Life / Poland and the neighboring Baltic States [5]

A great deal of trade and many business links. I have been maybe 15 times for business to Lithuania and a few visits to the other 2. I have family roots there

Vacationing isn't popular for Poles - most people who had heritage there have already seen it and being honest it's not an easy connection - flights are expensive and by road can take a long time.

Love / Date Guidelines Required [36]

If you mean Kawa po turecku then prepare for a long date - that stuff needs several hours to cool down !

Never really gone for the Laura Ashley vibe in cafes, seems to have a niche in most Polish towns though.

Love / Date Guidelines Required [36]

Well I recognize Wedel, Fukier something and I think the Hotel Bristol - all a bit high end for a first date. Wedel is OK I guess.

But I am really struggling to think of cafes in central Warsaw that have waitress service and have even a hint of romance. Most seem to go for the queue up for your drink, dispose of your own plate and listen to loud coffee machines vibe.

Obviously a bit of a generation gap thing Paulina - if I lady told me she wanted to meet for a coffee I would assume she wanted some kind of favor or to oitch some business idea to me. If she suggested to meet for a drink I would put on a nice shirt and have a shave :))

Love / Date Guidelines Required [36]

Going for a coffee is pretty teenage IMO. If you are going to ask her for a date at least make it something more special than a Starbucks where you have to stand in line like a dork while she looks for an ugly sofa to sit on. Maybe lunch or visit some exhibition or walk in a park - there are plenty of alcohol free options.

News / Coronavirus in Poland - part 2 [599]

Yes they were - I remember some crazy laws, like not being able to walk in a totally empty forest, not for a few weeks but for months. Having to wear a mask in your own car, when you were driving alone. They were absolutely imposed lightly - Morawiecki seemed to pull them out of his dupa every Sunday night on powerpoint, with no law passed, no constitutional support and rarely much logic.

Masks were still needed in almost every public space in summer 2021, even though no real proof that they worked.. Entertainment, hotels, sports and pubs all closed for months on end, many gone for good. Standing in line in a stupid, ineffective paper mask at 7.00am just to get basic groceries.

And most damaging of all, the work closures which led to the return of inflation after decades, the long school closures, the bans on dating which have caused a demographic hole to go with the fiscal hole etc.

Amazing how lockdown fanatics are trying to gaslight us that this was not a big deal.

News / Coronavirus in Poland - part 2 [599]

Clearly not the same as either of those examples. I'm surprised you didn't wheel out the "seatbelts" argument beloved of nanny statists. You have a choice not to drive and can choose your taxes based on how you work and what assets you have - there is no tax just for breathing.

I got the vaccine willingly but agree that the level of coercion about what people do with their own bodies was a profound intrusion on our rights.

A lot of the hardline vaccine nuts like Arden and Sturgeon have shuffled off stage, unwilling to deal with the huge debts caused by permanent lockdown.

In Poland we had a more light touch about the vaccines thank heavens - even PiS realized there are limits

News / Coronavirus in Poland - part 2 [599]

That's not true - the biggest lie was that lockdown would just be 4 weeks in Poland. Another big lie was that once vaccinated we could get back to normal life with no restrictions.

Law / Gun control in Poland: should Polish people be allowed to own guns? [1070]

Probably a reasonable guesstimate though

An alternative way of looking at it.

65m Americans are on some form of mental health prescription medicine (20 percent)

82m have guns (25 percent)

That means circa 13m with guns and on prescription mental health medicine

Leaves

Law / Gun control in Poland: should Polish people be allowed to own guns? [1070]

82m Americans own guns

So your 98 percent of them being sane and responsible still leaves 1.8m unstable gun owners.

Seems like a big number from a European perspective

Law / Gun control in Poland: should Polish people be allowed to own guns? [1070]

Two came round to mine this morning because someone had vandalized a bus stop nearby. They didn't have guns.

Law / Gun control in Poland: should Polish people be allowed to own guns? [1070]

JR this is a democracy - maybe not as established as the US but now 35 years old and the way we solve these problems is by elections.

Abortion is one of the biggest electoral issues in Poland today. We will use our democratic process to decide.

In the 2019 elections only one party wanted more liberal access to guns - Kukiz. However during the campaign there was another big massacre, I think at a concert in Vegas, and they dropped that policy.

