'Twas on the Thursday morning, the electrician called...

Thursday morning. Getting ready to go to work, when my phone rang. It was the electrician who was outside my działka to change the meter. "You were meant to be 'ere between 08:00 and 10:00 to let me in!"

"Hang on a second," I replied, "I haven't agreed to this..." And then I remembered. On Tuesday evening, on returning from work, I opened the mailbox to find an avizo - so ofp I went to the post office to receive a registered letter from PGE, the electricity supplier. I say 'letter', actually it was an A5 envelope containing no fewer than 79 pages in total - contracts in duplicates, handbooks, explanations, termination letters, errata slips - not stuff you'd want to be reading on a Tuesday evening after work. And not on the day before the Annual General Meeting and Board Meeting.

 

I left it. The fat envelope sat in my rucksack all day Wednesday, unread, and then on Thursday morning the bloke called. All uppity he was that I wasn't there to let him in. Patiently, I explained that it takes two to be umówiony, and that I had not agreed to be there, that particular Thursday morning. Between 08:00 and 10:00, especially when that day I had to be in the office to run a seminar on digital disruption/digital transformation.

Later, I referred to the contents of the A5 envelope. Inside the umowa (contract) it did indeed state that if I wished to change from the G11 tariff to the more advantageous for me G12W tariff (cheaper electricity at weekends, which is when the działka would be in use), the meter would have to be changed. On Thursday 26 April. Between 08:00 and 10:00.

All of this would have been fine, had the letter reached me sooner than the evening of Tuesday 24 April, on the eve of the Most important day of my firm's business calendar. The letter was sent (according to the postmark) on 17 April from PGE Obroty S.A. in Skarzysko-Kamienna; it took a full week to travel the 140km to my post office on ul. Puławska. That's 20km (12 miles) a day. I could literally have walked with it quicker.

PGE Obroty S.A. could have used sent me an email or an SMS saying 'we're going to change your meter in nine days time - is that OK?' The company had both my email address and mobile number on the last form I'd sent them (in reply to my original letter of 16 February). But no. They will send it all by post, knowing that this is the most primitive and business-wise, least effective way of reaching the customer.

And why seventy-nine pages? Who reads this stuff? Everything, in Einstein's words, should be as simple as possible, yet no simpler. Has any lawyer or business-process manager gone through those 79 pages, paragraph by paragraph, line by line, questioning whether this has any meaning or relevance, and why we have to send this, is this clear communication?

This is what they sent me:

Now, among all this bumph, bądź mądry and find that one sentence that mentions the impending visit of the guy to change my meter.

How much time does it take one human being to read through all this stuff? How much of it do you really have to read? What happens if you don't? How much of it is understandable? Do you know the formula to working out how much you have to pay for electricity? It looks like this:

This is babble. Who understands this? If whoever wrote this thought - "they don't understand, but so what?" - then that person doesn't merit a customer-facing job. Without explanation, just dumping this in the contract is a heinous error of judgment.

In Britain, consumers may complain, but they are years ahead in terms of the service they receive from the utilities.

In Poland, I too have a choice. And here's my message for state-owned PGE. I'd prefer to buy my electricity from a Polish firm than from a German, French or Swedish one. But if it communicates with me per noga, then I must say I'd pay over the odds to a supplier who gives me what I want.

A smart meter. An app in my phone that lets me monitor and control my electricity usage. A contract that's clear and easy to understand.

And if not...? The Polish electricity regulator, URE, has insisted that among the 79 pages included in that fat envelope is one sheet giving me the right to annul my contract with PGE and switch to another provider.

UPDATE Friday 4 May 2018: I get an SMS at 15:57 from Poczta Polska to say that the signed contracts, which I posted by registered, priority mail on Monday 30 April, reached PGE Obrót S.A.'s Skarzysko-Kamienna offices today... not bad given that Tuesday and Thursday were both public holidays.

This time last year:
The Gold Train film shoot - Day Three

This time three years ago:
45 years under one roof

This time six years ago:
May Day in the heat (it was 31C in Warsaw!) 

