Entwined Histories by Piotr Wilczek

For anyone living in the Polish-British space, this book is an absolute must-read. A collection of 38 essays written by Poland's former ambassador to Washington (during the first Trump administration) and to London (taking office just as Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began), the book is presented as a 'cultural memory'. It avoids the format of a conventional diplomatic memoire; Prof Wilczek reveals no juicy tittle-tattle. "I shall be taking such secrets to the next world," he said at the book's Warsaw launch. Rather, each essay shows how the histories of Britain and Poland have been interwoven by war, exile, culture, tradition and diplomacy in unexpected ways. 

After a spirited attack on lazy media stereotypes of Poles in an article to The Spectator, Prof Wilczek has become a regular guest on the pages of the magazine, currently edited by Michael Gove. A revised version of the chapter, How London became Poland's second capital, made its way from the book to The Spectator earlier this month.

What makes the book so fascinating is the topics chosen for 38 essays. A few are familiar (such as the stories of spy Krystyna Skarbek or General Maczek); most of them, however, uncover new territory even for readers well-versed in British-Polish relations. These include the story of how the Duke of Kent might have become the King of Poland had he not died in a plane crash in 1942, and the story of Poland’s ambassador to the court of Henry VIII, Jan Dantyszek (Johannes Dantiscus), who arrived in London as envoy of Poland's King Sigismund I in 1522, exactly 500 years before Piotr Wilczek took up the role of Poland’s ambassador to the UK. I also found fascinating the story of Socinianism, a nontrinitarian Protestant movement ('the Polish Brethren'), based in Raków, "a modest town which housed a printing press, a famous academy and some of the sharpest minds of the age." Prof Wilczek writes: "For a brief but incandescent period, Raków was Geneva without the dourness – Reformation thinking at its most open and its least vengeful." The Counter-Reformation got to the Socinians in the end, forcing them into exile. "Socianian thought percolated into the bloodstream of English radicalism. Its fingerprints can be seen in the writings of William Penn, the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania." A trip to Raków (40km south-east of Kielce) is thus in order.

Another noteworthy chapter, A Polish Eye on England's Harbours – with Joseph Conrad in Mind, considers through visits to Southampton, Portsmouth, Liverpool and Hull how the Polish-born writer understood the British Isles as home to a sea-faring nation. Prof Wilczek quotes from Conrad's description of the Thames Estuary in Heart of Darkness, which remains one of the most atmospherically evocative passages I have ever read in the English language.

London is a top posting for any diplomat, so about a third of the book is focused on it. I found the essays on the Warburg Institute and the diplomat's guide to navigating London's gentlemen's clubs the most interesting, as well as the descriptions of its bookshops – and its Polish restaurants.

One thing I would have like to have seen in Entwined Histories is some comparisons between the training and ethos of the British and Polish diplomatic corps. Diplomacy is very much a field in which one needs phenomenally fine judgment and superb people-skills – and above all, knowing when to stay silent. Dealing with the assorted ogres, narcissists and ne’er-do-wells that all too often rise to positions of highest office requires a suspension of normal instinct-based behaviour. "Diplomacy is a balancing act between urgency and restraint," writes Prof Wilczek; I feel that it is something you have to be born to do; most of us would be too quick to snap back with an undiplomatic riposte that would carry with it real-world consequences. How the diplomatic mindset is nurtured across different cultures is of great interest to the general reader.

Entwined Histories reads well and smoothly; it shall end up on my library shelf next to Speeches for Leaders by the former British Ambassador to Warsaw, Charles Crawford.

Entwined Histories is available from Chronos Books (www.chronosbooks.com) for £12.99/$17.95.

This time last year:
The [2025-brood] kittens on their 12th day

This time last year:
A new path to Krężel

This time two years ago:
Mutineers march on Moscow

This time six years ago:
Lifelong brand ambassador

This time eight years ago:
How much for locally grown strawberries?

This time nine years ago:
Zamość – the beautiful, must-visit town of Poland's east

This time 15 years ago:
Israeli Boeing 707 visits Warsaw again

This time 16 years ago:
More interesting aircraft overhead...

This time 17 years ago:
Poland is really short on mountains

This time 18 years ago:
The warmth of the sun
[with noctilucent clouds]

This time 19 years ago:
Full rainbow over Jeziorki

Andrew Marr's 'A History of Modern Britain'

There's never a good time to write a contemporary history. Historical narratives need closure. Loose ends need tying up, threads need to be neatly summarised. Causes linked to effects. The start-point of any history is easier to set than its end, and the choice of where to begin a modern history ends up defining the work. 

I picked up Andrew Marr's A History of Modern Britain (2007) having watched Adam Curtis's 2025 BBC documentary, Shifty. Curtis starts his look back at what's gone wrong with Britain by dropping the pin on May 1979, from the day Margaret Thatcher became prime minister. On the other hand, Andrew Marr's narrative (which came out as a BBC documentary in 2007 and in book form later the same year) starts in 1945 with the general election that brought in Clement Attlee to Number 10. This was as radical a moment as the one that ushered in the start of Thatcher's revolution. Attlee's Labour government brought in the Welfare State and the National Health Service, it nationalised large swathes of the British economy, it started decolonialisation, and introduced major educational reforms. All this against the backdrop of national bankruptcy and the onset of the Cold War.

Whilst I cannot quibble with either start date when it comes to analysing the state of the UK, I'd say that bringing Marr's A History of Modern Britain to a conclusion in 2007 was settle on the worst end-point possible at which to wrap up. For the shit was months away from hitting the fan. The global financial crisis would usher in austerity, the Tory-LibDem coalition and ultimately lead to the Brexit referendum. But Marr's documentary was in the can before Tony Blair had resigned as prime minister, to replaced by Gordon Brown just after the entire series had aired.

With that major proviso – one that was entirely out of the author's hands – let me go on with my thoughts. I'd very much like to place Marr's History of Modern Britain alongside Shifty as a significant explainer of the forces that shape contemporary Britain. However, they differ greatly in form and in content. 

Shifty begins its narrative when I was already a young man, whilst History of Modern Britain begins 12 years before my birth. I recognise Marr's portrayal of postwar Britain, it's hopes and its handicaps as the world I was born into; grey and drab, but getting brighter year by year as the goodies of consumer market, and innovation in technology and marketing, were rapidly disseminating through society. 

The optimism of Labour, the steady stuffiness of the pre-Thatcher Tories. I remember well the 1964 general election, Labour's victory, its slogan, 'Go Labour!' and prime minister Harold Wilson talking about the "white heat of the technological revolution" that prompted my father to vote Labour (something he'd never done before, nor indeed again until much, much later). Hovercraft, supersonic airliners and the GPO Tower, augmented by fictional visions of the future (Fireball XL5, Stingray and Thunderbirds) grounded in the heroic recent past (Airfix kits of Spitfires and Lancasters, Churchill tanks, HMS Ark Royal and Commando soldiers). This was all before Shifty's timeframe.

Marr, being a first and foremost a political journalist, is at his strongest dwelling on the political intrigue going on behind the scenes and the personalities. The downfall of leaders, from Harold Wilson through Thatcher and Blair, is well recounted.

Popular culture is neatly covered, but with a strong generational skew towards the 1970s when the author (born in 1959) was growing up. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Roxy Music, the Sex Pistols, the Clash, Ian Dury, the Jam, the Police, the Specials, UB40, Live Aid all get a namecheck or two, but there's no mention of hip-hop or rap, Oasis or Blur – popular music fizzled out with the onset of Marr's adulthood. And indeed mine (it could be argued that compared to the 1970s, contemporary popular music is feeble).

History rhymes. I was reading this book's coverage of the run-up to the Iraq war ('weapons of mass destruction) with the run-up to the Iran war going on ('weapons of mass destruction'). I was reading about Peter Mandelson's contribution to Labour's 1997 election victory just as he was being arrested on charges of abuse of public office. The seeds of Brexit were sown, with a major contributory factor being Tony Blair's decision to open the UK labour market to Poles and citizens of the other seven countries that joined the EU in 2004. Instead of the 13,500 migrant workers forecast by analysts, over a quarter of a million turned up within a year, with many settling in rural parts of England and Wales that hadn't seen a foreigner in centuries.

