News / Poland highest inflation in 20 years [319]



Other people have said that to me, one of whom I remember buying gold and doing well.

I bought a load of old sovereigns in the 80s and 90s (cheaper than buying 'virtual' gold or tablets but slightly lower resale price too and easy to sell in the U.K.) and by weight the current value has outstripped any other investment I've made except the house and flat which I don't consider financial investments.

I'm not talking about making a fast buck here. I get paid in cash (eur and usd) every few months at a time, don't want to either pay it in the bank or have depreciating banknotes stuffed away in different countries. Aside from depreciation, there's also a potential burglary risk.

Hard to know the best thing to do. These aren't million pound investments, but involve enough cash to worry about. I dislike currency trading and am sceptical about the future of Sterling and euro, and to a point usd too since all three are vulnerable to inflation.


Bugger 'businessmen'. Farmers will always produce eggs and milk and with something as vital as food policy, society (via their elected representatives) can certainly ensure they continue to do so.

News / Poland highest inflation in 20 years [319]


What do you think about holding gold to protect against inflation?

News / Poland highest inflation in 20 years [319]


Those cases (not so rare) are with staples. In the U.K. pre-1990 it worked very well indeed for staples like eggs, milk etc and another positive was that the affordable prices for those meant that they outsold less healthy processed alternatives.


A very clear idea; see further back in the thread. Still no engaging though.

News / Poland highest inflation in 20 years [319]


Thanks.

You're right about the coming inflation. It's quite scary in Warsaw. I remember when low spending power here led to non essential businesses closing. That's happening now. There used to be three restaurants within walking distance from me. Now there are none.

Life / Poetry and Poets of Poland [58]

No, it doesn't.

One of my favourites is:

There once was a lass and a very pretty lass
And she was an isotope's daughter
They called her Ethyl Methyl
For her mother was a gas
Made of CH17 and water.

Life / Specific Military to join? [13]

Buy the way, if you're good at science and have at least a Matura or equivalent before applying for the course, many ships' electricians in the Merchant Navy are from Poland. I know a few and have worked on board ship with some (on the ship I was on, all the electricians were Polish). They all trained in Gdynia and this can be a very highly paid as well as a very rewarding career.

Life / Specific Military to join? [13]

As far as I can see, you'll need to visit the correct recruitment office. An unwillingness to travel to the coast may well be seen as a drawback in wanting a career at sea.

This website may help you: amw.gdynia.pl/index.php/kandydat/studia-wojskowe/item/1143-rekrutacja-na-studia-wojskowe

News / Poland highest inflation in 20 years [319]


He probably thinks he'll get a different answer if he keeps repeating the question, or that he'll initiate a 'debate'. He won't on either score.

And of course he knows the answer already.

Inflation is really noticeable here now. I wasn't posting here much for a couple of weeks since I was in London doing some work and noticed a few things. Despite prices in London being higher than the rest of the country (higher wages, dearer premises, etc) there were some real extremes, some things were a crazy price (we northerners love complaining about southern prices) yet there were also some things that were (in some shops) surprisingly cheap, even cheaper than the last time I was there.

Here in Warsaw, there's very little that's surprisingly cheap and prices generally rise and rise noticeably. I've noticed here that the biggest rises are in staple goods whereas some luxury or less necessary products aren't going up. This suggests people aren't buying them due to increased expenditure on necessary things.

In the area where I live (a posh suburb of Warsaw) pizzas in decent restaurants are getting close to the price you'd have expected to pay for a steak a couple of years ago. This is a very bad sign indeed.

Life / Specific Military to join? [13]


Like the ones in Kraków od Wrocław for example, rather than going to, say, Gdańsk or Gdynia?

News / Poland highest inflation in 20 years [319]


We're actually much closer to that than people like to think. A plus for Poland is that everybody over about 45 or 50 has lived through it already.


For staple food items and things people can't easily live without?

Who sets them now in well-regulated societies where things like milk, eggs and bread are controlled?

Language / Polish in 4 Weeks CD-ROM [46]

@FHernandez
It's a pleasure.

If the website comes up in russian, you can set it to English or another language as needed.

There's tons on there, some of it excellent.

News / Poland highest inflation in 20 years [319]

There's nothing 'commie' about a country ensuring access to affordable and high quality food (or other essentials) just as there is nothing 'commie' about ensuring high hygiene standards in food production and regulating additives or food labelling.