This time eight years ago:
Bike ride across rural Poland

This time 11 years ago:
Mazovian landmark from the air

Nation building - my wishes for Poland in 2014

I've long wanted Poland to be a pleasant place to live, a normal country, Scandinavianly boring, prosperous, without islands of glaring poverty, without ignorance or hatred. And to my delight, it's moving in that direction, albeit at a slow pace. To be able to find Poland's place in the world. one really needs to compare a wide selection of indicators across many countries - from wealth to health to happiness - and track these over time. In general, Poland is getting better, in many international rankings. But there's still lots more to do, a long way to travel before Poland can be as great a place as say Norway or Denmark to live.

So then, my fellow nation-builders - what do we need?

• A Plain Polish campaign. Polish government authorities - and private companies (in particular the utilities) should communicate with citizens and customers clearly. No more gobbledegook! No more sentences of 100 or more words! No more irrelevant references to the chapter and verse of the law! It really is high time that Polish bureaucrats appreciated that it is their responsibility to write clearly - not the citizen's responsibility to attempt to understand their convoluted texts.


• Safer roads. As I write, another BMW (why is it always BMWs?) driven by a drunken driver, ploughed into a group of people at a level crossing, killing six. Dangerous driving results in mass slaughter, several thousand Poles are killed needlessly by idiot drivers, and it occurs to few to SLOW DOWN. 50kmh means 50kmh, not 85. As I pointed out this time last year, more than six times as many Poles have been killed in road-accidents in modern Poland than were killed by Stalin at Katyń. Road safety must become a top priority for government. The cost of keeping several thousand people alive each year is minimal.


• Polish universities need a shake-up. There are still way too many old-era professors blocking the advance of younger academics, who are multilingual, who have experience living and working abroad, who have a vision of how things can be. Poland's poor standing in research and development, in collaboration between business and academia, in creating science parks that can turn the fruits of academic study into profitable products or services, is mainly down to the heavy blanket of blinkered profs in their 60s and 70s. Time for them to shuffle off.


• More civil society. By which I mean charities, volunteering, more public-spirited behaviour. No, putting a few zlotys into a collecting-tin for Wielka Orkiestra Świątecznej Pomocy once a year and allowing the government to give 1% of the tax it's taking from you to the charity of your choice is not enough. If Poland is to catch up in terms of the individual's attitude towards society, we need to move towards an understanding that we're all in it together, for one another's benefit. This message needs to be appreciated by every individual, not forced into them as communist-style collectivism was.
  
• Let's be nicer to one another. Let's stop treating shop staff, security guys and office cleaners with cold disdain, bury that supercilious arrogance that comes with being financially better-off. We're all here together, so we should try to get along, with a smile, a dzień dobry, a dziękuję, a do widzenia as we go through our day.


• A focus on economic sustainability. As Poland becomes more wealthy, there is the opportunity to stop obsessing about short-term gain and start looking ahead with a more long-term perspective. The economy is likely to accelerate this year - may the owners of the businesses that are making this happen also think long-term about their companies' competitiveness, investing in R&D, in new technologies, in their employees, in growth, in sustainability, in making their companies more resilient to external shocks. Government needs to cut borrowing, spend less on current costs (a smaller bureaucracy please, and invest more in capital projects to enhance the nation's infrastructure.

Less intolerance, less selfishness, less sense of entitlement, more kindness, more patience, more self-reliance and responsibility. In the next ten years, Poland really can become a much, much better place to live than it is today - which is a whole lot better than it was in 2004 or in 1989...

This time last year:
LOT's second Dreamliner over Jeziorki
(before the batteries started catching fire)

This time two years ag0:
New Year's coal train

This time six years ago:
Winter train

Orwell's Politics and Language and Poland

Moni received a letter today from the Mayor of Warsaw. I'll cite it here in full.

"Na podstawie art. 26 § 5 pkt 1 ustawy z dnia 17 czerwca 1966 roku o postępowaniu egzekucyjnym w administracji (Dz. U. z 2005 roku Nr 229, poz. 1954 z późn. zm.) z chwilą doręczenia załączonego odpisu tytułu wykonawczego następuje wszczęcie egzekucji administracyjnej celem wyegzekwowania należności wyszczególnionej w tytule wykonawczym.

Kwotę wynikającą z należności objętej tytułem wykonawczym wraz w kosztami egzekucyjnymi 51,40zł należy wpłacić na rachunek bankowy organu egzekucyjnego. Na dowodzie wpłaty należy podać numer którego wpłata dotyczy.