Marr's prequel to A History of Modern Britain, the BBC documentary series The Making of Modern Britain (2009) is readily available on YouTube to watch (sadly,  A History of Modern Britain isn't). One way or another, I'd recommend reading the book though. And having it on your bookshelf, especially if you or indeed your parents, lived through these years. It's a gripping read and never becomes dull, not even in the minutiae of fiscal and macroeconomic policy details. 

Having said that, Marr is more small 'c' conservative than Curtis – his approach to history more conventional. The two work well together; for me. A History of Modern Britain is an excellent guidebook to Shifty, providing a historically rigorous framework upon which can be stretched the canvas of Curtis's compelling vision.

This time two years ago:
A family 'what-if' and the soul

This time eight years ago:
Work proceeding around Jeziorki

This time nine years ago:
Karczunkowska reopens to traffic

This time 14 years ago:
Goodness gracious!

This time 15 years ago:
Muddy feet, Warsaw 'pavements'

This time 16 years ago:

Cycling and recycling

This time 17 years ago:
Winter clings on to the forest

This time 18 years ago:
Toyota launches the iQ

This time 19 years ago:
Old school Łódź

Base Twelve

Empires rise and fall for different reasons. Some collapse within a few years, others slowly decline. The Soviet empire collapsed rapidly; the British Empire fell apart over decades. Britain's decline from being the pre-eminent global superpower in the middle of the 19th century to merely the world's sixth-largest economy isn't over and has many causes. 

But one I'd like to touch on one, which I doubt if any serious historian has picked up on – decimalisation.

When I was in primary school in the 1960s, the British monetary system was vastly more complicated than the decimal one which has been in place since 15 February 1971.

There used to be 12 pennies to the shilling and 20 shillings to the pound, so 240 pennies to the pound (but nothing cost, say 126 pennies – it would have been ten shillings and sixpence, or ten and six, expressed as 10/6). 

To make things more complicated, there were also crowns (worth five shillings – so four crowns to the pound); in daily usage, half a crown was worth two shillings and sixpence, and had its own coin in regular circulation, unlike the crown (which was for commemorative issues only). There was also the guinea, worth one pound and one shilling, or 21/-. This unit of account, (expressed as 'gns') would be used for luxury items such as fur coats or up-market home furnishings, as well as for professional fees, and for prizes in horse-racing (the Thousand Guinea Stakes at Newmarket, for example, still raced to this day).

Coins: I don't remember the farthing (quarter of a penny) in circulation, but I certainly remember the halfpenny (pronounced ha'penny). Some of the pennies in my pocket would have born the portrait of Queen Victoria. Large and quite hefty for their value. Then there was the 12-sided threepence coin ('thruppenny bit'), the silver sixpence ('tanner'), the shilling ('bob'), the two shilling bit ('two bob' - not 'two bobs'!) and the half-crown. And then onto paper money - the ten-shilling note (Riches! Not something I'd ever get my hands on while at school).

So - it's all very complicated. And that's the point!

I was surprised to learn on holidaying in Poland in 1966 that Polish children only learnt their multiplication tables to 10, whilst in England, we had to learn them to 12. Up to 144. Extra brain-power, cramming in those 11 and 12-times tables.

What would we buy with our pennies? Sweets, chocolates, soft drinks, crisps...

[I strongly suspect that confectioners were an important part of the dental-industrial complex]

Sweets. Also sold by weight. Pounds and ounces. Sixteen ounces to the pound.

So a quarter-pound of pineapple cubes at 1/2d a pound would cost how much? Thruppence ha'penny. Two ounces of jelly beans at 1/4d a pound would cost how much? Tuppence (two pennies).

These were the sort of mental gymnastics every school child would have to deal with when entering a sweetshop. Have I got enough? Did I get the right change? If you didn't have a firm grasp of the times tables you'd lose out. Everyone did. Greengrocers selling three and half pounds of King Edwards at 4d a pound. Ironmongers selling a gross of three-quarter-inch screws at three bob a gross.  

And then one day, with much publicity, the shillings disappeared, the number of pennies to the pound reduced by a factor of 2.4, and by the end of the 1970s, pounds and ounces gave way to kilos and grams. While in the short term, even more mental arithmetic was required to juggle the old system and the new, in time, it was stripped away. Everything became simple. Sweets and screws were sold in packets (unit price = one packet), meaning you'd have to buy more than you needed of low-value things. Bad for the consumer, good for the producer, good for the shopkeeper.

Here's my main point. In the days of pounds, shillings and pence, every child, from whatever social class, could deal in base twelve and indeed, with pounds and ounces – in base sixteen. Decimalisation robbed us of the need to be mental gymnasts, sapping the empire's unique superpower.

One of my qualia memories is of entering Tanners confectioners/newsagents /tobacconists on Oaklands Road; the smell of sweets and newsprint, damp cardboard on the floor whenever it rained; the rows and rows of jars of sweets sold by weight; the display of Matchbox die-cast toy cars; newspapers for the grown-ups, comics for us children – pulling out a handful of coins – a 12-sided thruppenny bit, a Queen Victoria penny, almost worn flat, a ha'penny - fourpence ha'penny in total, and working out whether to buy a small chocolate bar and some Black Jacks and Fruit Salad chews, or some American bubblegum with WW2 collectors' cards, or spend the lot on a bag of liquorice twists.

Below: coins from my childhood – top row: pennies from the reign of Queen Victoria and Edward VII, ha'penny from the reign of George V, bottom row, ha'pennies from the reign of George VI before and after he lost the title, Emperor of India (Ind. Imp). 

[According to the Bank of England Inflation Calculator, one pound was worth £17.86 in 2023 money, so one penny had the buying power of 7.5p, a shilling being worth 90p.]

This time last year:
Memories of Seasons

This time two years ago:
Pictures in the Winter Sun

This time three years ago:
Magic sky

This time four years ago:

Too good to skip over

This time six years ago:
The Hunt for Tony Blair
[Apologies to UK readers - the YouTube link is geo-blocked there]

This time eight years ago:
Lux Selene

This time 11 years ago:
David Cameron, Conservatism and Europe

This time 12 years ago:
Citizen Action Against Rat Runners

This time 13 years ago:
Moni at 18 (and 18 months)

This time 14 years ago:
Building the S79 - Sasanki-Węzeł Lotnisko, midwinter

Television Times

For the first two-thirds of my life, television was ever-present. Childhood and teenage years were dominated by it. When there were only two or three (from 1964) or even four channels (from 1982) to choose from, television created a shared sense of national identity. We all watched the same programmes and discussed them avidly in the playground the next morning. It created a sense of community unique in history; never before or since have societies bonded over the shared experience of watching the artistic endeavours. Thunderbirds, Dr Who, Top of the Pops, Tomorrow's World - this is what we grew up with, and it shaped our worldview and identities. If, like me, you grew up in Britain in the 1970s, the big debate at Christmas was whether to watch the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special on ITV or the Two Ronnies Christmas Special on BBC1.

Then along came multichannel TV, first through cable, then digitally via satellite. It was around this time that I stopped watching TV as a regular pastime. The choice became mind-boggling, but as Bruce Springsteen sang, there were "57 Channels and Nothing On." He wrote that song in 1992; by 1997 I was in Poland publishing a TV guide that covered the outpourings of so many channels that I cannot remember the exact number. Certainly several hundred including all the satellite digital platforms. By now, the social effect that TV had during its golden age was fading fast. Rolling 24-hour news channels would soon run out of news and so start creating fake outrage which soon became news in its own right. Third- and fourth-rate channels, stuffed with low-budget shows and repeats. Viewers would sideline themselves into their favourite screen pursuits - sports, news, serials, chat, history, shopping.

And so at work the next morning, the conversation was no longer about what everyone had watched the night before; each individual is likely to have watched something else. Britain held out with nation-binding standards such as Great British Bake-Off or Strictly Come Dancing that could still draw multi-million audiences and be discussed socially - I can't say I've seen nor discussed either though. 