Such things long predate communism and as I recall there were riots in Poland when the communist government reduced price controls on essentials.

Language / Polish in 4 Weeks CD-ROM [46]


Try Vkontakte.

They usually have audio downloads (free but probably not legal) for language courses.

News / Russian criticism of Poland - Soviet war memorial removal [332]


The graves, yes. That dreadful monument on Zwirki I Wigury is less about them and more about Soviet triumphalism.

News / Poland highest inflation in 20 years [319]


Letting the 'market' determine the prices of life's essentials is like letting a serial killer determine police investigation methods.

News / Poland highest inflation in 20 years [319]


Yes, it will certainly get much worse. I'd say though that Poland is used to (perhaps a bit too used to) inflation and people are more tolerant of price rises than they ought to be, inflation is very noticeable here. Because my job takes me out of a Poland for a couple of months at a time, I really notice it on my return, and it should be said that the way producers and retailers take advantage of it to make a fast buck only compounds the problem.

Things are going to get tough generally, however as I said, people in Poland are used to it and have survived it before.

Life / In Poland on holiday - need help with bad case of homesickness [108]


Sadly, that's what they think.

They probably think I'm deranged sometimes, however smiling makes you feel better when you do it and it's their loss if they want to scowl.

If you're the first customer of the morning and they refuse your money due to having no float at all in the till and you ask why they've no float, you'll get silence. I've found that smiling at shop keepers doesn't work much unless a) you're in a small town or the countryside where people are a bit friendlier or b) it's a western-owned chain shop with younger staff who've had customer service training.

It's actually a lot better than it used to be and nowadays I even get a smile at my local petrol station sometimes. Unthinkable 20 years ago.

Poland, for all its pluses sometimes seems like the land of passive aggressive. All those daft 6or 7 foot high metal fences around suburban houses are another symptom of that.

News / Russian criticism of Poland - Soviet war memorial removal [332]


It's a comparison, however there was direct competition between the two with each to an extent feeding off the other and the interference in both by different parties muddies it. There's no perfect comparison, however the building boom of the 60s and 70s in Poland wasn't fortunately driven by capitalism, and although pre-war southern Italy and Poland had many differences as well as similarities, Poland's infrastructure from that period compares very well with that of, say, Calabria or Naples which were far more capitalistic and where living standards appear to lag behind Polish cities even now.

Had Poland been under the western sphere of influence after 1945, things would *probably* have been better however a heck of a lot of pre-war industrial and agricultural exploiters would have come back out of the woodwork. A plus though is that there wouldn't have been the dichotomy between the two economic systems and provided the (surprisingly large) socialist element in Polish pre-war society wasn't frustrated by the greedy, there may have been a large communitarian and worker-led element in post-war reconstruction.

News / Russian criticism of Poland - Soviet war memorial removal [332]


I'd mostly say that too.

The bit some will disagree with is that Socialism (whether a distorted form imposed by the Soviet Union) or a more practical aspect of it was part (but only part) of the growth in education, infrastructure and especially housing in the 60s and 70s. Had it been left to capitalists and their 'markets' there'd have been more nice villas built for the better off (though not many, since not many could afford them) however the ordinary people would be living in far worse conditions, and be far less well educated..

It mirrors slightly the situation in the U.K. where the Labour voting areas in the north cleared slums, built polytechnics and hospitals whereas the south east (which lives of money generated in the industrial north) didn't spend the money that much and progressed more slowly until Thatcher's asset grab in the 80s.

These aren't perfect comparisons since the countries are very different and of course the economies of Europe would have developed differently. Another (imperfect) comparison is with the capitalistic South American countries with their huge gap of rich and poor or America with its desperate poverty in the rust belt (only mitigated by the post war boom at the expense of other countries) and conspicuous wealth elsewhere. We forget about the grinding poverty they had there in the 30s of which Steinbeck wrote.

News / Americans incite hatred towards Russia in Polish media [75]


If you want to see the worst of them, look in a mirror.

And it isn't about whether or not the USA is afraid of the rise of China (although their government is indeed very afraid), it's about the unstoppable rise of China, something that is a matter for the whole world. r*SSia however will always be a minor junior partner in any dealings with them. China can see how th8ngs are going and know very well that r*SSia is finished.

This thread isn't about China so much, it's about the Polish media's very understandable dislike of r*SSia, something entirely justified and not about to stop any time soon.


Learn some manners, coffin dodger.