W przypadku nie uregulowania należności wyszczególnionej w załączonym odpisie tytułu wykonawczego zostaną zastosowane środki egzekucyjne przewidziane w art. 1a. pkt 12 lit.a powołanej ustawy o postępowaniu egzekucyjnym w administracji.

Dodatkowe informacje dotyczące wszczętego postępowania egzekucyjnego można uzyskać w siedzibie Urzędu m.st. Warszawy, Biuro Podatków i Egzekucji, ul. Kredytowa 3, II piętro...

What's it all about? We really can't tell. It sounds serious. "Execution proceedings". Six very official stamps. Four official signatures. But then a piffling sum of money – just over £10. A phone call to Moni establishes that she was caught without a ticket on a tram (after six years with a quarterly travel pass, she had got out of the habit of buying a ticket for each trip when coming home from Łódź). OK, fine paid, lesson learnt.

But could this letter not have been written more simply? Is it not beyond the wit of the city authorities to write a letter saying something like "You have failed to pay the correct fine on time and have been fined a further 51.40 złotys - please pay immediately or face court action"? Why all this chapter-and-verse nonsense?

George Orwell has the answer. In his 1946 essay, Politics and the English Language (a mere eight pages, well worth reading), he posits that circumlocutions, pretentious and abstract words, passive voice, needless repetitions, are used as an instrument to conceal. Behind the legal bluster of the letter quoted above is an over-staffed office, with too many people involved in unnecessarily bureaucratic revenue protection procedures (it costs 80 grosze to bring in one zloty in fines). No one has ever audited this process. Would it not be cheaper and more effective to send SMSs first – and then heavy legal letters to that tiny minority that doesn't pay up at this stage?

Orwell and Winston Churchill did most to change the course of the English language in the 20th Century. And, three decades after their finest hours, the Plain English Campaign came along making it impossible for a British civil servant, bank, insurance company or law firm to trot out this kind of gobbledegook that still passes as formal language in Poland these days.

Three relevant rules, then, from Orwell's essay:

• Never use a long word where a short one will do.
• If it is possible to cut a word out, do so.
• Never use the passive where you can use the active.

Churchill, who "mobilized the English language and sent it into battle" was also one for short, powerful words. The two Englishmen exposed the fashion for consciously complex writing for what it is - an attempt to belittle or befuddle the reader, to assert superiority over the reader. In communist Poland, this was part of the armoury of sociotechnika – keeping the Party in power and the people in their place, building on the traditions of Tsarist rulers. Who in turn learnt their art from Byzantium. 

Times have changed, but the drętwomowa [numb or stiff language] of the past still holds sway in the high offices of the land.

Time to change it. Time for a Plain Polish Campaign.

Thanks to Anon for a link to a Polish Radio programme (in Polish) about Polish official language (to listen, click here).

And thanks to fellow-blogger and near-neighbour Student SGH for having a decent crack at the above letter, which I'm elevating from status of comment to part of this post...

"Pursuant to article 25, paragraph 5, section 1 of 'Administrative execution proceedings law', dated 17 June 1966 (Journal of law no. 229/2005 with further amendments), administrative execution, aimed at collection of amount due set out in enforcement deed, takes effect when the execution deed is delivered.

Amount due stipulated in the execution deed, along with execution charges of PLN 51.40 should be paid into the bank account of the executing entity. The payment receipt should contain the number the payment refers to.

In case the debt set out in the attached excerpt from the execution deed, the enforcing entity shall resort to further execution proceedings, listed in article 1a, section 12, letter a of the herein mentioned law on administrative execution proceedings, to collect the debt.

Further information on the execution proceedings can be obtained at Capital city of Warsaw's Tax and Execution Bureau head office..."

Oh, the humanity! Oh, the bureaucracy!

A man fell under my train home this evening, the 18:20 from W-wa Centralna all stations to Skarzysko Kamienna. He slipped on the platform at W-wa Rakowiec. From what I could see, and from what other passengers were saying, he was neither drunk nor old; he had slipped off the platform edge and under the middle carriages of the train. The temperature had remained below zero for much of today, and despite the platform edge's knobbly surface, there was a certain slipperiness underfoot.