In February 2005, an American start-up came along to offer something quite new - a place where you could upload your video content and the world could watch it. Today, nearly 17 years on, YouTube is the second-most visited website on earth after Google Search, with more than one billion visits each month. Within a few years of its launch, YouTube was a copyright-lawyer's battleground with content appearing and disappearing; these days with a business model that's far broader than just serving out ads, it works well. 

The days of having a TV guide and arranging your free time around what is being shown at a given time is over. Watch what you want, when you want. But it also means does mean that the shared communion, the mass participation in a televisual event that would draw together a quarter or a third of a nation is over. Video on demand, Netflix and other brands, will be marginalising TV much like TV slowly turned regular cinema-going into a niche activity from the 1950s onward.

This summer, fed up of being unable to listen to more than one song before an ad popped up to annoy me, I signed up for YouTube Premium (36 złotys a month, about £6.75). I consider this money well spent; YouTube now works much better for me.

So what do I watch on YouTube? Mostly non-fiction. A lot of science - sub-atomic physics, quantum mechanics, cosmology, consciousness. Royal Institution lectures, PBS Space Time, Event Horizon and others, getting my science up to speed. A great favourite of mine has become Closer to Truth with Robert Lawrence Kuhn, which brings the science together with one man's search for God in all this. Over the years, Closer to Truth has brought out hundreds of excellent interviews with scientists, philosophers and theologians; although Robert Lawrence Kuhn's might be no closer to truth in his own personal journey, these discussions are extremely worth listening to. Also, Lex Fridman's thought-provoking dialogues with top thinkers from AI, science and philosophy. Thanks to my son, I've become a subscriber and habitual viewer of Jago Hazzard's short videos about London's railway history. And finally, for bringing together spirituality, science and more than a bit of UFOlogy - Project Unity.

This time last year:
New asphalt for Jeziorki - or Dawidy?

This time four years ago:
What did you do in the First World Cyber-War?

This time five years ago:
Solstice sunset, Gogolińska

This time ten years ago
Extreme fixie

This time 12 years ago:
Poland's worst railway station

This time 13 years ago:
Last Christmas before the Recession?

Decimalisation and Determination

I believe that the fate of nations - their rise or their fall - is firmly bound to how determined their people are. Britons most certainly were back in Victorian times - running a global empire - a manufacturing superpower - they were victorious in battle on land and sea. But by the middle of the 20th century, America had taken over; today a tussle is taking place with China likely to wrest that crown for itself.

The strength of a nation is the sum, the product of the determination of its people. How easily they give up, how far they push themselves that extra bit, in their day-to-day lives, at work, at home, in their hobbies and interests - to get what is required of them - rather than just say "sod it, there's easier stuff I could be doing".

Over the decades, life has generally been becoming easier. Fewer things to worry about. No more queuing in the bank to pay your gas and electricity bills. Train tickets available from your phone. Calculators to do the counting. Goods of ever-higher quality available at ever-lower prices. 

In essence, an easy, comfortable life is a good thing. It should be something we aim for - ridding ourselves of things that are unpleasant, uncomfortable or difficult in our lives.

I fear, however, that too much ease, and we get soft; complacent - flabby as a nation (metaphorically and literally). Which would be OK if every country, every person on our planet were moving in the same direction at the pace. But they're not.

A little over half a century ago, on 15 February 1971, Britain went decimal. One hundred new pee to the pound. How easy it suddenly was! Before that, we had to juggle with pennies (12d to the shilling) and shillings (20s to the pound). As well as half-crowns (two shillings and six pence) and guineas (21 shillings). Tanners (6d) and thrupenny bits (3d) were in our pockets too. Before 1961 there were also four farthings to the penny, and up to July 1969, there were two halfpennies to the penny. 

In everyday life, this complex system meant having to use a higher order of arithmetic to work things out. A shirt costs 17/6d (17 shillings and six pence). How much change will you get from a pound? A shopkeeper sells 43 items for 11/7d. What was his total revenue from those items? You want to buy a pound of tomatoes at 2/4d, a pound-and-half of potatoes at 11d a pound. How much would you pay the greengrocer?

My mother, who hailed from a land where 100 grosze = 1 złoty, made a career as a comptometer operator, working in pre-decimal times for the accounts departments of various companies, totting up sales receipts with the aid of a comptometer. Like everyone in accounts departments across the UK, she had a book of tables called a 'ready reckoner' to help with calculations, and knew by heart the more common computations. So 24 gross of eggs at 8d a dozen would cost how much?

The result of this clumsy system was that primary schools taught the times tables to 12 (rather than to 10 as on the continent), and even the slowest child knew they needed to grasp this because otherwise they'd get short-changed by unscrupulous confectioners totting up four Black Jacks at a farthing each, a Cadbury's Dairy Milk bar at 3d and a Sherbert Dip-Dab at 5d.

Anyone working in retail had to have good mental arithmetic skills. The rich, who operated in pounds and guineas rather than pennies and shillings, didn't have to worry as much as the poor. If education gave anything to the working classes, it was the ability to juggle in twelves and twenties, quarters and halves.

Then came Decimal Day, and after a few years during which Britons were converting from the old system to the new (six old pence = two and half new pence, eight shillings = 40p, 19/6d = 97½p. The decimal halfpenny disappeared with the end of 1984, simplifying things further. Unlike decimalisation, metrication of weights and measures didn't happen overnight, but the gradual switch from ounces, pounds, stones, hundredweight and tons to grams, kilos and tonnes, made life easier still. There were 16 ounces to the pound, 14 pounds to the stone, eight stone to the hundredweight and 20 hundredweight to the ton.

All gone. Once, you'd have to be able to work out mentally what three and half ounces of ham at 10/6d a pound would cost. Today, it's easy to tell how much 100g of the stuff selling at £10 a kilo. 

One daily challenge facing our brains has gone for good - as a result, a nation that had to be good at mental arithmetic has lost that edge. And with it, I fear, some of the nation's drive and determination to do things that appear difficult.

I'd suggest introducing a currency with 17 dzherzgols to the rolspaarg, and 13 rolspaargs to the krazbount.

This time three years ago:
God, an Englishman, orders his Eden thus:

This time six years ago:
I buy a Nikon Coolpix A

This time seven years ago:
More about the Ladder of Authority

This time eight years ago:
By bike, south of Warsaw

This time ten years ago:
Functionalist architecture in Warsaw

This time 11 years ago:
What's the Polish for 'to bully'?

This time 12 years ago:
Making plans

This time 13 years ago:
The setting sun stirs my soul

This time 11 years ago:
Rain ends the drought

Future, past

Forty five years ago; February 1976. A time of incipient change. Ahead of me, my A-Level exams (equivalent of Polish matura), summer holidays in Poland - then university.

But which one? It was this month 45 years ago that I set off on my own to see five universities around the UK - Lancaster, Warwick, Kent, Essex and East Anglia. These were my choices for the university admission process that would end with offers of grades needed at A-Level. I'd never travelled so intensively, or so far, on my own around England as I did that month. I came back from East Anglia, Norwich (or was it Essex, Colchester), with a dose of the flu, leaving me bed-ridden for a few days.

It was a specific time in my life. My father had just installed a new central heating system in the house - on his own - and I recall the smell of the paint of the new Potterton boiler, looking into the little window at the blue pilot light, watching it ignite the gas with a muted 'whoomph', the warmth, the copious hot water... At the time, I was making an Airfix kit of a North American P-51D Mustang, USAAF Eighth Air Force, England, 1944. The period appealed strongly to me; in the pop charts were Glenn Miller and his Orchestra and Manhattan Transfer with another Glenn Miller hit - Tuxedo Junction - 1944 was only as distant from 1976 as 1989 is from today.

And in the Radio Times for Saturday 21 February 1976, on BBC 2, an intriguing programme... 

