Have PO (Platforma) operatives in Poland fallen into a panic?

Neither of those suit them. Pseudopatrioci possibly. As for szlachetność, I almost literally fell of my chair laughing, however on reflection and given the appalling behaviour, decadence, incompetence, greed, corruption, superstition, histrionics and fecklessness of the old szlachty, there is a clear parallel.

And the Citizens' Platform is still the most successful government Poland has had since the day before the First Republic was formed.

The Olszewski government was the best and therefore had to be toppled, because it would have exposed all the perfidy of the ex-commie vermin and their KOR-ite soft on communism fellow travellers.

Jerzy Buzek's AWS government was also good, but its Unia Wolności junior coalition partner (the refuge of much ex-commie and post-KOR-ite scum) kept undermining it.

[Moved from]: POs 6-year-old school muck-up

The PO-led government has been forcing through its project to have 6-year-old start school despite parents' disagreement. The result is that some Warsaw schools have got 18 first classes. In Buałołęka the class names go all the way up to 1-R. Another example of the PO going off half-cocked and forcing through measures without first studying the issue and laying the necessary groundwork. Komrowksi's knee-jerk referendum was another example. It's high time for the Platfusy to get voted out of office and take their rightful place in the rubibsh bin of history.

Please don't post new topics about the same party - continue in the old one/s.

Are there any stats relating to how many parents object and why?

I couldn't agree with you more Polonious. That was the time for Poland to prosecute its' communist traitors within an inch of their lives, and to fix that murdering sunglass wearing Moscow lover - but unfortunately the moderates, as usual, (including our Kashubian friend) had their way.

Today's Poland has it's scars because of the night of the knives, and those thieves got away Scot free because the population had no balls. Now it's too late, and don't confuse this PIS gang with Olszewski. They are not fit to lace his boots.

So hilarious the way Polish kids don't learn how to read or write until they're 7!
WTF is wrong with you lot?
Jaysus I started school when I was 4.

So stupid that Polish students don't finish university until they are in their mid twenties. Get them finished college and out working by the age of 22.

If you care so much, why don't you take up the opportunity you have to vote?

Most of the arguments are utterly invalid. For instance, there's one claim that they can't go to school "because the toilets are too big". They usually go silent when you ask them if the toilet at home is also adapted for their small child.

The population was not consulted. Nocna zmiana truly was a conspiracy theory in action. Wałęsa's parliamentary coup was the source of more than 2 decades of crap that followed and is with us to this day. The battle lines are still drawn up between the soft-on-commies PO appeasers and the the justice-demanding PiS.

Check out Nocna zmiana online. The conspirators are all plainly shown.

Spot on. The reasons behind it are purely resistance to change and sentiment.


Likewise, spot on.
Platform did the right thing here. It had to be done sooner or later.

PiS don't demand justice Polonius. It's one of the biggest myths about PiS - the reality is that they only want justice in so far as it relates to their enemies. For instance - do you think PiS would be willing to undergo a thorough examination of what Rajmund Kaczyński did in the 44-53 period? What about Lech Kaczyński? Would you be happy if it was discovered that his dad pulled some strings to get him released quickly from prison?

PO on the other hand wisely realise that communism has been dead for 25 years and many of the most important people are now either old men or are already dead. There's no point wasting energy on what happened - far better to move on, and the general population agrees. There was no appetite in 1989 for "revenge" - and nor is there any appetite now.

Anyway, Olszewski's government fell because of far more complicated matters than that. The clumsy way that lustration was attempted was the final straw for the Sejm, but he also suffered because of his constant fighting with Wałęsa. It would take a book to explain why Olszewski fell, and even the KPN were against the way that he tried to perform lustration.

It's worth pointing out that the law in question that led to the vote of no confidence was ruled illegal by a vote of 11-1 by the Constitutional Tribunal, and furthermore, Macierewicz's list was found to be very inaccurate. Olszewski's biggest mistake was to trust Macierewicz - a man that we all know has absolutely no problems with lying constantly and who has always had a rather tenacious grip on the truth.

The new age for starting school wasn't just plucked out of thin air; it is for very sound pedogogic reasons and in any case, Europe is moving towards standardisation of practice.

PO may have implemented it, and PiS (such an unfortunate name) may have huffed and puffed out of opportunism and pandering to their rural/small town public, however it would happen regardless of the party in office.

Yes, I suspected as much. I would imagine most of the objections come from the mothers who want to keep their 'babies' in a state of arrested development. Polish mothers are very over-protective and do far too much for their children which they could easily and happily do themselves.


Yes, I was three! Started September, turned four in November. But of course the Irish education system has always been set up to cater for the 'infants' as we call them. Junior and Senior infants are two lovely years which break the children in gently but give them a great start with concrete learning, motor skills development, oral language development etc. Makes a huge difference for children from disadvantaged backgrounds who don't get that input at home. Polish primary schools on the other hand expect a lot of children in their first year, loads of rote learning etc. If they're bringing children straight from pre-school or no pre-school at all into that kind of setting, they really need to make that first year a transition year or the kids will find it a bit grim.

