History / Lech Kaczynski - was he a good leader? [88]

Erm, you do know the thread isn't about his evil twin. Nor is Jaroslaw (Tinkerbell) Kaczynski even mentioned on this page.

As for him retiring, I suspect the decision will be made for him.

UK, Ireland / WHAT IS IT ABOUT POLISH PEOPLE THAT MAKES THEM THINK THAT UK WANTS THEM? [309]


+1

UK, Ireland / WHAT IS IT ABOUT POLISH PEOPLE THAT MAKES THEM THINK THAT UK WANTS THEM? [309]


No there isn't.


This doesn't really make any sense.


And the other EU member states threw their doors open to us. Do you know how many British people are living round Europe.


Communism ended in 1989 and even before that, 80-90% of Poles were decidedly not communists.


Interesting where you got that statistic from, about 2 million Poles, Latvians and 'god knows what else' being homeless.


No it isn't!


A lovely place actually. You should come here.


You seem to have an unfailingly negative view. I gues things are not going well for you on a personal level.

Genealogy / Being ashamed of Polish ancestry? [156]

Not long ago I met somebody who, though probably not ashamed of anything, pretended not to be Polish. This person is in their forties and has been out of PL for only around ten years. I really can't figure out why someone would do that, even going to such lengths as anglicising their name and refusing to speak Polish, even when other Poles address them in that language.

Life / Of Polish Descent - Looking for Background Information on Poland for a School Paper [5]


Very much so.


Very often.

Interesting though that the woman is usually still expected to cook and clean, even after a hard day at work.


I know of such families but they are relatively rare.


Very common in Poland.

Australia / Australian citizen wanting to go to Poland for as long as possible - needs Polish Visa [49]


Easy.


Difficult.


It doesn't.


It can help.


Ambasada Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej w Canberze

canberra.polemb.net

History / Lech Kaczynski - was he a good leader? [88]


Em, you do know he's no longer alive?

UK, Ireland / WHAT IS IT ABOUT POLISH PEOPLE THAT MAKES THEM THINK THAT UK WANTS THEM? [309]


Isn't that just what you're doing?


You know, the folks who went from Poland to the UK got jobs that were on offer already, without takers. The reason so many employers breathed a collective sigh of relief when the Poles came wasn't because of the low wages (they were already low) it was because they could actually fill vacancies. I don't see many youngsters being 'undermined' because they can't get a job sorting strawberries or doing the night shift in the Tesco warehouse.


The least you can do for your country is not to be so darn silly.


Well....


Never a good idea to align yourself with right-wing extremists.

UK, Ireland / WHAT IS IT ABOUT POLISH PEOPLE THAT MAKES THEM THINK THAT UK WANTS THEM? [309]


Fascism has always been notoriously difficult to define however Theodore Adorno's definition is usually accepted as definitive The NDSAP fit that perfectly.


The basics of his job and the bye-laws regarding public transport in London. By the same logic a Pakistani shopworker, fresh from Karachi wouldn't have a right to stop an English girl from shoplifting...


Dear me no! Plenty of people I happen to disagree with are perfect gentlemen. Griffin is not. He is a thug. And among the officials of his numpty nazi party there are dozens of people with long and unsavoury personal histories. There's even a thread about it on here if you care to use the search function.


Yes. Do you like Lanchester's fiction?

UK, Ireland / WHAT IS IT ABOUT POLISH PEOPLE THAT MAKES THEM THINK THAT UK WANTS THEM? [309]


Because they were very much that.


And here in Poland anyone, schoolgirl or not, would be taken off the bus and fined 120zl for not being able to produce the card. I wonder why you mention that the driver was Polish - would a driver of another nationality follow a different rulebook?


No. He isn't. He is a raving nutter with a very nasty streak. He was when I first met him 20-odd years ago and in my (and the voters) opinion he is still a raving nutter with a very nasty streak.


Well, interesting of you to make assumptions about my reading habits, but what sort of media would you prefer I read?

News / Becoming non-EUnuch -> giving up your share of handouts. [36]

They've had at least as much chance as Germany has to do so already, but I don't see half as many factories.

UK, Ireland / WHAT IS IT ABOUT POLISH PEOPLE THAT MAKES THEM THINK THAT UK WANTS THEM? [309]


Who is praising a neo-nazi organisation!!


The 'word' of what?


There is still most definitely left and right, and Conservative (& historically Liberal) front benches tend not to be made up of middle-income people. Who would you rather have in government - someone successful and intelligent or Griffin and his goony band of thugs and losers?

Yes. An extremist and a hotheaded one.

News / Becoming non-EUnuch -> giving up your share of handouts. [36]


Don't forget retsina, bazookis and Demis Roussos.

History / Poland did reasonably well in land terms out of the postwar settlement [270]

Subtract Poznan from the equation or swap it for Zielona Gora - the premise is still as true as the moment I posted it.

Now stop trolling!

UK, Ireland / WHAT IS IT ABOUT POLISH PEOPLE THAT MAKES THEM THINK THAT UK WANTS THEM? [309]


So what you're saying is that you're an inconsistent extremist.


