Life / Foreigners in Poland - the identities of our native or the host country [66]


The Polish Information and Foreign Investment Agency produces a handy booklet in English titled 'Poland - a place to live and work'. Some of the funniest bits are in the 'Cultural Differences' section;

- It is important to know that in Poland building relationships is the key to successful cooperation. It is good to maintain direct eye contact during a conversation. Polish people are very sensitive to body language.

- Kissing and hugging are a bad idea, unless your partner is a very good friend.

- Polish negotiators tend to be reserved and taciturn. Periods of silence during negotiations are not unusual. Do not try to fill the silence with unnecessary talk

- The more you converse with your business partner the more physical he or she may become. Therefore, just enjoy it if typical business standoffishness eventually transforms

- Appointments: Be punctual. If you are going to be late, send a text or call the other person to let them know.

- When you are invited to an informal social event at a Polish home, you should arrive a quarter of an hour after the appointed time.

Riiight. So keep eye contact, even though the sensitive Poles may interpret this body language as domineering and aggressive. Stick to a firm handshake and above all don't talk too much as conversation makes them horny and they will get physical. Be on time unless it's more proper to be exactly late.

And lots of 'don'ts' like don't rest your ankle on your knee (I thought that was arabs?) don't clink glasses, wear old shiny suits that have been pressed rather than ostentatious new clothes, come in teams of one middle-aged man and one woman, so long as her jewellery is elegant but modest.

You couldn't make it up.

UK, Ireland / Polish is Britain's second language, says UK report [52]


That's interesting. The same 2011 census gives 579,121 persons born in Poland living in E&W; I guess the 33,000 difference is infants born at home in Poland but not yet talking; what a superb opportunity for them to grow-up bilingual


There's another 35,000 Argentinians that speak Welsh ....

UK, Ireland / Polish is Britain's second language, says UK report [52]


In London we've got a DAB Polish station - also avail via the web from prl24.net
Mostly kiddie pop. I'd prefer Chopin.

Real Estate / Astounded by the poor value of residential property here in Wroclaw [92]


When a Polish couple of my acquaintance came to stay with me here in London (Zone 2) last year I had to show them my bank statement before they'd believe me; 3 bedroom / 5 room +k +b +garden 80m2, owned with an outstanding part-mortgage for 850pln a month (11pln /m2) . OK, I bought it in 1995, but compared to their cramped, tiny Warsaw apartment for twice the cost in rental it presents a real enigma. And one reason I'm happier commuting to Poland and staying in hotels.

You can buy a 34m2 apartment in the centre of Budapest for 140,000pln - that's also what I would expect for Poland, based on average income. I simply can't understand the Polish housing market.

News / THE PARTYS OVER... NO MORE EUROS FOR POLAND'S ROADS [71]

Well, I for one would be happy to see a slowdown in some infrastructure investment. Krakow's new EU-funded station is just a vanity project - huge, empty and monumental. My greatest pleasure every time I arrive at Krakow is the walk from the terminal to Balice International Rail Station - pic below. In the Summer the chickens in the adjoining field provide amusing entertainment, and sometimes in the Winter when the rails haven't broken the 'Balice Express' sometimes gets up to speeds of 20km/h. Actually I love it and wouldn't change it for anything.

I was told they were a bit ashamed of it and wanted to replace it with some steel and glass modern thing. What a horrid idea.

News / THE PARTYS OVER... NO MORE EUROS FOR POLAND'S ROADS [71]


Nooooo! It's lovely! Take an umbrella. I think I'll start a campaign to preserve it ....

News / Polish Business Centre Club hammers another nail in Blair's coffin [35]


Tend to agree. Well, it's the same difference as between Coke, Pepsi and Virgin Cola; each party is now not more than a 'brand' all seeking to occupy the same political ground but all seeking minor USPs to build brand loyalty. From memberships of millions of voters in the 1950s, the three parties between them now have fewer than 450,000 members - less than 1% of the UK electorate of 45m. They've ceased to be membership organisations and become elite metropolitan clubs. This is now accepted across the political spectrum; Vernan Bogdanor and Simon Jenkins writing in the Guardian and Peter Oborne writing in the Telegraph all say the same. And it's not because the British don't join organisations any more - the National Trust has 3.7m members, and even the Womens' Institute has more members than the Conservative party.

Peter Oborne has described a 'political class' that have more in common with each other than with the electorate; they are loyal to party first, before country or constituency. Local candidates are parachuted in by central office - and these blow-ins have all the characteristics of apparatchiks receiving patronage from the nomenklatura in Soviet days. They are obedient only to their party.