"Introduced by Melvyn Bragg: So You Wanna be a Rock 'n' Roll Star. Tonight 2nd House looks at the reality behind the fantasies with a three-day slice in the life of the Kursaal Flyers, one of the bands most tipped for success in 1976. The film records their ups and downs, joys and anger, in dressing rooms and motels, and includes extracts from two concerts."

It really is worth seeing. If you haven't got a spare hour and 20 minutes, bookmark it and return - a slice of rock history, a snapshot of an era.

This I had to see. Turned out to be most influential - director Mark Kimel's documentary went on to inspire Comic Strip Presents Bad News Tour and of course This Is Spınal Tap, both parodic satires of rock bands on tour. Influential for me too. The 'Flyers' aspect (I didn't know at the time that the name referred to a funfair ride at Southend's Kursaal amusement park) appealed to me, as did the vintage Americana the band's music drew on, a heavily country-influenced sound. The cover art of the band's second album, The Great Artiste (1976), prompted me to buy it later that year.

Mama's boys indeed - the documentary shows that all but one of the band lived with their mums (like Colin out of Bad News).

Watching the Kursaal Flyers documentary influenced me greatly; I'd see them live, at the time (just before punk rock emerged), the pub rock genre was destined for success. Acts like Ian Dury and the Blockheads, Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello and Dave Edmunds in the Stiff stable, from Southend and Canvey Island (the Kursaals' home) Dr Feelgood and Eddie and the Hot Rods. Of those five universities I visited 45 years ago, I ended up in my first choice, Warwick, to study America - a country my postwar generation obsessed about. 

This time last year:
New platforms, Sułkowice and Chynów

This time two years ago:
Birds return to frozen ponds

This time three years ago:
Bending the forces of physics with your will

This time five years ago:
Giving it up for Lent

This time seven years ago:
North-east of Warsaw West revisited

This time eight years ago:
Looking for answers

This time nine years ago:
Fresh powder in Warsaw's parks

This time 11 years ago:
Another Lent starts

This time 13 years ago:
Okęcie dusk

Winding down, moving in, keeping on

Scene at the Blue Ocean fish and chip shop on Pitshanger Lane last night. An English couple in their 70s are seated in the restaurant section, waiting for their meal. I take a small table by the window, one other table (for four) has a reservation, there are a few more tables for two.

It's a long wait at the Blue Ocean as everything is freshly cooked. The Greek-Cypriot waiter (who's also manning the fish fryer) takes a phone call and comes over to the couple. Apparently, there's a large group coming, and would they mind moving over to one of the tables for two. They move, but he's not happy. I can tell by the way he slams his half-empty Coke can on the ledge. Soon a group come in, to take the vacated table for four; two adjacent tables for two are pushed together to make a single long table for eight. The group settles in. They are Italian, stereotypically voluble. Hugs, kisses, ciao, bellissimas and all at vocal volume ten.

The English couple are served their fish and chips, and eat in silence. Grumpy is not the word. Then another, smaller, party arrive. Four of them. Portuguese. Not as loud as the Italians, but also speaking in forrin. Add the Greek-Cypriot waiter and myself, in from Poland though born and raised locally, and the English are outnumbered seven to one.

Pitshanger Lane is very European - French is often heard along with other languages. There's a French primary school across the railway line in Hanwell, preparing pupils for the long-established Lycée in South Kensington. The influx of well-heeled foreigners into the area has benefited the look and feel of Pitshanger village; it is a delightful place to live, but property prices are high.

But for people who were born and grew up here, the changes have made Ealing unrecognisable compared to how things were half a century ago.

Migrants work harder than the native community; these are people ready to leave home for new opportunities. Leave a wealthy country like any EU member state of Western Europe, and you'll be coming over for a very well-paid job. But migrants from poorer countries will settle into service-sector jobs, work hard, ensure their children are equipped with the education to rise into better employment.

Japan, an economy that's been virtually flat for the past three decades, has continued excluding migrants from its economy. It faces demographic challenges that are a harbinger of what the Western world can expect in the near future. Migrants fill ever-increasing gaps in labour markets; the challenge is a cultural one. Migrants need to be sensitive to the feelings of the indigenous population and adapt to their new environment - which does not mean abandoning their culture.

The UK economy is currently growing at a far slower rate than Poland. Many Poles I know in the UK are moving back to Poland or considering such a move. When I think back over the excellent healthcare my father was afforded in his final years, I struggle to remember any doctor or nurse or pharmacist that was English or British. They were nearly all migrants or children of migrants.

People get lazy as they get older and more comfortable. The will to get out and work hard dissipates as the need to keep the wolf from the door abates. When the Brexit issue is sorted out, one way or another, and the dust settles, will migrants keep coming to the UK? Where will they work? Will there be enough labour to keep the economy from stagnating, as the Japanese one did from 1991 onward?

[I miss my father. While writing this blog over the past 12 and half years - one eighth of a century! - I was always conscious that my father was my most loyal reader. Every now and then as I wrote this piece, I was thinking about him, how he'd respond to my points... he's gone now. I do miss him.]

This time last year:
Socialist-realist Tychy

This time four years ago:
Face to face with the UK retailing scene

This time five years ago:
Bricktorian Birmingham

This time seven years ago:
Welcome to Lemmingrad

This time nine years ago:
Dream highway

This time 11 years ago:
The Days are Marching

This time 12 years ago:
First snow, 2007

Comic Strip Presents The Hunt for Tony Blair - review

Laughter, they say, is the best medicine - Nostalgia's pretty good too. Weave the two together...

I watched Comic Strip Presents The Hunt for Tony Blair (2011) on Saturday, and since then, I've rewatched it a few times - it's just that good. It works on so many levels - political satire (crude, but hilarious), an exercise in nostalgia (the soundtrack! the cars! the lighting!), lush cinematic orchestral score, funny dialogue, quality screenwriting and directing...

For my readers who don't know the Comic Strip Presents, this well-established British comedy series goes back over 35 years to the days when Channel 4 was launching and fresh young comedy was much in demand. Through my 20s I'd be watching series after series, the comedy of my generation. While output is flagging (just three specials since 2010), quality clearly isn't.

The soundtrack was selected to evoke the period encompassing the years 1958-1962  (with one outlier, Herman's Hermits' I'm into Something Good, 1965). Conjuring up my earliest childhood memories of the BBC Light Programme - songs by Adam Faith, Helen Shapiro, Billy Fury, Max Bygraves - and the orchestra of Norrie Paramor. A well-chosen soundtrack is crucial for creating the period mood - what's happening here is fascinating, because the Blair era is being physically shunted back 40 years - the cars, the clothes, the props and of course the music are taking us back to the 'never had it so good' times of Harold Macmillan. The mix of the soundtrack and the cars of the era on an appropriately dressed set sent me blissfully back.

Comic Strip regulars Nigel Planer, Rik Mayall, Jennifer Saunders, Robbie Coltrane, Peter Richardson (who co-wrote and directed this episode) are present as are Harry Enfield and John Sessions - in other words, an all-star cast is about to entertain us.

Steven Mangan's portrayal of Tony Blair (prime minister from 1997 to 2007) is comically convincing. Unrelentingly optimistic and self-justifying, even in the darkest moments, Blair's breezy, first-person voice-over commentating the action provides an extra layer of comic surrealism. The Blairisms come thick and fast, laid on with a trowel directly from his autobiography, A Journey.

The final shot begins by referencing the opening of Sunset Boulevard - Tony Blair floating face-down in water -  before the final twist (literally) as the dead Blair turns over to float on his back, hands behind his head, with a smug, self-satisfied smile on his face. Also heavily referenced is the 1935 Alfred Hitchcock version of The Thirty-Nine Steps, all music hall and steam trains.

For me, the biggest laughs came from watching Jennifer Saunders playing Margaret Thatcher in the style of Gloria Swanson playing Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. When Tony Blair enters Baroness Thatcher's mansion, she's watching films of her speeches and the victorious British armed forces in the Falklands, while her butler Tebbit (played in John Sessions in the style of Eric Von Stroheim) runs the projector. Jennifer Saunders had played Margaret Thatcher in a Hollywood style in a previous Comic Strip episode (GLC: The Carnage Continues), but this performance is superb.