Law / Gun control in Poland: should Polish people be allowed to own guns? [1070]

But a good proportion of Poles oppose both abortion on demand and access to guns - I'm one of them and I reckon about 40 percent share my views.

They are totally separate issues unless you an American right winger

Law / Gun control in Poland: should Polish people be allowed to own guns? [1070]

35 gun deaths last year means that is literally a one in million chance for your average Kowalski

We have more chance of winning the lottery

Law / Gun control in Poland: should Polish people be allowed to own guns? [1070]

See London, Sweden, Germany, France ?

All high income, interesting and nicer, healthier places to live than Appalachia

Law / Gun control in Poland: should Polish people be allowed to own guns? [1070]

Of course you need it - you never know when a rogue taxi driver might come calling

News / Will Poland as a NATO member be drawn into the Israel/Iran war ? [250]

It would be a short war - and in a good way

North Nigerian alcoholics
Chinese peasants
Starving Koreans
Mad Muslims who can't aim their missiles

All equipped with junk.

They are going to send unmotivated slaves to fight free men ?

Law / Gun control in Poland: should Polish people be allowed to own guns? [1070]

No because we don't hunt whales or zubr any more.

Mind you if I could get a gun I for sure would go off and blast a few peaceful bison

Law / Gun control in Poland: should Polish people be allowed to own guns? [1070]

How many deer should there be ? They were there long before the white man

Law / Gun control in Poland: should Polish people be allowed to own guns? [1070]

He was absolutely in danger - she was a lunatic cab driver.

The guy deserves a medal, not a felony charge. One less Uber criminal in Ohio

Law / Gun control in Poland: should Polish people be allowed to own guns? [1070]

She was on his lawn. With intent to invade. A psychopathic uber driver

Her death was totally justified

Law / Gun control in Poland: should Polish people be allowed to own guns? [1070]

It was a home invasion by a crazed taxi driver.

The guy was totally correct to blast her away with no questions asked

Law / Gun control in Poland: should Polish people be allowed to own guns? [1070]

I'm not sure what good a crappy handgun fired by an amateur middle aged man like me is going to do against North Nigerian armored vehicles.

Isn't it better to invest in drones, fighters, missiles etc ?

Law / Gun control in Poland: should Polish people be allowed to own guns? [1070]

cbsnews.com/news/uber-driver-killed-scam-phone-call-william-brock-loletha-hall-clark-county-ohio/

Another mistaken "home invasion"

The kind of thing that would never happen in Poland.

Just one of 500+ accidental deaths from firearms in the US every year

Law / Gun control in Poland: should Polish people be allowed to own guns? [1070]

In North Nigeria I would say police stations are one of the most dangerous places

Law / Gun control in Poland: should Polish people be allowed to own guns? [1070]

Poland gun deaths 35
US accidental gun deaths 672

1200 kids died in gun accidents since 2002. They had no votes on gun laws.

There is a separate thread to discuss abortion, which in broad terms I oppose, but its up to voters to debate it.

Law / Gun control in Poland: should Polish people be allowed to own guns? [1070]

Here is a bet - the amount of accidental family firearms deaths in the US in 2023 was 10x higher than total gun deaths in Poland in 2023

I will google it now

News / Will Poland as a NATO member be drawn into the Israel/Iran war ? [250]

Minor damage only from these 300 drones - I am no fan of Netanyahu but I would say that's a good news for the world that there are effective defences against Muslim fundamentalist states

Law / Gun control in Poland: should Polish people be allowed to own guns? [1070]

Yes but these are the facts we rarely have to confront or excuse here in Europe because we don't let people carry automatic weapons - it doesn't matter how good their aim is.

Law / Gun control in Poland: should Polish people be allowed to own guns? [1070]

Don't you also need to control for large scale gun massacres at schools, concerts, parades, sports events etc, for accidental shooting of burglars who turn out to be your mum, for femicides and many more examples

Those are not suicides and nothing to do with hipsters buying cannabis

Law / Gun control in Poland: should Polish people be allowed to own guns? [1070]

Those are high numbers for tiny populations

But anyway we don't care what you do in Wyoming - people there can vote for what they want

Here nobody votes for guns. And it's not about being left or right - Orban, Kaczynski, Salvini are all hard right and all against guns