It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The

According to a poll published in Rzeczpospolita today, 93% of Poles believe their country is corrupt. The only countries which are close are Bosnia (also 93%) and Croatia (92%). Among those who are more comfortable with their country are the Russians (88%) and the Ukrainians (84%), never mind the Swedes or the Austrians (28%).

The experts didn't take the Poles' word for it, however, and investigated further, asking what they would do in specific situations. 81% of Poles said they never give bribes, which is right up there with Britain (84%) and Austria (82%). On this scale, the least corrupt were the Portugese, 94% of whom said they wouldn't give in to the temptation to bribe. On the other hand, 70% of Poles wouldn't inform the authorities about a bribery attempt. This may well be because the Poles consider the police one of the more corrupt public services.

On the other hand, Poles seem very sceptical. Over half (56%), think Poland is more corrupt than other countries. Only a few points behind that (49%) comes the view that there's no point in fighting corruption (one of the things the current government was elected to do, funnily enough), because it was, is, and always will be present. One third (34%) add that "Without bribery, even those mechanisms of state which somehow still function would grind to a halt".

That's a pretty fair description I'd say. Although I've never intentionally given a bribe (there was an occasion once when I didn't have enough cash to pay the fine for not having a tram ticket, so the inspector took what money I had and stuck it in his pocket), I know many people who have - police officers, bureaucrats, doctors and teachers being the most common recipients.
4.11.06 14:25


The pollsters run around and take a poll and say, do you smell anything?

According to a recent poll, the Poles polled don't think much of PiS a year after their election win, and this includes a huge number of people who voted for them. Two of the statements with which the pollees had to agree or disagree are given below with three percentages - the total percentage of those who agreed, the percentage of Civic Platform (PO) voters who agreed, and the percentage of PiS voters who agreed.

"PiS has fulfilled many of its election promises"
Total: 12%
PO voters: 6%
PiS voters: 21%

"I feel as though I've been tricked by the politicians"
Total: 82%
PO voters: 87%
PiS voters: 73%

Not looking very healthy for the government, is it?
3.11.06 10:05


The truest characters of ignorance are vanity, and pride and arrogance.

As of yesterday, we're no longer allowed to take photos of Premier Kaczyński in profile. Press photographers received the information before a press conference yesterday. A special barrier was erected to make sure that no photoreporters slipped round the side. Why have the government taken this radical step? Because "there's no need to take pictures of the Premier from the side." No need? What the hell does that mean? There's no need to take photos of him at all. No need to report to his activities. No need to even know that the stupid ducker exists. Every day in every way, he's becoming peasanter and peasanter.

Wiggle like a snake, wobble like a duck
That's what you do when you do the Hucklebuck

Kakofonia adds: What if someone drew him from the side? Is that OK?

EDIT: This photo is now forbidden.

Thanks for the idea, Nell!
3.11.06 08:57


The Mystery of Lights

These aren’t necessarily my views, but I thought it was worth giving an impression of what November 1st is like here. This is by Adam Szostkiewicz and can be found here:


At the cemeteries, the flames are already rising. This is probably the most Polish of Polish festivals. I’ve always liked it, even in my youth, when we usually give cemeteries a wide berth. The view of Polish cemeteries in these November days almost always makes a great impression on foreign visitors, especially those from the post-Christian West. And when they are told about Mickiewicz’s “Forefathers’ Eve” and the political role of the cemeteries in the fight for collective memory, they start to look at us strangely, but with a flash of tolerance for our cultural difference within Europe.

This year the mystery play of the cemetery is repeated once again. The countless crowds are a sign, not only of the vitality of Polish mass Catholicism, but a test of communal ties. The full cemeteries are the proof that the social role of death is strong in Poland. The cult of the ancestors serves the generations of the living in the keeping up of family, group, and finally national ties. If we used this as a measure of Polish social cohesion, we would receive an A+ in the sociology of remembrance. And also in a feeling of connection and sense of community. Maybe it’s this which makes a particularly strong impression on foreign observers, and not simply the magic of the lights on the tombs.

As an adult, I’ve cured myself of two tendencies – to disregard the social and individual meaning of death (nothing encourages a sensible life like reflection on its passing) and to discount mass (folk) forms of religion and collective life in general. In almost every organised religion there are elite and egalitarian currents, and also a purely magical one, requiring strong emotions rather than the subtle considerations of the theologists. In Buddhism, for instance, there are the minimalist Hinayanas, the maximalist Mahayanas and the enlightened magical-mystical Vajrayanas. It is from the rubbing together and intermingling of these currents that religion takes a power that no secular ideology can match. The concepts of nationalism and totalitarian ideas are almost as strong, which is why it has been emphasised so many times that Communism or Nazism attempted to remove religion from the life of society while holding onto some of its attributes and rituals (Hitler or Stalin as a messiah, and so on).