Don't forget granny - the Polish babcia finding her little ones plucked away from her. This is a big part of the motivation for opposing the change.


I was close. Turned 4 in the August, started in the September. No harm in that at all, whatever they say about summer-born kids.

The best argument in favour is that it means that kids will finish school by 18, and will put a stop to the ridiculous situation when 19 year olds in school are being treated like children. It means they'll also enter the workforce by 23, which is badly needed.

I'm not personally in favour of the reform, but this is based on my experience as a teacher of 6-7 year olds. Most fellow teachers in my school are pretty much indifferent.

Talk about stripping kids of their childhood! Typical mercantile British Isle mentality: whisk the kids through school and kick them into the rat race ASAP for they can start making their pile early on. Rather than playing with them, telling them stories and reading them books, start cluttering their little brains with maths, geography, spelling and suchlike as soon as they're potty-trained. Wonderful, eh?

If you care so much, why don't you take the opportunity you have to vote against it?

There is one slight difference though Polonius - our kids might go at 4/5 in the UK, but that first year is pretty much identical to "zerówka".

But some posters are writing about the alleged "beenfits" of having them through uni and on the job market by 22 or so. They've got a whoel life ahead them also at 25, so why the big rush?

It's an issue for women more than men - if you consider that in Poland, women tend to get pregnant earlier - so if they don't start work until they're 25 and then get pregnant at 27-28 and a second at 30, then they've effectively shut themselves out of the job market.

And yes, before you say it - it is a problem with the Western style of service-based work, where someone can be 'too old' at 35.

Spoken like a true mercantile Brit who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing! If Polish married couples had 2 kids, the demographic crisis would nearly resolve itself. Is life only about job markets?

Only a retard would think that's a bad idea.


If you knew the actual situation in Poland you might become aware of the fact that the ageing population is going to be a huge motherf!cker of a burden to the coming younger generations. Get them working and get them paying tax, coz the lazy b!stards that live here even want to lower the retirement age.

Idiots.


Oh look, somebody learnt a new word in English lessons today.
*claps


You guys wanted Capitalism when Communism didn't work out, you wanna change back?
Bollox to that.

Depends on their perspective, doesn't it? They might not be too happy to spend their lives working in menial jobs because they missed the boat at 25-30 and couldn't get onto the corporate 'ladder' at that point.

I saw a CV not so long ago from someone who had graduated at 25, obviously had kids and now wanted to get back into the job market at around 32. But the problem was that her skills were 7 years out of date - she wasn't familiar with the latest software, she wasn't familiar with the trends in that type of business (which changes yearly) and she didn't do anything during those 7 years to even keep her knowledge up to date. In short, she was utterly unemployable, and that was before considering the issues caused by labour contracts.

One area in which PO could do very well would be to offer workplaces the possibility of operating nurseries and creches with public money.

sadly these days, yes. The old model of man as breadwinner and woman at home is outdated. It doesn't pay the bills.

Yes - we have gone through this before Delph on this board, but an excellent report. Thanks.
It is an simple opinion though that the East Germans dealt with their communist gremlins, and full credit to them. Poland should absolutely have done the same. In my view. In a perfect world. Olszewski was the last chance to face up to criminal misdeeds on a nationwide scale. You might say, more fool them, for all those millions who didn't play the system, or didn't managed to get hold of some of the ill gotten gains.

Of course a lot of people fell by the wayside after communism, but others had to be retained, because plutocrats though they were, they had the contacts and held the seat of management. But why is the smell of corruption still prevailing after all these years, and not so in other previous Warsaw pact countries?

You could say all above is irrelevant - but at that time - 1992 - it could still have been acted against in a lawful and proper way. That's what Polonious is saying, and I was living here at that time, and I saw what he could see, and I share his opinion of that time.

That's only for those who wish PO to do very well. The majority of Poles do not! They've had their fill of Platformerism.


Yes, but capitalism with a human face -- not a dog-eat-dog society, cut-throat competiton, the mindless ratrace and de-humanised hyper-commerialisaiton of ever field of human endavour. According to the RP Constitution Poland has a "social market economy", not capitlaism. That should be a kind of third road with room for higher things, a cultural mission, human interaction (being destroyed today by mega-gadgetarianism) and spiritual values.


Did you know that biologically the ideal, optimum age of intial childbirth is 23. Younger and older than that entails increasing risks to mother and child. But such information is being suppressed today by feminists and other opinion-moulders. What is being promoted instead is greed, money madness and obsessive careerism.

Increasingly females want to first complete their education, start a career and often put child-bearing off to the biological limits of mid to late 30s. At that stage it is too late for another child. Not to mention those who, swayed by all the glamourising singlehood propaganda, eschew maternity altogether. And we have the source of the demographic crisis.


That kind of speculation can apply to anyone... What would happen if it was discovered that Tusk was a wife-beater and Komorowski a secret transvestite...