As he fell, he must have banged his head hard; there was blood and he appeared unconscious. He was quickly pulled free by fellow passengers and placed on a bench. The train crew acted admirably. An ambulance was called and medics were on the scene within minutes. I was impressed by everybody's helpfulness and concern. "Has he dropped anything?" The man's glasses were seen under the train. The guard slid down between the platform and the train to pick them off the tracks. Several men gave the medics a hand taking the stretcher up to the ambulance. Solidarity in action. It was good to see; basic human decency - a desire to help one's fellow man in trouble.

The ambulance departed as swiftly as it came, and I have little doubt that the man would be well looked after. Assuming he has somewhere about his pockets his employer's details, his ZUS account number, proof that he hasn't any ZUS payment arrears.

Did the train depart swiftly? It did not. No doubt there was also much form-filling that needed to be done. The driver and guard needed to be interviewed... Meanwhile, a trainload of people were getting increasingly impatient. Half an hour later, another train turned up, also heading south, on the 'up' platform. Where was it going to? Góra Kalwaria? Radom? Piaseczno? No one knew. But lemming-like, everyone in the back half of the train leapt off the platform, on to the track, across the other one, scrambling up onto the opposite platform, and onto the train that had just arrived.

As we finally pulled out of W-wa Rakowiec, some 35 minutes after arriving, we passed two north-bound trains that were stopped at intermediate stations waiting for a clear line into town.

The accident was sorted out quickly and efficiently. The bureaucratic cleaning up took a whole lot longer, and affected at least five train-loads of people, anxious to get home.

When will the public sector acquire the skills (and technologies) to speed up its procedures to an acceptable level?

This time last year:
Kidnapped by Koleje Mazowieckie

This time two years ago:
Google Earth updates Jeziorki

This time three years ago:
Out and about with two foot of glass

Poland's electorate plump for continuity

The exit polls put Platforma Obywatelska (PO - Civic Platform) in first place with 39.6% of the vote (down a touch on 2007's result of 41.51%) clearly beating Prawo i Sprawidliwość (PiS - Law and Justice) into second (30.1% down from from 32.11% in 2007). So PO will stay on in power.

For the first time in 21 years of democracy in Poland, a governing party has come first in elections. This means an unprecedented vote for continuity.

The only question is - with whom? Unable to form a government on their own - will PO have enough seats with current junior coalition partner PSL (who got 8.2% of the vote in the exit poll) to continue in power with them? Or would PO actually prefer to turn to the party of social and economic liberal Janusz Palikot (who gained an amazing 10.2% in the exit poll) to form a majority?

Now this would be interesting. In theory, a PO-Palikot coalition would be a good one, though socially abrasive (Palikot enjoys rubbing up the Church the wrong way). But above all, Palikot in government would put more pressure on a rather inert PO to finally get round to reforming the state. Palikot no doubt won massive support from Poland's entrepreneurs, running micro-businesses in the face of the tyranny of red tape, soulless bureaucracy and poorly thought-through and drafted regulations. PSL have tended to act as a handbrake when it came to reforming KRUS (the social security system for farmers which ended up with self-employed people paying eight times more in social security than well-off farmers), and finding their mates cushy public sector jobs.

Palikot's party is a one-man band (imagine the third largest party in the UK, for example, being called 'The Movement to Support Nick Clegg') without any strength in depth. Palikot, a maverick who split off from PO because it was insufficiently radical for him, is seen by some as PO's attack dog, let off the leash before the elections, to return in coalition with PO as a powerful agent for pushing reform. Palikot also proved useful in knocking the post-communist SLD into fifth place (with a mere 7.7% in the exit poll - this was the first time it failed to win double-digit support - a dramatic collapse from its 13.2% in 2007).

We shall see how the coalition talks conclude. PO is currently talking about keeping the present coalition going. What ever happens, my main emotion right now is relief that PiS are nowhere near power; a return of Jarosław Kaczyński and his crew (Antoni Macierewicz, Anna Fotyga, Zbigniew Ziobro - no thanks!) would have been utterly disastrous for Poland.

The gradual passing of old Poland

The suicide two months ago of former deputy premier Andrzej Lepper, leader of Samoobrona, a populist, potato-throwing political party that was once in a government coalition, caused me to reflect on how Poland is marching inexorably in the right direction.