This is obviously degenerate, and normally religion should not give way to them precisely because it will not allow Man to occupy God’s position. Nationalism is clearly inconsistent with Christianity, which is a universal religion. For this same reason (universalism) exclusivism, the exclusion of anyone from the opportunity to meet or unite with God, is also inconsistent with Christianity.

For believers, life is the road to that meeting, and the moment when it arrives is death. It is for this reason that for Christians death is the gate to a new, richer and more real life. The Christian has nothing to fear from death as the final event of our existence.

The death of a Christian, understood in this way, is more impressive than terrifying. Poles are not considered a theological nation, meanwhile our massed presence at the cemeteries in November bears witness to the fact that it is somehow different, that a sense of metaphysics is more vital in us than in the societies of Western Europe, as is a sense of the common weal.

The great contemporary theologian, the Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin, developed the theory that evolution has an aim, and that aim is a meeting between humanity and the cosmic Christ. Church teaching was not ready for such ideas, however, and Teilhard got into trouble. I don’t know whether Teilhard was right or not, but his ideas once pleased me greatly.

I also liked – to the degree that I translated his book of essays “Beyond Tragedy” – the contemporary American theologist Reinhold Niebuhr. And his words circle above the cemeteries on the festival of the dead: "Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone. Therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own. Therefore, we are saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.” How marvellously these words by Niebuhr suit this mystery play of the lights on November 1st in Polish cemeteries.

2.11.06 09:57


Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English

This is a place to complain about, ponder, make fun of, execrate, or do what thou wilt on the topic of the English language. I'm going to move it up my bloglist every week or so, so that it remains easily findable (now there's a word that's not findable in most dictionaries).
1.11.06 13:58


Custome, is the most certaine Mistresse of Language, as the publicke stampe makes the current money

As there’s nothing going on in Poland today because it’s the Day of the Dead and everyone’s out visiting the headstones of their deceased relatives,(I doubt there’s anything of the real people left), I'll have a pop at something linguistic today.

Hmm. How about the age-old argument between descriptivists (linguists in the main) and prescriptivists (other, ahem, 'language authorities', like the abominable Lynn Truss of "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" fame).

The battle between these two camps is fought with a ferocity that comes close to Evolution/ID 'debates', with one side (the prescriptivists) claiming that the other adopts an 'anything goes' attitude towards language, and that we linguists believe prescriptivism is evil. As in many other areas, they’re wrong.

Prescriptivists claim you mustn’t split infinitives. They claim the use of ‘they’ to describe an individual of indeterminate gender (“Someone just phoned from the telephone company”. “Oh yes? What did they want?”) is ungrammatical. They claim the use of the form “ain’t” is not just bad style, but bad syntax. They believe that the use of 'less' as compared to 'fewer' is a matter of countable versus uncountable nouns, so that "less people" is incorrect, and the correct form is “fewer people”. And so on, and so forth.

I’ve no intention of debunking these myths here – they’ve been dealt with many many times. I would like to take a look at the straw man prescriptivists set up, though – the idea that as far as we Ds are concerned "anything goes" and "prescription is evil".

“Anything goes”. Well, no it doesn’t. Take a list of any 10 English words. Unless you’re choosing them specifically to disprove my thesis, the chances are that whatever order you put these words in, the result will be ungrammatical. There are infinitely more ungrammatical strings in any language than there are grammatical ones. So, no. Anything does not go. What we do say is that any string that is used consistently by native speakers of a language is a legitimate utterance in that language. So, ”I ain’t got none” is perfect grammatical English. It may be stylistically inappropriate under certain conditions, but that’s a wholly different matter. As an aside, even my Word spellchecker wants to correct this to isn’t, aren’t or am not. It's wrong.

As for the idea that we think “prescriptivism is evil”, let’s take a look…
• Sometimes, as in split infinitives or “less” v “fewer”, the prescription is based on mistaken analysis or false history. Damn’ silly, but not evil.
• Sometimes, the prescription is based on resistance to innovation (“hopefully” does not mean “it is to be hoped”). This is futile, but not evil.
• Some prescriptive advice deals with effective communication, stylistics, appropriacy and so on. This advice may be right or wrong, effective or ineffective, useful or useless, but it’s not evil.