Peter Richardson does a splendid George W. Bush playing a mafia boss, leaning on Tony Blair to support him in the Iraq War, aided by a brutish Donald Rumsfeld.

Another comic high spot comes when Tony Blair runs into a drunken socialist (Ross Noble) in a railway compartment "Come on Tony! Let's hang the bankers from the lamp posts! Let's get the workers out on strike!" "Well, if you'd read my book, you'd know that I'm not really a socialist" "You're the man that stole my party! TORY Blair! TORY Blair!" "Just shut your drunken left-wing mouth!" Little did Peter Richardson realise in 2011 that just a few years later, it would be the extreme left-wing end of the Labour party that would be in opposition to a hapless, hopeless Tory government.

Filmed in black and white with low-key lighting, foggy streets of old London town (well, Devon, actually), The Hunt for Tony Blair is, I think, one of the greatest of the Comic Strip Presents shows, up there with The Bullshitters, A Fistful of Travellers' Cheques, Five Go Mad in Dorset, Bad News on Tour and More Bad News. Watch it here:



This is political satire done as a surreal conceit; you can get away with much in this format. Now, imagine for a while something done like this in Poland, about a Polish politician - say, Donald Tusk. Can you imagine it being as witty, as sharply done as this? British humour is an essential part of the nation's soft power, the ability to mock oneself

This time two years ago:
Lux Selene

This time five years ago:
David Cameron, Conservatism and Europe

This time six years ago:
Citizen Action Against Rat Runners

This time seven years ago:
Moni at 18 (and 18 months)

This time eight years ago:
Building the S79 - Sasanki-Węzeł Lotnisko, midwinter

This time nine years ago:
My return to skiing after an eight-year break

This time ten years ago:
Moni's 15th birthday

Cultural differences UK-Poland: Power distance

Whenever you sit down to do a serious analysis of cultural differences between two countries, you invariably come across the postać* of Geert Hofstede, anthropologist. His Cultural Dimensions Theory may be almost half a century old, but it's still the best set of tools to measure those "have you noticed that Poles tend to _____, while Brits are more likely to _____?" differences empirically.

If, dear reader, his name's new to you, and you have an interest in the cultural differences between the UK and Poland (or any other pair of nations), have a read about him and his works, do.

Essentially, Prof Hofstede defines six axes along which these differences can be plotted:

• individualism-collectivism
• uncertainty avoidance
• power distance (strength of social hierarchy) 
• masculinity-femininity (task orientation versus person-orientation)
• long-term vs short-term orientation
• self-indulgence vs self-restraint

I'd like to focus on power distance, which can be boiled down to the steepness of the hierarchical pyramid. A short power-distance culture is one in which the boss is democratic, has an open office door (or even works in the same open-space as everyone else), and takes decisions based on consensus. A long power-distance culture is one in which the boss is autocratic, remote, the trappings of power are made obvious, and the boss's decisions are not up for discussion.

Reading the above paragraph, you can immediately tell that the UK has a shorter power-distance than Poland - and Prof Hofstede's Power Distance Index shows this to be the case. On a scale of 1-120, where 1 = totally democratic and 120 = totally autocratic, the UK scores 35, Poland 68. Bear in mind that the research was carried out decades ago. My guess is that both countries have moved in the direction of a shorter power distance, with Poland maybe moving faster than the UK, but the UK still having a significantly shorter power distance than Poland.

Differences in power distance between the UK and Poland (and within Poland) can be seen by the use of the form 'Pan/Pani' to address one's boss. In the UK, it's first-name terms from the outset, and so it has been, generally, since the 1970s. Finding a Polish-owned company (even in the UK) in which an employee can address their boss in first-name terms, is rare.

The notion of an autocratic, paternalistic boss or ruler, accepted by those of lower status, is in Western European terms, rather pre-Enlightenment. The French Revolution and the American War of Independence, were about saying 'no' to an autocrat's divine right to rule.

In the context of the rise of civilisation, the emotionally-intelligent, aware leader is conscious of the sources of their leadership attributes (innate intelligence, good education, determination, physical mien) and does not feel a need to lord it over their subjects or employees. In return, the subjects or employees feel they can participate in decision-making, and have a greater sense of ownership and engagement in their society or company.

High power distance, therefore, is less civilised than low power distance. We humans, like all animals, naturally seek a place in a hierarchy. The higher the better. The notion that 'I'm it, you're shit' is something that civilisation has sought to temper. Through good manners, politeness, respect for others regardless of their natural place in the hierarchy. And yes, political correctness. Democratic societies tend to laugh at pompous buffoons. The success of Britain's best TV comedy shows - from Dads Army to The Office - is based on this.

The shorter the power distance, the more it behoves those in power to be understood by those over whom them have authority. A high power-distance leader can waffle on in a boring drone, his subjects noting his every word (and making the effort to understand what is being told to them). A low-power distance leader works on that speech to make sure that everyone gets the message, couched in plain, clear language. Tax offices too - compare the UK's tax return form with the Polish one. The former - a model of clarity (with a Diamond Mark from the Plain English Campaign). The Polish one - well, you need to hire an advisor to tell you what the tax office requires of you.

But what can we see today? People are confused, anxious, lost. Globalisation has created winners and losers. Consensus and democracy has failed the Western world. Elites are plotting to keep the little man in his place. And so the little man seeks someone strong, someone who can take the tough decisions to make the world a less uncertain place. Someone like Trump or Putin.

The less plugged in to the complex operations of government and business people are, the less they know about what is actually going on, the more likely they are to believe conspiracy theories and seek a strong 'cut through the bullshit' person who will make their world clearer.

It is a fallacy. It was proved a fallacy in the rubble of German cities in 1945.

Voting for an autocrat is a dangerous short-term fix.

* Postać. Figure? Character? Personage? Naah! Postać in this context is a word missing from English. I suggest it becomes a loan-word. Pronounce it POST-atch. With a short 'o' like in 'box'.

This time two years ago:
Wes Anderson's Grand Hotel Budapest

This time four years ago:
Painting the Forum Orange

This time seven years ago:
That's what I like about the North

Before Spin - at the interface of government and the media

My first job after leaving journalism school was at the Confederation of British Industry, where I was employed as an information officer. My first boss, Keith McDowall, at that time, director of information at the CBI, has just published his autobiography; I was delighted to have been invited to the book launch held on Tuesday at the Reform Club in London's Pall Mall.

Before Spin, offers fascinating insights into the interface between government, business and media over half a century. Covering the period from the Second World War to the Blair era, Before Spin reveals many of the human stories from behind the headlines of those years, fleshing out the social history of post-war Britain.

Keith began his career as a young local newspaper reporter before landing a job on the Daily Mail, then making his way from Fleet Street into government PR in several ministries, then heading the Information Directorate at the Confederation of British Industry, and finally running his own PR firm.

The historical narrative begins in the late summer of 1939, when Keith, then a boy of ten, discovers his summer holidays will be prolonged because of the outbreak of war. The arrival of Canadian artillerymen, with their guns, uniforms and swing records, provided huge excitement for the lad, who from the photos of the time, looked like the eponymous hero of Richmal Compton's Just William books.

A critical point in the autobiography is the death of Keith's father at the age of 43 in 1941. He died in hospital of bronchial disease, leaving the family to fend for itself, an experience that strongly shaped Keith's political views. The war dragged on as he grew up fast, for Londoners the night-time bombings were something to get used to; "we just got on with it," he says. Later in the war came the V-1 flying bombs, but it was the V-2s that were most terrifying. Over 1,300 of these ballistic missiles hit London from mid-1944 into early 1945. "Rumours of major incidents in London were circulating in which there was no sound of an an engine, but just a sudden massive explosion with far more devastating damage that could be caused by a doodlebug. We heard on the grapevine that 164 people had been killed as they queued at Woolworth's in New Cross... The V-2 rocket... literally arrived out of space...[it was] so terrifying because there was no way we could prepared or take cover."