More and more voters are refusing to play. 16m electors boycotted the last election. If 'None of the Above' was a choice on the ballot paper, it would receive the largest vote share in the country. The three parties are committed to a Central State with Whitehall pulling all the levers of power, allied to big business and the Federasts in Brussels. In the UK 95% of tax is collected centrally, and 100% of tax is determined centrally. Only Council Tax - 5% of all taxation - is collected locally at levels decided in Whitehall.

As Richard North has said, the reason we don't hang them all from the lamp posts is what exactly?

UK, Ireland / Is there actually anything cheaper in Poland than in UK? [51]

Yes! This splendid bit of Polish engineering is half the price on Ceneo.pl than from their authorised UK retailers

News / THE PARTYS OVER... NO MORE EUROS FOR POLAND'S ROADS [71]


Railways are good at moving huge amounts of bulk materials between a limited number of points - coal to power stations and blast furnaces, steel from furnaces to car plants, aggregates to roadstone plants, construction materials to new towns, shipping containers from ports to depots, bulk wheat from silos to food plants, bulk chemicals, fuels to and from refineries etc. This is what rail is designed for - you don't need heavy steel rails and massive locomotives to move people around; rubber-wheels and light transport like London's DLR are all that's needed

With e-commerce as the new world model, we need a distribution system with millions of destinations, and a transport and logistics system that can work flexibly down to local hub and spoke networks - this can only be done by road.

Life / Foreigners in Poland - the identities of our native or the host country [66]


Good post. I'd add that, with the exception of mom-n-pop businesses, in the absence of external pressures capitalist enterprises will always hire on merit alone. External pressures from State or national laws, contract conditions attached to government funding (including EU) that force recruitment decisions on the basis of quotas actually makes firms less competitive. It's a paradox that true capitalism is blind to 'taste' disrimination and will always hire workers to help maximise profit while the public sector actually discriminates. By 'taste' discrimination I mean discriminating on the basis of race, sex, sexuality or faith. Again paradoxically, much of this kind of discrimination comes from workers' unions seeking to exclude those different to themselves from the workplace - Harland and Wolff in Belfast wouldn't employ Catholics because the Protestant workforce would have downed tools, and believe it or not London Transport one ran a recruitment ad that stated 'We don't employ Blacks' in an effort to boost white employee numbers.

And of course the ~18% difference in female earnings, despite the whingeing of the left, is nothing to do with taste discrimination. It's mostly (about 14% of the difference) about women taking time out of the workplace to have babies. Firms that pay reward on a merit basis use

Education + Experience + 'W' the employability factor = Wage

So if a man and a woman the same age had exactly the same college grades and were equally employable but she had spent 4 years out of the workplace looking after babies, of course her wage is lower.

UK, Ireland / Is there actually anything cheaper in Poland than in UK? [51]


Very true. Typical cost of a night-out in pln;

UK, Ireland / Is there actually anything cheaper in Poland than in UK? [51]


OK say 8pln for 33cl beer in centre of old town - Buddha Bar price

Polish wine duty is 1pln for 75cl + 22% VAT; UK is 6.25pln plus 20% but this isn't the difference - restaurant mark-up here is commonly 200% over retail price and you can easily pay 200pln for a quite ordinary Rioja

History / A legacy of Serfdom in Poland? [7]

Yes, of course; serfs were always recognised as having a soul and Gogol of course describes them as so many 'souls' - and neither could they be bought and sold individually, though land sale meant the transfer of ownership of serfs living on that land as well. Both different from negro slaves in the US. And many 'one horse' szlachta were not much materially better off than their serfs.

But no consciousness of that former status remains today? It's completely disappeared?

UK, Ireland / Poles robbing Poles in the UK [12]


I witnessed exactly the opposite. A local pub was being managed by a young Polish woman; she ran a tight ship, the beer was always good, glasses were always clean etc. A fine looking lass she was, with dark flashing eyes and a keen intelligence. Early lunchtime three Polish lads came in, frowsty and still ********** from the night before, to order the pub breakfast - at about 32pln each. Well, she went off like a cannon; I didn't understand one word in fifty, but it was clear she was telling them what useless turds they were, that they should be ashamed of themselves at wasting so much money, and they could sod off to Tesco to buy the ingredients and go home and cook their own. These three hulking great lads just stood there with hangdog expressions and took it. I almost applauded when they trooped out.

