipline and because of the insight it gives into how languages work.

BTW: there should be two years of 2x90 mins per week between FCE, CAE and CPE

As a minimum.
JonnyM   
27 Jan 2012
UK, Ireland / Obtaining driving License in UK or Poland ..which is easier [8]

it was enough to give the examiner a bung and he would pass you

however as far as I know it is more or less impossible to buy a driving licence in Poland now
the driving test itself is recorded on film and you simply cannot cheat anymore

It can still be done - especially away from big cities. The key is (as it always has been) to have an instructor who also works as an examiner. Allocation of examiners had to be randomised via computer to prevent abuse, but they still manage it.
JonnyM   
27 Jan 2012
Genealogy / Why Polish aren't white?? [272]

Poles are white, are you retarded or somthing?

This guy, in the Polish Parliament isn't white.

Gary Grzelak

Though Gary is a name Poles aren't allowed to register on a birth certificate. It isn't Polish.
JonnyM   
27 Jan 2012
Life / What is the reason for POLISH jokes ? [486]

So tell me - in what other European country have a million new people arrived in a five year period? The people who were already there are entitled to express their feelings about this through humour.

I get the feeling that Mediawatch obsesses about ALL Polish jokes. It's a good thing 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' wasn't called 'My Big Fat Polish Wedding' - he'd probably be holding a placard outside the cinema.

They pretty much more or less did it the same way a guy who works for the British newspaper Telegraph, Douglas Murray did when he made some Irish jokes not long ago.

Doug Murray (who was by the way a very longstanding acquaintance of my family) is from Ireland. The Falls Road to be specific, if that means anything to you. He was also blind and was a font of jokes about that too.

You have clearly missed the point of his article, looking for imagined offense without understanding one whit about the context.

Why do I get the feeling that MediaWatch has never left America and certainly doesn't understand the European culture of us all mocking one another freely?

Indeed.
JonnyM   
27 Jan 2012
Travel / Big Feet in Poland? [11]

It's called Wielkistop. People have seen it in the Tatry, especially after a few drinks.
JonnyM   
26 Jan 2012
Law / 'Karta Pobytu' & long-term visa [27]

You're getting mixed up. There isn't a 'working visa'. Karta Pobytu is a residence card. There are also work permits which are only required for citizens of certain countries. If your husband is from one of those countries (where is he from, by the way?), he will need both. He cannot 'get' a work permit himself. His employer has to apply for it.
JonnyM   
26 Jan 2012
News / Poland now soft-pedalling ACTA signing [107]

I actually think they are doing it now for the very reasons you have just pointed out.

One of the oldest tricks in the book - Macchiavelli mentions it. Pile sh1te upon sh1te and people handle it better.
JonnyM   
26 Jan 2012
News / Poland now soft-pedalling ACTA signing [107]

extreme

This is one of my worries in all this, The troubles in the world economy, the erosion of freedoms, the 'Occupy' movement, the pointless wars in Iraq and one already this side of the horizon in Iran, the imminent collapse of the Euro, the end of American hegemony and the meteoric rise of China. Do they really have to do this ACTA thing right now?
JonnyM   
26 Jan 2012
News / Poland now soft-pedalling ACTA signing [107]

Tens of thosuands of brownshirts deminstrated acorss Germany in the early 1930s. Did that make them right?

Those 'tens of thousands' were demonstrating for repression, to bun books to restrict freedom. Different, no?
JonnyM   
26 Jan 2012
Law / Bank account in Poland which does not use SMS [13]

not all banks use that way - I have an inteligo.pl account (which is part of PKO BP) and I have got a plastic card with gum covered codes - there is some 40 codes on the card if you run out of the codes from your card before they send you a new card

I have the same from Nordea - they offer either a scratchcard like you have or something called a token.
JonnyM   
26 Jan 2012
Work / Working and living in ELBLAG as an expatriate [11]

It's not bad if you're actually from Elbląg - an expat would have different expenses and personally I wouldn't like to support a family on that much. It will be tight.