Posts by marcos

marcos

29 Jan 2012

Law / Bank account in Poland which does not use SMS [13]

Thanks for the advice everyone.

I will look into getting the paper list of passwords, it will make like much simpler.

marcos

26 Jan 2012

Law / Bank account in Poland which does not use SMS [13]

Hello

When I was living in Krakow last year I opened a bank account with Mbank which I used mainly for buying stuff on Allegro. Now I am back in the UK it turns out the account is useless. The reason being, that to make payemnts Mbank send a code to your phone by SMS which is used to authorise the payment. But this only works in Poland, once you are in another country the SMS no longer arrives.

At the moment there is something I would like to buy on allegro but I cannot find a sensible way to pay, the seller will not accept paypal and I cannot use my PL bank account :(

Does anyone know a workaround for this problem and does all Polish internet banking work in this way, using SMS to authorise payments?

Thanks in advance
Mark

marcos

4 Jan 2011

News / Upping the speed limit in Poland [92]

I think 5000+ road deaths each year shows that a lot of Polish drivers are pretty useless at choosing an appropriate speed for the road conditions.

The amount of people is see belting through city centers at 60+ Kph is not civilised at all, and then there's the ones who prefer not to slow down in thick fog......

'Free speed' for 'free people'???

Yeah right! How about freedom to arrive home alive, and freedom from oil dependency!

marcos

4 Jan 2011

News / Upping the speed limit in Poland [92]

So to all those who just want to drive as fast as possible.

Poland has to import virtually all of its oil, right?

So driving ever faster, in ever bigger cars, means you are sending more and more of your country's wealth to the Russians and the Arabs.

Seems pretty stupid to me, maybe you should all drive slower and do your country a huge favour!

marcos

18 Dec 2010

Life / How do the Polish feel about air pollution in their cities? [35]

Well I was thinking of cities mainly, all these shopping malls I am seeing everywhere; if there is money for this........

I find it hard to believe that living in coal smoke would not affect ones health.

One thing I do know is that London in the 1950's had massive air pollution caused by coal burning in houses, in 1952 there was the great smog which killed about 3000 people, all due to the use of coal for home heating in combination with weather conditions which trapped the smoke at ground level for weeks.

Of course I am not saying that this is the situation now in Krakow, but is is a good example of how a s**t situation can be corrected. Basically they brought in a law (called the 'clean air act') which said; if you want to burn coal in the city, then it has to be 'smokeless' coal. Problem solved; London no longer has pollution problems caused by coal. Now there are pollution problems caused by diesel engines, but that's another story.

marcos

18 Dec 2010

Life / How do the Polish feel about air pollution in their cities? [35]

When coal is cheap and abundant, while gas is expensive and not available to be produced domestically - are you surprised?

No, not too surprised, but all this pollution must take years off the life of the average Pole not to mention the healthcare costs. I was just interested to know whether this is currently being debated in Poland, as I don't understand Polish language well enough to follow the news.

The solution seems obvious; keep on using your cheap abundent coal in power stations, and use electric to heat houses. Its got to be easier to control the chimneys of a few power stations than the chimneys of millions of homes.

marcos

18 Dec 2010

Life / How do the Polish feel about air pollution in their cities? [35]

Thanks for the replies. Pretty much confirms what I thought; that most people are really not too bothered. In fact when I mention the pollution on a particularly bad day, like yesterday was, most people don't even seem to have noticed. Guess it depends what you grew up with.

Actually the pollution only really gets to me on certain days when there is no wind to clear the smog. I think I will buy an air scrubber for my apartment, so at least I won't have to breath this s**t while I am sleeping.

Was in Zakopane today; that place is even more polluted than Krakow. Poland is the land of coal!

marcos

18 Dec 2010

Life / How do the Polish feel about air pollution in their cities? [35]

Hi All

I have been living in Krakow since September and since the weather has got cold I have really started to notice how polluted this place gets. I have had to cover up all the ventilation in my apartment to stop the stink from getting in.

As far as I can tell the problem is people burning some sort of low grade coal in older houses. Every evening the sky fills with acid smog when people get home from work and light their fires. At 17:00 the air is starting to smell of sulphur and by 22:00 it is really minging.

I have been quite shocked by this, I come from the UK and we have a big problem with traffic pollution, but I have never experienced anything like this!!

It seems to me that all the apartment blocks do not burn coal, its only the older cottages and single houses that are causing most of the pollution.

So my question is WTF doesn't the PL government do something? What do Polish think about this, and is this something that gets talked about often, for example is air pollution seen as a high priority, or is it pretty low on the list?