For me, the most fascinating period portrait was of British journalism in the post-war years - a bygone era of typewriters, boozy lunches, rushing round bomb-sites in pre-war sports cars to get the scoop, and the greatest prize of all - a Fleet Street byline. Keith started his career on the South London Press, a paper covering London south of the Thames, from Wandsworth to Deptford. After several scoops which did not go unnoticed in the national newspapers published across the river, he was offered a job on the Daily Mail, eventually taking on the industry beat, this at a time when unions, strikes and industrial action were making Britain the 'sick man of Europe'.

Some beautiful vignettes tell us much about the political climate of 1950s Britain. Hiding in the back of a Morris Minor van with a photographer, McDowall of the Mail caught the leadership of the Amalgamated Engineering Union, days before their policy-making conference, leaving the HQ of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Black and white prints in hand, Keith confronted an executive member of the union with the accusation that they had been taking instructions from the communists. The resulting story and photo made the front page.

The expenses system oiled the wheels of the newspaper industry. Informal payments, ostensibly to buy a pint to loosen the tongue of a copper or eye witness, were also used as financial bonuses to incentivise ace reporters, while highly paid printers and their closed-shop unions kept the newspaper owners under constant pressure.

An extremely interesting time, certainly the Fleet Street of those days would make an excellent backdrop to a TV series (more interesting than detectives, vets or midwives). And there are many hilarious anecdotes (my favourite concerns a certain crime reporter on the Daily Mirror) that capture that era perfectly.

In the late 1960s, Keith made the jump from being an industrial reporter to working for Her Majesty's Government as a public relations man. His Fleet Street experience proved invaluable in all the ministries he worked in, starting from the Department of Economic Affairs, then - and I think the most exciting part of the story - in the Northern Ireland Office, finally a spell at the Department of Employment under a Tory then a Labour government, before going on to head the PR unit at the newly-nationalised British Shipbuilding. So the book has lots of insider portraits of politicians such as Jim Callaghan, Willie Whitelaw and Michael Foot to mention but three.

Precious insights emerge from this part of the book as to how Britain's Civil Service runs. "Four-fifths of civil servants say 'we can't' and one fifth ask 'why can't we?'" On paper, there are hundreds of people in each department at a ministry, but the trick is to identify the 12 or so people who - despite their official job titles and formal place in the hierarchy - actually make things happen.

As a child and teenager I was ever a keen student of current affairs and voracious newspaper reader, and it is fascinating to read an insider's account of the events that I recall from those years; Bloody Sunday, the sectarian Tit-for-Tat Murders, the Three-Day Week, the Grunwick strike, nationalisation of the shipyards, right through to the election of Margaret Thatcher, and the birth of the world into which I started work as a young adult. There was Operation Motorman, the clearing of Londonderry's No-Go areas by 4,000 British Army troops. And there was the Three-Day Week, from January to March 1974, the culmination of the industrial strife that characterised Britain in the '70s.  I remember it well; my family would have get into the car and drive somewhere with electricity (in our case Ruislip for fish and chips) when the lights went out in Ealing. The book shows what was going on between the government and the unions at that time - and how the media reported it.

Keith moved to the CBI in 1981 and recruited me in September of that year into his Information Department team. My 16 years at the CBI have been put to good use in my current work, using best practice picked up there to help build a new Poland.

There are also the stories that didn't grab the nation's attention but are nonetheless well worth recounting, such as the attempted takeover of the Cooperative by an asset-stripper who was, as it turned out, was basing his £1.2-billion bid on stolen data. This was after Keith had left the CBI to set up his own PR agency. During this time, he had been involved in the conversion of London pirate radio station KissFM into a legitimate broadcaster in the early 1990s.

The final chapter, the one that gives the book its title and theme, compares today's sound-bite focused PR on the profession as it evolved in the pre-internet, pre-social media era. This should be compulsory reading for all students of journalism and media studies. Slipping standards, brought about by the young Special Advisers (SPADs) on short-term contracts who've replaced many of Whitehall's full-time PR people, are more interested in photo opportunities than in-depth briefings. Perhaps the politics we have - lurching from one form of populism to another - are a reflection of 24-hour media bombardment when too little time is allotted to checking facts and too much attention is given to sound bites.

Keith McDowall at the launch of Before Spin at the Reform Club

As expected from a former Daily Mail journalist, the book is written with clarity and an easy-to-read style, which allowed me to devour all 373 pages in a few sittings. For anyone of my generation or older with an interest in current affairs, Before Spin will evoke plenty of memories of the stories that made the front pages and TV news headlines. For students of post-war British social history, the book fleshes out the names and the dates.

The foreword is written by Peter Hennessy, and it looks like half of the House of Lords has endorsed the book on its back cover!

Before Spin by Keith McDowall [ISBN 978-1-910792-17-9] is available from Melrose Books for £19.99 (hardback).

This time last year:
Mill town Łódź (Liked it so much, I've since bought a flat there)

This time two years ago:
Today, a tipping point in European history

This time three years ago:
Church and state

This time four years ago:
Scrub fire in Jeziorki

This time five years ago:
Airbus A380 visits Warsaw

This time six years ago:
Lenten recipe no. 7

This time seven years ago:
Poland's economy - upturn in sight? (answer of course: yes!)

This time eight years ago:
Spring? Feels like Christmas in the snow...

The Polish individualist

Walking past a long line of stationary cars in the rush hour this morning, I had another insight into cultural differences between Poles and Britons. [WARNING: Sweeping broad-brush generalisations follow, of course there are exceptions, but I'm trying to present a Big Picture.]

Sitting fuming one-per-car in traffic, these individual(ist)s cannot not bring themselves to collaborate with others in getting to work. The streets of Warsaw are bunged up solid with one-per-car commuters driving short distances to work because it's beyond them to even think of sharing a bus, tram or train with their fellow citizens. We could all whisk into work in half the time by public transport were we to cooperate effectively with one another. If even half of those who had an alternative to driving took it, Warsaw would be an even better place to work.

The wonderful British 1960s TV series, The Prisoner, has, I think, some very Polish characteristics. There's no doubt that the protagonist played by Patrick McGoohan is clearly on spectrum. Often brusque in his dealings with others, he is obsessed with small details and takes the matter of his personal freedom very seriously. He is accused of being 'unmutual', of not wanting to get on with his fellow inmates. Being 'mutual', showing a willingness to cooperate with others with the aim of a building a better society for all - the notion of win-win (or even win-win-win) does not come easily to Poles.

Business in Poland is far more adversarial than it is in the UK. Both parties to a contract subconsciously consider that the natural outcome is that there will be a winner and a loser in this deal. And they'll do everything to ensure the other party doesn't win, often doing themselves down in the process. In the UK, there's a basic, background appreciation that things can be done on trust, so less time is spent ensuring one's interests are protected. The cost of mistrust is high - between businesses (lengthy legal contracts); within businesses (internal audits, compliance teams); between citizens (padlocks, crowbar-proof doors, alarms, security services); between tax authorities and taxpayers (endless kontrole - audits).

Building trust across society is the best investment any nation can make in itself. Everything else - education upward - stems from a basic belief that we can all trust one another, our neighbours, employers and government. And while that background level of trust has been steadily growing in Poland over the 18 years I've lived and worked here (it's still not as high as in the UK), I fear it may be going to reverse, taking into account the 19th Century mindset of Jarosław Kaczyński.

Yet there is clearly something about Mr Kaczyński that appeals greatly to many Poles. PiS is currently enjoying a 42% approval rating in the polls. Statements from government ministers against 'lefty liberal fads' such as cycling, vegetarianism or recycling resound with the grumpy individualist, who, like Patrick McGoohan will not be pushed around. The PiSite nagonka aimed at the WŚOP charity has something to do with the high profile of its organiser Jurek Owsiak successfully getting people to pull together. The concept of individualism (in opposition here to teamwork, rather than collectivism) is very Polish. This is not the 'rugged individualism' of the American West, rather an unhealthy individualism that cuts off the 'other'; nasz and nie-nasz.