In particular, a reportage in Gazeta Wyborcza about his last days, showed how unsustainable were the old ways of doing things in Poland. The article showed Lepper's business model - borrowing money from dubious sources to fund political campaigns, then paying back the lenders with political favours. It all went wrong when he and his party failed to win re-election in the 2007 parliamentary elections. In increasing desperation, Lepper went around seeking new ways to raise funds. He would say nice things about the Belarusian regime, and then trade his new-found (though illusory) influence in Minsk for introductions which he'd sell to Polish entrepreneurs keen to do business across the border.

Reading the article, I could feel a whiff of that dank staleness (stęchlizna) that once permeated Poland's elites, but is now definitely on the retreat. Poland is modernising; the EU, foreign direct investment, mass migration and the modern media are all helping re-shape the country into something more normal, more similar to the western Europe than to Russian Eurasia.

On Tuesday, I took part in an EU conference on innovation and governance organised as part of Poland's EU presidency by the Ministry of the Economy. There were speakers and participants from all over Europe. Looking at the Polish participants, I could see a clear division between the younger, mainly female ones, confidently - and knowledgeably - speaking to Dutch, French, British or German delegates, and the older ones, mainly male, sprouting non-ironic moustaches, wearing ill-fitting jackets, steering clear of foreigners to avoid betraying their inability to speak anything but Polish. And these men were typically the bosses of the women. In a few years time, when the old geezers retire, Poland's state bureaucracy should function a whole lot better.

Next week, I'll be making a brief presentation to the Polish Association of Rural Municipalities about the UK Bribery Act and the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The purpose - to make it clear to Pan Burmistrz that asking foreign-owned businesses for a 'cash contribution to village festival fund' in exchange for planning permission is just not on. Talking to a representative of a large retailer present in Poland, I was told that attitudes to this kind of thing are markedly more dodgy in rural parts than they are in Poland's cities and larger towns.

On balance, I feel increasingly optimistic about Poland's long-term future; economically, Poland has enough forward momentum to carry it through the expected global recession. Politically - it's cisza wyborcza ('election silence') , so I'm not allowed to agitate on behalf of any party - but I would say to those of my readers who can - get out and make your voice heard. Don't let the country go in the wrong direction because you couldn't be bothered to vote.

This time last year:
A glorious week

This time two years ago:
Trampled Underfoot - Jan III Sobieski and the Turks

This time three years ago:
Proto-park and ride, W-wa Jeziorki

This time four years ago:
Autumnal atmosphere

Of sausage and drains

I had a real fright this morning. Opening the mailbox I found an awiso from the post office, addressed to both my wife and myself, that there is letter awaiting collection. Why the fright? Usually letters addressed to both of us come from one source - the tax office. Well do I remember those Days of Fear in September 2005 when I received a summons from the tax office. What was the problem? The suspense was unbearable. It is entirely possible to unwittingly commit a heinous tax offence in Poland either because you've misunderstood something (przychód -'revenue', 'income'; and dochód - 'income', for instance) or because of a variance between your tax adviser's interpretation of the richly opaque tax law and that of the local urząd skarbowy. (As it happened, the issue here was that I'd accidentally written down our total income in box 115 rather than box 114 of our annual PIT-37B tax return form.)

At the post office, I took my ticket for the queue and waited, amusing myself as two elderly ladies traded insults (one had got her ticket from another elderly lady and thus found herself ahead of her interlocutor in the queue). Chamka! they yelled at each other. Fifty minutes and five ticket numbers later, it was my turn to collect our post. It was....not from the tax office!

It was from the Department of Architecture and Building for Ursynów District, Warsaw City Hall. Telling us... telling us... Well, here's a literal and direct translation of said missive.

NOTIFICATION

Of the institution of proceedings

On the basis of:

Article 61 para. 4, art. 10 para. 1 and art. 36 of the Law of the day of 14 June 1960 year, of the Code of Administrative Proceedings (unified text in the Journal of Laws no. 98 from 2000 year, position 1071, with amendments); art. 50, art. 53 of the Law of the day of 27 March 2003 year about planning and town planning (Journal of Laws no. 80 from 2003 year position 717 with later amendments).

[Still with me, readers? Now, take a deep breath and try reading the following sentence without pausing for another breath.]

