News / Which French candidate for president will be best for Poland? [512]


I wish it were that easy. If Macron wins by 7 votes in the second round they will take as an absolute victory and as a mandate for further integration. If Le Pen wins in either round they might make the French hold another election (I'm completely serious).

An explanation I read years ago that makes sense is that many politicians in EU institutions think of integration as being like a shark, if it's not constantly moving forward it will die. They are completely unable to imagine any other scenario..


EU politicians want the migrant crisis, every single thing they do encourages more low-skilled low educated people to risk their lives in a risky trip across the Mediterranean. If they didn't want that they would stop it (or try to stop it). don't ask me why but they do.


the only common strategy that will work is repatration and/or force in turning people back (and that's presuming that Merkel et al want to stop it which....they don't they want to increase it)


It will accelerate something. A Le Pen victory might be shock therapy and wake some people up, a Macron victory will accelerate the self-destruction of the EU as he seems to be on board with all the processes tearing the EU apart.

Law / Poland three year residency [30]


I agree completely, but they are often tied to passing at universities...


why the scare quotes? they are errors in the sense that native speakers would not produce them, the fact that they're understandable doesn't change that

'nie znam to miasto' is also completely understandable in Polish and is an error

Law / Poland three year residency [30]


I'm not talking about BAsic English (which was never really workable) but a distinct standard that would allow common "international" structures like

- the party was funny (meaning: fun)
- women are discriminated in my country (meaning "discriminated against" or "suffer discrimination")
- I don't know where does she live (meaning "where she lives)
- I saw him to get into the car (meaning "saw him get into the car"

These and many other "wrong" expressions are extraordinarily common in all non-native contexts and those exposed to them long enough find it very difficult to get rid of them so you get the weird situation of people who are very communicative and by some measures fluent who can't pass standardized tests...

Law / Poland three year residency [30]


Having to translate everything going on for the noob gets real old real fast...


Having had the dubious pleasure of hearing lots of non-natives talking to non-natives it's hard for me to really call that English (or American) in any real sense since the discourse and politeness markers (as well as much of semantics and collocations) typical of native varieties are MIA

The idea solution would be for some distinct form of "international" English to break off from native varieties (and become distinct enough that native speakers would have to learn it or at least receive training in it).

I'll add that I've known young Polish people who are very proficient in the international reduced English but cannot pass a standardized test based on native usage to save their lives so this is a real issue affecting some young Polish people.

News / Tesco out of Poland? Żabka and Biedronka opportunity. [73]


Polonius would have another daft commie plan like forbidding adverstising or state inspectors skimming off the excess profit. PRL all over again...

Love / I want to know, how do I show the Polish women that Im interested in knowing her? [10]


Relax. If she's interested she'll let you in very unambiguous terms (on the whole Polish women are not the type to wait forever for a man to make the first move).

History / Polish-Hungarian border exchange? [60]


Hungary has been in the EU since 2004

News / Tesco out of Poland? Żabka and Biedronka opportunity. [73]


You mean they wanted to continue PRL style policies?

News / Tesco out of Poland? Żabka and Biedronka opportunity. [73]


Sent you a memo did he?


You can take the guy out of the PRL but you can't take the PRL out of the guy. that is just the type of solution they were trying to get away from.


Why should people in those countries not patriotically buy in their own stores?

News / Tesco out of Poland? Żabka and Biedronka opportunity. [73]


Portugal is hardly "far more affluent" than Poland.


What do think shock therapy was all about? And there is an indigenous Polish capitalist class ... but they vote for PO and you and PiS hate, hate, HATE them!

Love / Polish girl "loves" me, despite not meeting in real life first [56]


You don't know her, you know a part she's playing.



Which statement is true? How can something that's been going on for less than a week be described as happening "quite frequently"?

News / Tesco out of Poland? Żabka and Biedronka opportunity. [73]


Another day, another ethnic slur from Polonius (Portugal and Germany are Polish allies within the EU and NATO). Why are trying to convince them that Polish people view fellow EU citizens (and NATO allies) as enemies?


This is a "hapless Polish shopping public"



Is that really what you want again?

News / Tesco out of Poland? Żabka and Biedronka opportunity. [73]


Does not exist. The most likely explanation is the increase in Biedronka and Lidl (both of which have opened up within easy walking distance of where I live). After the Lidle opened, the much bigger French owned store next door became somewhat less crowded. I hope it stays open though as it's the only place that carries my favorite pasta - French with an obscene amount of eggs.

And you forgot a really important part:

"The retailer did not say how many jobs would be cut as a result, the daily reported."

Love / Polish girl "loves" me, despite not meeting in real life first [56]


Are you sure she's not a minor? Because if she is..... then having her pictures would not really be a. very. good. thing. tooo. haaave.

News / How will BREXIT affect the immigrants in UK and Poland. [1114]


I'm not crowing, i'm not British and have no special dog in the fight. I'm hoping that the result will shake up the EU so it can be saved before the whole thing crumbles, which it might if those in decision making positions don't start making different decisions.

The ideal result (if I had my druthers) would be a halt or at least a massive slowdown of the integration-uber-alles agenda and that the leave process can be abandoned before being finalized. If the EU doesn't change though then, well..... the UK might well be glad it got out when it did.

News / How will BREXIT affect the immigrants in UK and Poland. [1114]


The first three sound like "let's support the City! Let's support the one per cent!
The fourth implies its the UK's duty someone to watch over squabbling continentals
The fourth makes no sense and actually backfires, it suggests that the problem of contentious boundaries is best solved by absorption into a larger politic where it doesn't matter where borders are (the Catalonian question - the idea of the EU actually strengthens the independistes)


I think it was more important to Remainers to be "right" than to win....

