News / Self-important Warsaw mayor [18]

Warsaw's lady mayor Gronkowiec-Waltz raised a fuss when she refused to buy a 5 złoty ticket to visit the gardens of Wilanów Place. 'I'm the mayor of Wrasaw and do not need to pay,' she stormed. To all her other many 'virtues' such as PO membership she has added arroagnce, self-importance, elitism adn pettiness.

Life / Why aren't Polish dope-promoters prosecuted? [15]

This bit of information about police seizing 18,000 portions of ampha in Bielsko-Biała in itself is not a major development, but it does raise a serious question. The only way to resolve the drug problem is by focusing on the demand end. As long as there are nutters who want to ingest poison, the problem will not go away. But Poland has laws against inciting or instigating criminal activity. Why are pop culture representatives (performers, composers, journalists, publishers, film makers, etc.), who effectively normative drug-taking by glamourising it as cool and trendy, not charged with inciting criminal activity. It is they, not parents, schools, the church, etc., who encourage young people to reach for and often become addicted to various stupefying substances.

Such an approach together with a serious crackdown on drug dealers and a dynamic anti-drug information campaign might achieve the results vote-seeking politicians only spout pious platitudes about.

Life / Poland's expats' colonial mentality? [176]

People remote in time from various sources often display residual behavior they may not even be aware of. Many expats on PF display traces of their countries' colonial past as regards the country they are in at present. They hail from former colonial powers such as Britain, Belgium and Holland, whose representatives tried to impose their values on the natives they had conquered. Many expats in Poland seem to want to remake the country in the image and likeness of their own prejudices rather than accepting it the way it is. They often display a snooty, snobbish, arrogant. elitist and colonialist attitude and revile and look down their noses on whatever is not to their liking. There used to be the concept of an 'ugly American'. Now perhaps the term 'ugly expat' would be more appropriate.