[I] i n f o r m [you],

that on the motion of the Urban Enterprise of Waterpullings and Canalisation of the Capital Town Warsaw Joint Stock Company filed on the day 14.09.2010 year with an amendment dated 05.10.2010 year, administrative proceedings were instituted in the matter of determining the localisation of the investment in the public cause for the investment depending on the construction of a sewerage canal Dn 0,2m, along with the accompanying technical infrastructure on ul. Trombity on the stretch from ul. Karczunkowska up to the property on ul. Trombity 20 and in the pedestrian-driving traffic route (up to the properties on ul. Trombity 18) foreseen for the realisation in the District of Ursynów in the Capital Town of Warsaw on the following plots...

[there follows a list of plot-, rather than house-, numbers]

This classic example of Polish bureaucratic gobbledygook gives me cause to thank the Plain English Campaign that this kind of stuff does not appear in the UK and pray for a Plain Polish Campaign along the same lines. There is a need here for Gricean Maxims (1. Be truthful - well this probably is; 2. Provide as much information as necessary, but no more - this is overload. Is anyone going to refer to all those old laws? 3. Be relevant - see above and get to the point. 4. Be clear - this fails totally. A total of 116 words in this single sentence including 17 subordinate clauses.)

What does this mean? In a word, drains! After eight years living here, there's finally the distinct probability that at some undefined point in the future, we will no longer need to use a septic tank which needs emptying every two weeks. Jeziorki edges ever closer to civilised norms.

The dwellers of the southern end of ul. Trombity now have seven days to make their comments on the plans, which are publicly available for inspection at the Architecture and Building Department, room 306, Al. KEN 61, from Monday to Thursday, between 12 and 3pm. In other words, we have 12 working hours in the middle of the working day to make our comments. Well, at least the blockers can't block.

The prospect of being finally connected to the city's sewerage network reminds me of a stanza from John Betjeman's In Westminster Abbey:

Think of what our Nation stands for,
Books from Boots and country lanes,
Free speech, free passes, class distinction,
Democracy and proper drains.

I am also mindful of the impending local elections. The clear calculation that voters will be more likely to support the incumbent if progress is occurring around them. The cynical part of me thinks 'electoral sausage'. The rational part of me is delighted that we seem to be closer to civilisation. All I need now is a letter informing me that ul. Karczunkowska will be getting a pavement soon.

What do I want for Poland

I want a modern, normal country, of which I can be proud. When I took the decision in 1997 to move to Poland with my (then) young family, a colleague at work in London mocked me. "America, Canada, Australia - I can understand. But you are emigrating to Poland?!? POLAND! That's some kind of a JOKE country!"

That hurt. I was brought up as a Pole in the UK, and returning to my fatherland was a form of destiny shaped by my upbringing - Polish school on Saturday mornings, Polish scouts on Saturday afternoons, Polish church on Sunday. I am here by choice, not by default. I won't have the beton Jarka element label me as unpatriotic; I want what I see is best for my country.

A modern, normal country. One where decent citizens can go about their daily, law-abiding lives, working in fulfilling jobs, paying taxes, trusting one another, trusting the Polish state, trusting their neighbours, employers, tax authorities and police. A country with decent universities, turning out graduates that are equipped for the labour market of tomorrow. Graduates that don't have to flee to foreign universities to get decent research fellowships. A country when research and development spend per capita is as high as it is in Scandinavia, the US or Japan. A country not dependent on jobs on low-cost manufacturing, but on high-value added high-tech industries and professional services.

Poland does have the people. I never cease to be amazed at the quality of young people - hard working, intelligent, well-read, highly-motivated; yet the country - the state - can't seem to get itself organised in such a way as to harness that energy to the full. Too many talented Poles leave Poland to make a career in foreign universities, foreign companies in foreign countries.

Year by year, Poland is moving away from joke-country status. Since we moved to Poland, it has become a member of NATO, the European Union, the OECD club of rich countries. Since 2004, Poland's GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power parity has risen from 54% of the EU average to 61%, and climbing fast. In 2003, Poland's economy was seven times smaller than the UK's. Today, it's only four-and-half times smaller. I want Poland to have a strong economy. For that to happen, the economy needs to be run by people who know about the economy. Here, I mistrust PO less than PiS. And that's what it boils down to.

I want a country of entrepreneurs, not bureaucrats. Poland does have one of the highest percentages of workforce employed in micro-businesses (employing one to nine employees) in the EU. That's basically one big ZUS dodge. The average Polish micro-business employs 1.3 people. The "entrepreneur" (read: 'self-employed person for tax reasons') and his wife doing the books one third full-time equivalent. Because it's too damned difficult for a sole trader to do it himself. The average British micro-business employs 3.7 people. That's healthier. Go up to the small firm level. Only 12% of the Polish workforce is employed in small businesses (10 to 49 employees). This is the lowest level in the EU. So medium- and large-size firms can go about their business without feeling the nip of competition at their heels - and can get away with charging higher prices and offering worse service than in the UK.