History / Origins of Poland national differences? [41]


Tosh. Methods of classification based on physical characteristics of race can only be crude and imprecise. I've still got my 1965 edition of the British Museum's 'Races of Man' and use it mainly these days to demonstrate to students the absurdity of the old skull-measurers. Here's what Cole has to say about 'East Baltic Caucasoids' - "round headed very blond people of countries east of the Baltic who originated in Asia and speak Finno-Ugrian languages, including many of the Balts, Finns, Poles and Russians. The type is also common in Scandinavia and North East Germany where the term 'square heads' was used to characterise the Junkers type. The East Baltics differ from the Alpines in having a flatter occipital region, flatter and squarer face, a more concave nose and a rounded chin."

Just read the thread above to see how silly those phenotypic generalisations are.

Polonia / What are qualites of Germans? [60]


Uhm, schnitzel is Austrian. The relationship between the two nations means it's a bit like describing Guinness as an English beer ;)

I first knew Germany as a young subaltern posted to BAOR. Leading a squad through a live-fire training ground we came to a clearing to find it occupied by a large German family, all entirely naked, eating their lunch. Soon I came to know that Germans (a) think forests are mystical (b) like to take all their clothes off in them. Some places in Germany, you can't move for naked Germans. All very innocent and non-sexual.

Then there's the obsession with their faeces. All German toilets have an inspection shelf; once they've emptied their bowels, they like to take a good look at it before they flush. Sometimes they call their wife or husband in for a second opinion, or take a picture with their cellphones. I'll bet there are entire German websites devoted to the classification and typology of turds. They hate squat toilets where the turd disappears from view - maybe they feel they are being robbed.

Apart from the weird naked thing and the weird turd thing, they're generally good fun.

History / Churchill and Poland [121]


1. Churchill had already been blackmailed by Roosevelt at Quebec II, when he was threatened that unless he accepted both the Morgenthau Plan and the outline post-war partitioning, then the US would cut off all aid to Britain on VE day

2. The threat to the British Empire came not from Stalin but from Roosevelt; it was US policy to dismantle the Empire after the war, and one that Truman wholeheartedly subscribed to

3. By the time of Yalta, Germany was defeated; the Red Army had just advanced 300 miles and was within 40 miles of Berlin. The occupation of Eastern Europe was de facto

4. It is simply naive to imagine that ANY victor could have left an independent Poland sandwiched between occupied Germany and the Ukraine, with the Baltic states to the North, former East Prussia, Hungary and Czechslovakia all within the Iron Curtain. Poland's post-war fate was decided at Stalingrad.

Roosevelt's stupidity, poor judgement and naivity in trusting Stalin, and his use of the economic cudgel to bring Churchill into line, perhaps made things worse than they need have been, but once the Red Army was within sight of the Elbe Poland's fate was sealed.

Oh yes, and the dates of the wars are different for the Septics* than for the Europeans; WWI was 1917-1918 and WWII was 1941-1946 for the US.

(English rhyming slang; septics = septic tanks)

Life / The Best Things About Poland [23]

Standing at a freezing tram stop one night this week watching the locals:

- girls who have worked out how to both dress warmly and still look attractive. This is more difficult than it sounds and needs careful wardrobe choices, particularly if they don't want to hide their good legs

- older ladies dressed elegantly in coat, hat and gloves and as if by magic on whom the snow never settles
- earnest, sober young men with good cheekbones and looks of poetic seriousness
- the pair of swaying clochards counting out tiny coins to see if they can afford another couple of cans from the alkohol sklep

The rattle of a tram in the evening snow, the friendly bell and the politeness of all - a very civilised small experience, but such small pieces of quality are the bricks from which healthy nations are built

Life / Men in Poland in the forest? Just men? [133]

This is clearly an 'Iron John' type male bonding rituals. In America, tired and stressed city executives go out into the woods with other tired and stressed executives and build 'sweat lodges' of branches covered with blankets, moss, branches etc where they heat stones with fire, then get naked and poor water on the stones to make steam. The circle of squatting men are undertaking ritual sweatlodge behaviour but don't realise they need to build the sweatlodge first.

After the executives are very sweaty they run in the forests attempting to kill small animals with sticks and once the 'hunter' has caught the 'prey' i.e. a small wood mouse or similar. they butcher it and smear the blood over eachother's bodies. This causes bonding amongst the executives.

Many are happy to pay $1,000 each for attending an 'Iron John' weekend. Are you sure those gatherings in the 'Pod' aren't just American businessmen from Warsaw seeking a cheaper alternative?