Why are Poles such individualists? Why are they not so good at teamwork and collaboration? The very word 'collaboration' has negative connotations in Polish - and for good historical reasons. Poles tend to be better at solitary work, focusing in depth of the subject matter, rather than working in teams. Brits are good at teamwork, sharing a project in a cross-disciplinary approach, avoiding the information silo.

This, I think, comes from schooling. In the UK, there's a school subject called 'games'. One afternoon a week, for two hours, there will be competitive team sport activity - for all pupils. Football, cricket or rugby for the boys, rounders and netball for the girls. In Poland, there's WuEf - Wychowanie Fizyczne (literally 'Physical Education' or PE). Seen as a non-subject by children and parents alike (the number of zwolnienia or sick-notes I wrote for Moni and Eddie does not bear thinking about), WuEf entails little more than getting changed into shorts and a vest and running round the gym hall for half an hour. If the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, it's the lack of that ingrained teamwork that has held Poland back; its sporting heroes on the international arena tend to be individuals rather than teams.

And Poles love to live in hierarchies, clawing their way up the vertiginous career ladder from młodzy specjalista, via specjalista to starszy specjalista. They don't like sharing information within the company, the starszy specjalista fearing that the młodszy specjalista is after his job. Which of course he or she is. A boss of a British company in Poland employing several hundred people told me that the day he posted the new organisation chart, showing who reports to whom, he was inundated by petitioners telling him that this reporting line was unfair, or that this person (shown above the petitioner on the org chart) should actually be lower, based on age, length of service and education.

Having said all of the above, collaboration in the workplace is attracting a backlash (see this article from the current Economist). Maybe Poles' ability to focus in solitude is an unrecognised reason why the economy's been doing so well. Whilst open plan offices are not controversial in the UK, in Poland they generate much resentment when they are being introduced by multinationals, while Polish firms (especially state-owned enterprises) tend to stick to the traditional long-corridor-with-individual-offices layout.

How this will pan out in the long term, with innovations in technology threatening to upset the world of work as we know it, is a moot point. Which approach will prove more resilient - the teamwork-based collaborative approach, or a cluster of focused individuals beavering away in solitude?

Time will tell.

This time last year:
Winter woes and a crisis of creativity

This time three years ago:
Warsaw - the more it snows

This time four years ago:
Get orf my lairnd!

This time five years ago:
A Dream Too Far - short story

This time six years ago:
Compositions in white, blue and gold

This time seven years ago:
Dobra and the road

This time eight years ago:
Polish air force plane full of VIPs crashes on landing in fog

Teetering between rage and reason

How to come to terms with Friday's obscenity in Paris? The base human instinct is anger - to lash out at the perpetrators and their sympathisers. Smash barbarism with barbarism. I found myself overwhelmed by feelings of rage. This filth should be crushed with extreme vehemence. Then I quickly pull myself up - no, this is not the way - these are the very same emotions that drive the jihadists against our civilisation.

One must not stoop to their level.

So what is the way? The most important question in our daily lives (I write from West London, not from Warsaw where Islam is a somewhat more distant and abstract concept) is how to relate to the Muslims that form part and parcel of the towns and cities in which Britons live.

On the one hand, there are observations. My father , 92, says that Muslims will be first to offer their seats to him whenever he travels on a crowded bus. And I recall at Christmas one year waiting at Tesco, watching a man shake a tin for a local hospice. The only people I saw putting money in were Muslims. The Muslim girl from Marks and Spencers that helped me sort out the catering for my mother's funeral was helpful and polite. So where's the problem?

The problem is that 100% of the terrorist outrages that we are currently witnessing are caused by Muslims. Not Christians, nor Hindus nor Buddhists nor Jews nor Scientologists. Murderous attacks claiming innocent lives in Paris, Sinai, Tunisia, Mumbai, London, Madrid, New York, not to mention the almost-daily carnage witnessed in Baghdad or Kabul - all carried out in the name of Islam. Sectarian violence between Sunni and Shi'ite is claiming the lives of thousands of ordinary people each year, people going about their day-to-day business as the people of Paris were doing last Friday.

What is it about Islam that makes it so easy to weaponise the religion? After all, there are Jewish, Christian and Hindu fundamentalists that are also out-and-out nutters and yet they do not slaughter innocent people or blow themselves to pieces. There must be something intrinsic in the way the teachings of the Koran can be interpreted that enable disaffected worshipers to perform such inhuman acts upon people with a different world view to their own.

The worrying thing for Britons and French people living cheek-by-jowl with Muslims - seeing them in their streets each day, sharing public transport with them, shopping with them - is not being able to see into their souls, to tell whether they are kind, generous-spirited people or potential suicide bombers.

Before 9/11, the sight of Arab women dressed head to toe in black with just a slit for the eyes as they walked from Marble Arch to Oxford Street was slightly comical. After 9/11 it became sinister.  Just as young men with long beards and long shirts overhanging baggy trousers today look sinister. Especially if carrying rucksacks.

They represent a different outlook to life, they represent something that native-born Europeans do not naturally feel comfortable with. And just as women can say that the way certain men behave make them feel uncomfortable, so British people should be allowed to say that they feel uncomfortable about Muslim women in burqas or Muslim men with long beards - without being labelled racist.

The French Republic's insistence on secularity, imposed at a time of revolutionary fervour on Catholics, touches Muslims' religious affinity greatly - headscarf bans in schools, for instance. Here, in Britain, tolerance of religious displays is far greater. Here on the streets of West London, one sees many Muslims looking as though they take their religious precepts very seriously. (North London's ultra-orthodox Jews are a parallel, although once more I'd stress that they do not commit acts of terrorists violence in Europe.)

The social media makes much play of the moderate Muslim hashtag #NotInMyName. It would be comforting to Europeans living in areas with large Muslim populations for those moderate Muslims to make their moderation more visible to others. Why aren't they doing more to display their loathing for the extremist murderous ideology that taints their religion? To show that they identify more closely with the values of their host population than with barbarous fundamentalism? To show that they are intolerant of intolerance?

By not doing so, the host population's feelings of discomfort rise.

But by wearing, say, a white badge saying #NotInMyName, would moderate Muslims mark themselves out as potential targets for those members of their community with more radical views? Should moderate Muslims respond to these terrorist outrages by choosing to wear more western garb, abandoning headscarves and shaving beards, so as to visibly distance themselves from the extremists?

And what about the Bangladeshi bloggers hacked to death in the streets because they were promoting secularism... These attacks worry me because they defy the narrative that 'only ISIS-radicalised Muslims take lives'. No, these are simply haters who flew off the handle, unable to contain their rage because someone had cast doubt on the authenticity of the word of God as handed down through the Koran.

Seeing Salafist preachers in Birmingham last year, who had set up a large platform in a busy shopping street from which to proselytise passers-by made me ponder what would be the fate of Christians trying to do likewise in Islamabad.

We read in the media about the 'preachers of hate'. These are certainly the extremists, and no doubt they are being very closely monitored by Britain's security services. Hearing Scotland Yard say that six terror attacks have been foiled in the past 12 months raises people's confidence. Increased security budgets will do doubt be spent on recruiting and training Muslims to keep watch on their communities.

As yet, the UK has not witnessed any backlash against Muslims here following the Paris terror attacks. Reason seems to be rising above rage, at least for the present.

For Poland, ISIS is a distant threat, whereas the Kremlin is the greater worry. Not having a Muslim community of any significance, and not ever having colonised any Muslim country, Poland's only ISIS-related worry is to do with having to accept tens of thousands of refugees from the Middle East, courtesy of the EU. The Paris attack will change the discourse on this issue in Poland dramatically.

These refugees are, of course, mostly fleeing ISIS. The scale of bloodshed being visited upon Iraq and Syria by ISIS is vastly greater than what we've seen in Paris. Ordinary people living in Raqqa and other towns overrun by ISIS, fearing for their lives, are seeking refuge - and a better life - in Europe.