So prescriptivism may be silly, futile, and useless, but it’s not evil. The real problem with most prescriptivists is that they know very little to nothing about how language actually works, and on that topic I can only repost a relatively well-known rant by Mark Liberman of “Language Log”. I’ve posted this before, but it’s so good it deserves another airing:


I hate this role of correcting elementary errors of linguistic analysis, or questioning unthinking prescriptions that are logically incoherent, factually wrong and promptly disobeyed by the prescriber. Historians aren't constantly confronted with people who carry on self-confidently about the rule against adultery in the sixth amendment to the Declamation of Independence, as written by Benjamin Hamilton. Computer scientists aren't always having to correct people who make bold assertions about the value of Objectivist Programming, as examplified in the HCNL entities stored in Relaxational Databases. The trouble is, most people are much more ignorant about language than they are about history or computer science, but they reckon that because they can talk and read and write, their opinions about talking and reading and writing are as well informed as anybody's. And since I have DNA, I'm entitled to carry on at length about genetics without bothering to learn anything about it. Not.
1.11.06 12:00


Notes from the shambles

by Jerzy Urban, from here:

We, the Polish nation, all citizens of the Republic, are like cats. Always on the wrong side of the door, never knowing what we want.

Law and Justice, with Jarosław K. at the head, are leading a magnificent, innovative and energetic election campaign for the Civic Platform. Anyone thirsting for the downfall of the current government shouldn't interfere with PiS. Let their little Napoleon howl a little longer at the rallies. After all, he has yet to attack housewives, teachers, peasants, and the fire brigade. PiS’ leaders haven’t managed yet, despite valiant attempts, to ensure that the young and the old, and even the deaf and the blind, watch the vehemently anti-PiS [independent TV channel] TVN. PiS took over public TV, after all, precisely so that they could fill their own eyes and brains to satiety.

The little Kaczyński twins have had neither the time nor the opportunity to argue with all their little country’s neighbours. There are still the Czechs – arrogantly indifferent towards Poland. You can’t just PiSs on the Czechs – you have to PiSs all over them.

Just so’s I don’t bore you with lists, there’s plenty of work for PiS still to do for the leaders of the Civic Platform. It’s therefore worth giving the governing party, or rather cabal, as much time as possible. The later parliamentary elections happen, the better. For although PiS has done a lot towards its self-annihilation, they can still – according to polls – count on around 20% support. That’s one, but not the only, point of view. The other side of the coin is that every week PiS grabs power over some new institution or area of life. If it governs for a while longer, it still has to swallow the courts, the lawyers, the Constitutional Tribunal, council allotments, the National Bank of Poland, further education, independent television, social organisations and, absolutely essentially, the advertising market, because that’s where TVN gets its money from, and “Gazeta Wyborcza” hasn’t yet been destroyed. So it might be worth choking PiS before the Kaczyńskis’ party shoves a bill through Parliament which says the following: “In order to stem the chaos reigning on the stock market, and to incentivise justice in the economy, the Minister of Finance will daily, before 8am, announce the share price of every company listed on the exchange.”

It’s only superficially unimportant what PiS will manage to take over and control before it all falls down. The real drama is that the Civic Platform – today outraged by the imperialism of PiS – with a look of distaste, will hold onto the gains won by the defeated Duckism. Whatever PiS manages to run today will be run by government forevermore. So, in the future, whoever comes to take power will take control of PiS’ booty, and that’s how Duckism will survive the Ducks. It will be inherited like the British crown is inherited by the monarchy. The aged British Queen’s head hurts from that painfully tight-fitting metal hat, but in spite of that she doesn’t dig out the 16-ounce diamonds and throw them to her subjects. Civic Platform, in opposition, doesn’t even falsely promise that after taking power it will give back what PiS took, to its sincere indignation.

As you can see from this exposition, it would be bad if PiS lost power before the voters were heartily sick of it. It would also be bad if the government’s fall were to be put off too long, because the party will manage to make any succeeding government all-powerful, permanently destroying the balance between authority and social and economic autonomy. Get rid of PiS quickly – bad. Put up with them for longer – even worse. As usual in Poland, there’s no satisfactory way out.

When I think about Lenin’s question “what to do?”, the ineffectual answer comes forth – go straight down the middle. Allow the PiSsheads to fling a few more accusations, scream a little, destroy a few things, create some stinks, and swallow this and that for another two or three months. And then, when the parliamentary elections come, make absolutely sure that under no circumstances will Civic Platform have a parliamentary majority. If the government goose is divided – a leg here, a breast there, a wing and the stuffed neck somewhere else – then part of the post-PiS omnipotence will disappear. An almighty mess has always saved this country from the worst. The madhouse was, is, and always will be our refuge and our good fortune.



Just to give you a taste of one of Poland's most disliked editors, unrepentant Communist and former press spokesman for General Jaruzelski, Jerzy Urban.
31.10.06 11:28


History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government

A couple of stories about the separation of Church and State.

With the local elections coming up fast, Father Rydzyk's Radio Maryja is telling its listeners to vote for PiS, and on his television station , TV Trwam, instructions on who to vote for were broadcast for several hours on Sunday afternoon. This is nothing new. Radio Maryja has been interfering in politics since its inception, despite the disapproval of the Polish episcopate and the Vatican.