News / How will BREXIT affect the immigrants in UK and Poland. [1114]


Why you lost. If you can't muster a minimum of respect for the other side... don't be surprised when they don't swallow your arguments.

News / How will BREXIT affect the immigrants in UK and Poland. [1114]


for that you have to have lots of arguments that resonate with voters and not just a bunch of economic numbers that many to most people suspect is all about supporting the one per cent.

unlike the supremely rational irish (hi atch!) most voters in most places and most times vote according to their aspirational identity (the candidate or option that best reflects who they think they are or who they want to be)

remain didn't have a lot to work with in that regard...

for countries like Spain or Poland (or Turkey till it went off the Erdogan rails) joining the EU was more like collective recognition and prestige for the country which is why most wanted to join, on the other hand "show you're a Eruopean!" according to my understanding doesn't do much to motivate English voters...

I ask again, what kind of resonating emotional arguments could Remain have used to fire people up to want to remain in the EU?

News / How will BREXIT affect the immigrants in UK and Poland. [1114]


Well the bloody Remainers were/are guilty of little more than completely IGNORING legitimate concerns of the voters, it's that simple :-o

News / How will BREXIT affect the immigrants in UK and Poland. [1114]


Then limited and controlled immigration as needed (and require the jobs be paid well enough that those that take them aren't incentivized to quit as soon as possible).

News / How will BREXIT affect the immigrants in UK and Poland. [1114]


Of course there's no such thing as a labor shortage (99% of the time) there's a shortage of people who want to work for below substinence wages while living in their own country. But applying the law of supply and demand to labor for some reason is economic heresy to the neoliberal order.

News / How will BREXIT affect the immigrants in UK and Poland. [1114]


Except that none of the higher ups in the EU seem to realize that.


I'm expecting islamification to rapidly increase after Brexit because if the government can't import relatively cheap labor from within the EU it will try from outside. Employers don't care how many deadbeats are brought in along with the small number that can be channeled into jobs (the old 'privatize profits and socialize expenses' mantra of neoliberalism). And muslim countries over-produce people who cannot succed in their own (or any) country and so of course they want to export them.


And the knowledge for every migrant actually on the way there are twenty more back home deciding whether or not to give it a go (and NGOs helping people smugglers in the Mediterranean doesn't help either).

News / How will BREXIT affect the immigrants in UK and Poland. [1114]


So what were the logical arguments put forth by the Leave side?

- final protection from the toxic Euro pseudo-currency?

- final protection from pressure to join Schengen?

- freedom from the burdensome nonsense regulations that Brussels produces on an industrial scale?

Also what were the logical arguments that convinced Ireland to vote against enlargement? And what were the logical arguments that convinced them when they were told to redo the election and come up with the right result?

News / How will BREXIT affect the immigrants in UK and Poland. [1114]


And that's why Brexit won. People don't vote for people (or policy decisions) that lecture at them.
The remain side needed ringing emotional arguments that resonated with people. Instead it lectured and threw around numbers that didn't mean anything to most people.

What are some appeals to emotion that could have helped the remain side?

News / How will BREXIT affect the immigrants in UK and Poland. [1114]


I'm fairly sure that what happens will surprise everyone.... things are hard to predict accurate, especially the future.

Work / Studies In Poland, is it easy to survive on part-time jobs? [259]

Yes, I don't think the Sub-Continent is sending Poland its best....

News / How will BREXIT affect the immigrants in UK and Poland. [1114]


Britain could possibly survive the Euro (maybe) but there's no way that Britain would survive Schengen, the population would increase massively in a tidal wave devastating the natural (and human) environment.

the UK in Schengen means a population rivalling Bangladesh....

Life / Why are Muslims seen as a deterrent to Poland? [564]


It's worse. Mutliculturalism, in it's most extreme forms, means no uniform set of cultural values and no _dominant_ set of cultural values.

I'm not sure if any society has existed (for any length of time) without a dominant set of values.

Part of what's happening in western Europe is alienated and unsettled muslims deciding that if the locals are too wussy to make sure their culture is dominant then they will make _their_ values dominant.

News / How will BREXIT affect the immigrants in UK and Poland. [1114]


YEs I don't think it's Poland's place to be experimenting, but countries that could be doing so .... aren't. They're stuck back in the 'bring in new cannon fodder' mode.


Yes, for Poland Ukrainians are (on the whole) better than Middle Easterners or Africans. No doubt. Some controlled Vietnamese immigration might be a good thing to (since they have a good track record).


How? I guess it depends on how you define "right wing". Something tells me that post soviet peoples tend to not be the most socially liberal in the world...

News / How will BREXIT affect the immigrants in UK and Poland. [1114]


Yes, especially when the immigrants come from cultures with very different values than those in Europe. Why would Ahmed or Nguru want their hard earned salaries going to support of bunch of old white people with customs they regard as filthy? (That is when you can get them into on-the-books employment in the first place, which is very far from 'most of the time'?)

Ukrainians in Poland come from a distinct (yet generally similar) culture and language and if they stay have children then those children will be essentially indistinguishable from the native population (unless a bunch of clueless do-gooders get their hands on them).

The idea of immigrants as retirement security is essentially magic thinking that breaks down when facts on the ground are looked at, but by then those proposing the policy have already pocketed a lot of money and decide that the solution to the last wave of failed immigrants is.... more immigration!

The idea of immigrants as some kind of economic magic or problem solvers is part of the neoliberal consensus that is being rejected (or strongly challenged) in almost all the countries where it took hold.

Time for newer, better ideas.