News / Referendum to decide about exotic immigrants in Poland [559]


The first accurate comment you made today.


They always have, however come bad times or good, very few Nigeriennes have made the journey there at all.

And no problem at all if some do.

News / Referendum to decide about exotic immigrants in Poland [559]


Fortunately they're more anti-France than pro-r*SSia.

It's not so much France's sins in the colonial period (although former French colonies are still less developed than most of Africa), it's more France's undignified attempts to hold onto former colonies as if independence had never happened and their strategic attempts to prevent the development of education, infrastructure and most significantly industry. France would rather they were a very minor market for French goods and make a fast buck than let them develop and develop healthy post colonial relations.

It's not insignificant that France had to 'abolish' chattel slavery there three times, most recently in the 1950s.

And of course China (who want rare Earth minerals from under their deserts) is the elephant in the room here.

If you're worried about migrants from Niger you shouldn't be. It has a small population, and I'd suspect that most of them have never heard of Poland.

News / Americans incite hatred towards Russia in Polish media [75]


China is becoming very strong indeed (the stats are scary as are the warnings from economists) anyway. r*SSia's decline is but a very minor factor in this and of course in any deal or partnership with China, r*SSia will always be very much the junior partner.

News / The quality of Polish media coverage [54]


As mentioned above, that's the opposite of what I see. Very little reportage of sensational crimes if it's a quality paper and too much part political or financial market minutiae. They seem so dry compared to the British or French ones.

Life / In Poland on holiday - need help with bad case of homesickness [108]


People in the U.K. say this too. And credit-funded BTL is generally a very silly investment with small margins and too many variables; something people in Poland who've done this are likely to find out sooner or later,


Agreed, and of course seeing greener grass in the other side of any fence isn't unusual and is often symptomatic of deeper worries.

News / The quality of Polish media coverage [54]


You probably mean "losers".

Aren't they still the biggest selling quality newspaper here? Certainly the most respected. I'd prefer if they had more crime stories though; in Poland, quality newspapers seem to think that reporting grisly crimes is beneath them.


Indeed, though I suspect Ironside calls anything 'commie' if it doesn't match his own particular viewpoint.

Life / In Poland on holiday - need help with bad case of homesickness [108]


Somewhat misleading since the alternative in Poland to the small houses in Britain (odd that you refer to just the part that is England) is even smaller flats with no outside space, no windows in the bathroom, no storage space and only one living room.

The lack of windows in bathrooms here is something I don't miss when back in the U.K. I even know people who've built their own houses with the bathroom having an outside wall but they didn't put a window in.

Lenka's feeling of homesickness isn't unusual. It's something you either get used to or don't. As I mentioned, it comes and goes. Lenka may well be having Britain Fatigue in the same way that people who've settled in Poland sometimes get Poland Fatigue. Different people have different ways of dealing with it, and you have to find your own strategy.

Wizz Air and Ryanair are a help; they make quick visits back ver6 affordable and easy, though it does help if your 'new' home and the place you're visiting back home are close to airports and if you have a job that allows you to travel back often.

History / 1920 Germany Lands in exchange for the Eastern Lands? [31]


What on earth for? They aren't Germany's 'lands' anyway and of course nowadays a billion is peanuts.

The Piast era and 1920 are irrelevances anyway nowadays.

Life / In Poland on holiday - need help with bad case of homesickness [108]


It is.

I've heard it time and time again in the UK from people who came from the Caribbean, Bangladesh, wherever. They dream of their retirement home then when they do hit retirement age they stay put for the reasons you mention.

Poland and Britain are nearer though and retirement there is more achievable. I don't plan to stay there in old age either and do dream of returning to a house with a nice English garden. Meanwhile however, house prices soar.

Life / In Poland on holiday - need help with bad case of homesickness [108]


Families tend to have larger territories than cats and are more likely to move away from home.


It will pass. When you're from one country and have made your life in another (as you and I both have) you tend to go through stages. I remember a thread here from an American who hated pretty well everything in PL. I'd bet that there was a stage before that where he loved everything and that (assuming he stayed) things would eventually settle down. Even after decades, things come and go for me depending on a lot of factors.

And of course it may not be a Britain/Poland thing; could the way you feel now have another cause?


Quite. Poland is the land of 'dres'. Both are big countries and what you see on the streets in York or in Saska Kępa isn't what you see in Scunthorpe or Sieradz.