Poland has had to accept its quota of these refugees. As we saw in Paris, among these refugees may be ISIS murderers. The least Poland can do is to very carefully profile those it takes in, on a points-based system, giving preference to non-Sunnis, families with children, women and the elderly - those less likely to participate in terrorism in other words. Psychological screening - understanding the refugees' motivations and worldview from in-depth interviews - should also be used.

Finally, to put Paris into perspective. A quarter of a million civilians were killed during the 63 days of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, with 40,000-50,000 civilians being slaughtered between 5-12 August in the district of Wola alone (see Wola massacre). Less than a year later, the evil ideology that had motivated this barbarism had been totally crushed, while today the German nation is alive and well. The Nanking Massacre, in which Japanese troops slaughtered up to 300,000 Chinese civilians in December 1937-January 1938 was a foretaste of the barbarism and inhumanity visited upon the Far East by Imperial Japan. It took two atomic bombs to restore Japan to the path of civilisation.

ISIS are not people with whom the civilised world can hold a meaningful dialogue. Peace talks - like the ones that resolved the decades-long conflict in Northern Ireland - make no sense when the enemy holds such irrational views. Militarily, ISIS needs to be crushed in Syria and Iraq. But across Europe, moderate Muslims need to take a long, hard look at where their loyalty lies. As I wrote the other day, my mother took a solemn oath of allegiance to Her Majesty the Queen when she became a naturalised British Citizen nearly 60 years ago - and she kept that oath for the rest of her life. And the British State was good to her. Muslims should demonstrably swear their allegiance to the British State. Should they not wish to, they may migrate elsewhere.

This time last year:
Poland - it works!

This time two years ago:
Bricktorian Birmingham

This time four years ago:
Fog hits Modlin Airport

This time five years ago:
The local elections and what they mean

This time six years ago:
Synchronicity of shape - Powiśle, Hanger Lane, Mel's Drive-In

This time seven years ago:
The last of Jeziorki's noted landmark - the Rampa na kruszywa

This time eight years ago:
Jeziorki spared high-density development thanks to airport zoning

Cultural differences, Poland - UK

Sitting in the Stag and Huntsman in Hambleden, a lovely old pub in a lovely old Buckinghamshire village, one of the essential cultural difference between Poland and Great Britain became clear to me.

It is the village. Cities tend to be similar. But examine the villages in both countries, and you will see the core of what makes Poles different to Brits.

In England, the village is the central repository of essential English values; decency, politeness, community - and privacy. 

It is here in Hambleden, not far from Henley-on-Thames, that W.H. Smith, newspaper vendor and bookseller - who made his fortune placing kiosks in stations as Britain's railways boomed - retired to. The village - like many around it - Fingest, Turville, Skirmett, Frieth - is extremely picturesque (it often appears in films and TV series). Its topography bears some examination, for it is here that lies the heart of the difference between Poland and England.

Hambleden is a largish group of cottages and a manor house clustered around a village green, a village church, a village hall, a village store and a village pub. Fields are regular in shape, interspersed by woodland and divided by hedgerows. Roads run off in all directions - down towards the river, up into the wooded heights, east and west to neighbouring villages. The terrain undulates; villages nestle cosily in the folds of hills. Below: the Village Hall, Hambleden.

It's a Sunday lunchtime, and the Stag and Huntsman is packed. Poles would look through the window, and remark that these people would be better off saving money by cooking their own food and eating it in their own homes - it's cheaper. It occurred to me that what these English rural folk are doing as they spend their money on roast beef and Yorkshire pudding is investing in their community. It's not just about creating local jobs for bar staff, kitchen staff, farmers and brewers. It's about building trust and friendships between people in the village.

Below: beyond the butcher's shop, Hambleden's village inn, the Stag and Huntsman. Note how all cars are obediently parked on one side of the road. Porządek, Panie.

The Polish village, in contrast, is typically strung out along a long, straight road, with no discernible centre. This makes sense as the landscape's table-top flat. Ideal for mobile warfare. Left: ribbon-thin strips of land run off at right angles from this road, each farmed by different farmers (click to enlarge), the sons of sons of sons who had too many sons. I've also mentioned the importance of primogeniture in defining the difference between Poland and England - and in particular the countryside. In England, custom and law had it that the eldest son inherited the entire landed estate - as a whole. Younger sons joined the army, the church, the civil service. Or went off to conquer an empire, invent steam engines or football. In Poland, a father would divide his estate between sons, with each son ending up with ever-smaller strips of land, just enough to subsist on.

Other than the church on Sunday, there's no social focus. Yes, there's the shop, and outside it Pan Heniek and Pan Ziutek will while the afternoon away supping tins of Warka Pstrąg. And indeed, they bring with them to the UK the habit of outdoor drinking and depositing their empty tins of Lech, Tyskie and Żywiec around Britain's parkland, rather than paying the premium for sitting down in a pub to imbibe one's ale, as is the British wont.

And so, roaming around the Polish countryside, I yearn for those village hostelries where a pork pie (what's that in Polish!?) and a pint can be consumed in agreeable surroundings while resting weary legs.

The result of primogeniture is that the British aristocracy is numerically a minute percentage of the population. The Polish szlachta, or nobility, watered down by split inheritance, numbered some 8%-10% of the population at its peak. Better to be a somebody with a tiny parcel of land and a noble surname than a nobody forced to invent stuff like steam engines, telegraphs, mechanised looms, or blast furnaces.

As I have written before, the English countryside is where one wants to retire to, the Polish countryside is where one wants to escape from. The Polish wieś seethes with zawiść - jealous hatred or hateful jealousy - neighbours cannot countenance the fact that others are doing better than they through harder work, more judicious crop rotation, earlier (or later) planting (or reaping) - or just better luck.

But back to Hambleden. I doubt if all but the smallest number of villagers living here actually makes a living from the land. The large landholdings are efficiently and industrially farmed; here and there some organic farming takes place, but generally this is arable and livestock country, well maintained and managed. The majority of its 1,500 villagers are recent arrivals who have bought picturesque properties with monies earned or inherited or both; I'd guess the village is 50%+ retired City folk, entrepreneurs who've exited their businesses or inherited wealth, with the minority being people connected to the village through their kin. The influx drives up property prices.

In Poland, I get the sense that the majority of Varsovians are only one or two generations removed from the land. In 2001, I remember going for a walk with my children, then aged eight and six, and seeing a slaughtered pig being drained of blood, its throat slit, lying on a large wooden table in the middle of a farmyard. At work the next day, I mentioned this to my colleagues Beata and Joasia. Both laughed and said they could still remember seeing the same scene as children on their grandfathers' farms. Most of urban Britain is five or even ten generations removed from the land. And with that comes learned dependence - on the mill-owner or the state - but that's another story. In January 2006, on my way to a conference in Sandomierz, I noticed on the thermometer it was -26C outside. I glanced at the landscape; an elderly woman was carrying a bundle of firewood from the forest to her house. It occurred to me that at minus twenty-six there's no such word as mañana - rural life is hard, and one takes full responsibility for one's fate. You don't outsource it to a welfare state. 

Rugged individualism can become pathological individualism, however.

Poland needs its villages to get more connected, to discover a sense of community, of win-win, of public-spiritedness, building trust between neighbours. The pub is essential to that process. Village pub teams - bowling, darts, cricket, quiz - compete with one another in English. Nothing like this happens in Poland.

But to get things kick-started, there's no better way to do it than by opening small cafés, bars, restaurants, pubs. Maybe in a generation or two's time, the Polish village is where wealthier Poles will want to retire to.

[UPDATE NOVEMBER 2017: I buy a działka in Jakubowizna, a village 40km south of Warsaw.]

[UPDATE JULY 2022: I find I'm spending more time in Jakubowizna than in Jeziorki.]

This time last year:
Schadenfreude! The downfall of Hofman & Co.

This time two years ago:
From the Mersey to the Tyne

This time three years ago
Autumnal Gdańsk

This time four years ago:
What Independence Day means for Poles

This time five years ago:
Words fail me: what's the Polish for 'to fail'?

This time six years ago:
Autumn in Dobra

This time eight years ago:
Autumn ploughing