Sunday's TV program, "Local Election Debate", had guests exclusively drawn from PiS candidates all over the country. During the phone-in section of the debate, more PiS candidates called to get their free dose of campaign advertising. Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek, one of the more sensible Polish bishops, was outraged by the programme. "This is typical misuse of the medium, but I won't be a part of this funfair," he said. Is Father Rydzyk breaking the Vatican's and Episcopate's recommendations concerning the separation of the radio station from politics? "That's obvious," he responds.

Not to be outdone, the League of Polish Families is using the late Pope in one of its campaign adverts. The advert in question is being shown at certain cinemas before showings of the film "Karol. The Pope who remained a man". The advert shows crowds praying and crying on hearing of John Paul II's death. On the screen appear his words: "This is our Fatherland, body and soul." These words are then replaced by the following: "There's no other nation like it. We're proud of you - LPR".

Words fail me.
31.10.06 06:28


The Be(a)st with Two Faces

The latest update on Poland's most famous amnesiac.

Jan 'the Beast' Bestry has recovered from his supposed heart attack and has come out fists flailing, although to no great effect, it would seem.

According to Bestry, the reason he quit his job at the school 20 years ago, when he allegedly sexually abused 15-year-old girls, was his poor state of health. And in any case, he added, the teacher-pupil relationship was different - children were hugged, sat on the teacher's lap, stroked.

Hmmm. "I didn't do it, and even if I did, it was OK then."

As for the documents he signed in 1986 confirming that he was being dismissed for alleged child abuse, he still claims he doesn't remember signing them, and has sent them to a tame graphologist to see if he really did. And the attack on the woman in the train in 1983? Yes, he does remember that, even though it was three years earlier. It's a matter of public record, after all.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention. Bestry is suing Super Express for libel. And Super Express is countersuing for same. This one will run and run.
31.10.06 05:35


Who is responsible?

by Dariusz Chętkowski, and published here


Confirming young people in the conviction that it's necessary to watch them, check on them, investigate and monitor them is passing responsibility for their actions onto others.

Children think that since no-one is keeping an eye on their class, it's evident that the school is neglecting its responsibilities. It’s therefore necessary to punish it. Pupils discovered a long time ago that the responsibility for everything that happens in school is held by the teachers and the head. They think that when no-one is near, they can do whatever they like. Many teachers think along similar lines: it’s a matter for the form tutor, it's a problem for the teachers who are running the class, it's a matter for the headteacher. After all, it's she, he, they who are responsible for order in the school - I've already finished my lessons.

In my lyceum, we all work under close supervision. This is because the head believes that it's necessary to monitor teachers' work continuously. We, the teachers, are convinced that it’s necessary to watch our pupils’ behaviour at all times. This work style has the effect of making us feel only truly responsible when there’s a supervisor next to us – one who observes. And that’s why we long for the moment when his eye is no longer on us. I’m not surprised that pupils go crazy when the teacher is absent, in the same way that I’m not surprised that teachers go crazy when the head is elsewhere. When the cat’s away, the mice will play.

There’s no doubt that one person – a parent, a teacher, a manager, a headteacher – must often take responsibility for the actions of another. But it needn’t be so obvious. It’s impossible to live, to study, or to work, with the conviction that someone else – even a guardian angel – bears responsibility for what I do. “My guardian angel, why have you left me? It’s your fault. Your lack of supervision caused me to do this dreadful deed. I didn’t want to, but as you’d left me, I thought you’d given me a free hand. So I went crazy. It’s your fault, it’s your fault, it’s absolutely and completely your fault.” The parents who instil the view in their children that school is responsible for their actions are bringing up monsters.
Every person must learn to realize that they are personally responsible for the actions they perform. And someone else may only additionally be co-responsible. The agent of an action is the one who is, above all, responsible – the supervisor is only partially so. So if I behave in an undignified manner – not in the way a pupil, a teacher, or simply a human being, should behave, that means I AM TAKING A RISK. Me! No-one else. Any other person can only say, in a friendly manner, “Don’t take any risks, Darek, and don’t take your work too lightly, because your idleness may result in a severe penalty. Act like a man, because you may be held responsible.”

And this is why we should react to the behaviour of others not as supervisors, but as colleagues, friends, or acquaintances, reminding them that they are responsible for their actions. I think the image of Christ, who bore others’ sins for them, works too well on the Polish consciousness. Unfortunately, we think “it's not my fault. The teacher is there to bear the sins of his pupils.” The Apostle Paul, also a Christian, but more sensible than the evangelists, wrote in his Letter to the Galatians: “For each man will bear his own burden”. This is the mode of thought we should be inculcating in our pupils - take responsibility.
30.10.06 14:17


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