Moczulski of KPN, despite his nationalistic rhetoric, had indeed been a communist collaborator. Kwaśniewski had been in the communist apparatus and the others from Nocna zmiana all had some form of political collaboration on their conscience. The fault lies mainly with Wałęsa, although probably his actual guilt was the smallest. Sure he signed some pledge to play ball with the regime but never did. His failing was a purely human one: an ordinary worker buoyed into prominence by history, a Nobel laureate and the President of Poland sudddenly felt threatened and panicked.

Had he allowed the lustration process to take its course, there would have been 1-2 years of commotion and things would have got sorted out. None of the other Nocna zmiana anti-heroes had the clout, either singly or collectivley, to oppose lustration if Wałęsa had not organised such a backroom coup.

Of course, that would be entirely the point of lustration. What happens then is entirely up to the people. It would be fair, thorough and the results would be there for anyone to see. I'm completely for lustration, provided that it is done like the German system where all is revealed and no-one is 'safe'. The problem is that now, the files have obviously been so heavily meddled with that it's unlikely that it could be trusted.


Yes, I think it's something that the conservatives are struggling to deal with. There were collaborators on all sides, and a thorough lustration process would have been required to deal with it.

Are you familiar with the Yugoslav ideas? It's not a million miles away from what you say - of course, the actual implementation was heavily flawed, but it shows what could be possible. There were definitely some East Germans as well that were hoping for something that wasn't quite pure capitalism or pure socialism. I wouldn't object to genuine worker self-management - for instance, with the coal mines, I would heavily support clearing their debts and granting 100% of the shares to the workers. How they run the mines from then on would be their responsibility - they would elect their own management and every worker would be responsible for the success or failure of the mine.

New polls should be great, after all that yesterday's bullshyt from Tusk. Pricelss :)))))))))

Yes indeed, even 10% of Poland's churchman were reportedly guilty, as were all political groiupings. But, and this is important, the largest concentraiton of secret police informers and other over and covert collaborators was found in the ex-commie SLD (which is obvious) and in the lefty-liberal KOR-ite formations such as ROAD, UD and UW. After the UW thankfully collapsed, some holdovers wormed theri way into the Platforma and the general anti-lutsraiton stench and ambience is discernible there to this day.


Yes, I recall the Yugoslav worker councils, and that was tried briefly in Polnad after 1956. But as soon as things settled down the regime hijacked and knocked the teeth out of that scheme.

I have in mind somethig less structural and more educaitonal, less economic and more humanistic. Not so much who manages factories or mines but the way society is brought up. The educational system, media and popculture -- the main educators of society -- are all in their own way perpetuating and normativising a dog-eat-dog world, cut-throat competiton, the mindless ratrace, de-humanised hyper-commerialisaiton and crass soulless consumerism. Shouldn't the educators of society be convincingly showing people there is more to life than "spożywać i wydalać" (consume and excrete). That there is nothing modern, intelligent or progressive about depleting the planet's natural resources to create a mega-mountain of waste which requires more energy to recycle and turn into more junky, disposal products which soon will get binned and recycled ad nauseam?!

Polonius, do you think that any party in Poland supports genuine lustration in which everyone is free to look at everything?

I would - personally - support a thorough lustration process. But it only really happened in East Germany because the state no longer existed, and West Germany had more or less put West Germans into every single position of power in the former East Germany. It also seems that no-one has a credible answer on how to deal with the false files, which is always going to be a huge barrier there.

By the way, while on the topic - can you find a list of the 58 professions that were supposed to be subject to the lustration process as proposed by PiS in 2006-7?

I'll try to be patient here.........without wanting to sound like a twat, in my own case, I was a somewhat 'gifted' child although that term wasn't used back then. and my mother never considered me to be anything special academically. However, I was already reading quite fluently at three. I tried reading Pride and Prejudice for the first time when I was six! I will admit though that I gave up after the first few pages. I finally completed it when I was ten. My mother said that I was never taught to read, I just started on my own. My sister was the same. We enjoyed learning. In fact I was bored a lot of the time in primary school as the work was too easy. The main reason my mother sent me to school was because there were very few children where we lived and she wanted me to have the opportunity to mix and play with other kids.

Now from my viewpoint and experience as a Montessori trained teacher, I know very well what children are capable of learning if it's taught in the appropriate manner. It is a child's natural impulse to learn in order to develop. They love learning and they do so in many different ways, partly through fantasy play, but they also enjoy directed play, learning 'real' things through carefully designed activities which are 'play' to them. Keeping a child in a state of arrested development because it fits your idea of 'childhood' is not beneficial to them. One of the great strengths of the Montessori system is that everything in it is there because Dr Montessori observed the children and then designed every aspect of the curriculum around their natural behaviours.


In the infant classes in schools in the British Isles children are read to every day. In my class the children sat on cushions on the carpeted floor and I read to them, all the classic fairy tales etc and we often acted out the stories. The stories are used for indirect learning. For example Goldilocks is a great favourite, using different sized bowls and chairs, (where the children are learning about comparative sizes, a maths activity) then one day making real porridge and eating it for lunch with honey. Talking about how the honey comes from bees, how the bees make it and so on. (We had a staff kitchen which we were allowed to use for cooking with the children). Stories are a huge part of language development, social development, general learning and are a very important part of the infant curriculum.