I'm not sure how Polish people can affect that one way or the other.


We never did. Young Aussies in particular had a shocking reputation for living 20 to a house, trashing things, wild parties etc.


Really?


It's one of the great cities of the world.


Numpty nazis with more violent criminals and enduringly mentally ill people among their 'activists' than any other group. And were trounced in the last elections, losing badly in every seat they could scratch together the money to field 'candidate' in.


OUR country, and just how will you fight? Nail bombs?

History / A little reminder for those Brits that ***** about Poles [143]


This forum is about Poland.


Their contribution is remembered and recognised.

Aha. There's a big danger in overstating the contribution of Poles and other nationalities, but it seems to me that there's a bigger danger in understating it.

Genealogy / Being ashamed of Polish ancestry? [156]

Ancestry isn't something that anyone can choose and certainly nothing that anyone should either be ashamed or proud of.

History / Poland did reasonably well in land terms out of the postwar settlement [270]

If people had to vote on swapping Szczecin, Gdansk, Poznan and Wroclaw for Vilnius, Lvov and Grodno it would be a waste of ballot paper.


Yes. They got a terrible deal.


I'm not sure that's any sort of plus.

History / A little reminder for those Brits that ***** about Poles [143]


It's the hand-kissing.


All at the same time would have been a record.


There's something in that, but most bashing of things is generally in a different direction.

News / EU Predicts Poland's Economy Will Expand at Bloc's Fastest Pace This Year [37]


This seems to make a lot of sense. Fits with intuition too.

News / EU Predicts Poland's Economy Will Expand at Bloc's Fastest Pace This Year [37]


Yes - I remember that. Unfortunately I was on a different continent so couldn't nip into the kantor. My feeling is that 5 zl to the quid is about what it should be, but it could go to 4.5 sometime this year.

There's also the side issue that if uncertainly continues (or worsens) regarding the Euro at the same time as growth in the Polish economy, will the zloty benefit out of proportion to sterling or CHF?

News / EU Predicts Poland's Economy Will Expand at Bloc's Fastest Pace This Year [37]

And is the zloty therefore undervalued and likely to increase, or is the economy here doing so well in part because exports to the UK and Eurozone are affordable?

An important question - I'm wondering whether to change a certain (not small) amount of money from GBP to PLN or not.

UK, Ireland / WHAT IS IT ABOUT POLISH PEOPLE THAT MAKES THEM THINK THAT UK WANTS THEM? [309]



There's a strong case for allowing guest to start threads only in the dating and the genealogy sections. After all, registration takes 30 seconds only and most of the guest who start genuine, non-trolling, threads register soon enough anyway.

History / A little reminder for those Brits that ***** about Poles [143]


There are certainly trolling threads, usually started by racists (and some of the OPs comments in other threads are pretty hair-raising) but those are usually demolished. Most of the posters here are very pro-Poland. From time to time there'll be a post from a foreign person who isn't having a great time here, but it's important to distinguish between something anti-Polish and something about how bad, say, the tax office is here.

History / A little reminder for those Brits that ***** about Poles [143]

That old chestnut has been on here, despite the war memorial in Warsaw.

USA, Canada / Polonia who needs help with Polish Documentary [27]


It's an issue now. Both hooliganism in general (and after all there are some pretty big matches happening this year in PL) and hooliganism in Poland in particular (which is never out of the press and about which at least one other documentary has been made).


Not suspicious at all - the media write about controversial things - it's for the tourist board to only write the nice and sweet stuff.

Perhaps you'd prefer the OP avoided controversial current affairs and instead produced a documentary about how pretty Kazimierz Dolny is?

Life / Letter-mail international Forwarding and redirection with Poczta Polska in Poland? [17]


So how should I describe her? Plenty of adjectives and nouns come to mind, none of them complimentary - however the two I used were the two I remember. And if she'd said to a Pole in the UK what she said to me, she'd no longer be working at the Post Office.

I might also mention another woman at Poczta Polska (I'll call her a cantankerous old bag, why not) who wouldn't hand over my tax rebate because she claimed she couldn't read the way my name was written on the chit the tax office had sent her.

History / A little reminder for those Brits that ***** about Poles [143]


You're reading all the wrong threads.

Plenty of people here live in Poland and are entitled to express an opinion about it without constantly and uncritically praising everything they see around them. Foreign people of Polish extraction who have a romantic opinion of a country they have nothing to do with may not like that, but so what.


Plenty of threads on that and gigabytes of discussion on the Polish contribution to the war effort.

UK, Ireland / WHAT IS IT ABOUT POLISH PEOPLE THAT MAKES THEM THINK THAT UK WANTS THEM? [309]


No thanks. The fact that they badly lost every seat they stood in at the last election shows that perhaps people prefer the Poles upstairs to numpty nazis.

Life / Letter-mail international Forwarding and redirection with Poczta Polska in Poland? [17]

Not only Poles. One fat b1tch from Poczta Polska told me I spell my name wrongly. First Class service.