This needs reform.

In the UK, to be self-employed, you merely fill in two sides of a form (CWF-1) and send it to your local tax office. And you pay tax once a year. In Poland, you go through inordinately more bureaucracy to be able to call yourself a jednoosobowa działalność gospodarcza. In England, if you wish to tune pianos, trim decorative hedges, teach ballroom dancing or renovate classic cars, you just get on and do it and pay the taxman annually. In Poland, the citizen is not simply allowed to go out and earn his or her way - he or she must apply to the state for permission to do so, pay tax and ZUS and VAT monthly, and be subject to such rigorous supervision as to put off all but the hardiest souls. (In the UK, you are only obliged to pay VAT if your earnings exceed £70,000).

Put it another way; if Poland is to really take off as a country, it needs to make it much easier for people to start working for themselves, to employ other people; it must be easier to pay taxes.

Where's the political appetite for reform? Looking at the economic programme of the presidential candidates, I could only see real economic reformist zeal in Janusz Korwin-Mikke (slightly nutty party) and Andrzej Olechowski. Both marginal candidates without any significant party support.

As for two remaining candidates, the least-worst option is Bronisław Komorowski. Plodding and steady rather than an energetic driver for change, I feel he won't get in the way. I don't get that feeling about his opponent.

Of Missionaries and Mercenaries

I recall chatting to a medical recruitment agency boss over a beer in Rzeszów's Old Town Square in October 2006. We'd organised a job fair, and this UK-based recruiter was in Poland selecting Polish doctors, dentists and nurses for jobs in the UK and Middle East. He told me that when talking to candidates, he'd be mentally sorting them into 'missionaries and mercenaries'. The former chose to work in the medical profession to help mankind. The latter, to earn money.

This extremely useful paradigm can be applied across the whole of society. Individuals can be placed along the 'motivated' and the 'less-motivated' spectrum; but those who are blessed with motivation (and this is the key spectrum in life) can be subdivided into 'missionaries' and 'mercenaries'.

What makes one work beyond the simple necessity of feeding, housing and clothing oneself and one's family? Why do people push themselves in life, initiating projects, making things happen, organising others, when an easy life would suffice? Eight hours 'working' then feet up, watching TV with a glass of beer and a large bowl of crisps?

There are those motivated solely by money, and the choices that having money can offer. And there are those who want to change the world for the better. And there many somewhere along that continuum, who want enough money to live comfortably, but at the same time feel they want to 'give something back'.

In Britain, there's long been the convention that a career should lead either to Power or to Wealth, and that the two should not mix. The wonderful (by Polish standards) UK Civil Service was built on that very premise. (Poles: Take a good look at this article.) But Britain's apolitical, professional, Civil Service is by no means a perfect construct, but it's a damned sight better than Poland's bureaucracy, which changes with the political winds, and as such lacks continuity.

In the pantheon of British stereotypes, we have Sir Humphrey Appleby, who lusted for power, not cash. He was the arch-administrator - neither politician, nor entrepreneur. He epitomised the upper echelons of Britain's administrator caste. In Russia, by contrast, if you have money, you have power, if you have power, you use it to acquire more money, which is turned into more power, and so on. A top UK political blog has (coincidentally) today looked at the issue of British MPs, money and power. My point exactly.

I return to the excellent BBC Adam Curtis documentary I mentioned a few days ago. It is worth watching and re-watching. Friedrich von Hayek, asked 'where does altruism come in', replies 'it doesn't come in' (6mins 49 secs). Fast-forward to 28 mins 52 secs. Here we see The American economist, James M. Buchanan suggests that all civil servants/ bureaucrats/ public sector clerks are, essentially, motivated by money, not altruism: "Working for the public good is a complete fantasy". Move on now to 49:o6. And then on to Prof. Buchanan: "If our success depends on the goodness of our politicians and bureaucrats, then we're in real trouble. "Zealots", as he calls them - idealists, unbribable, driven by ideas, not personal gain, are, in the view of Prof. Buchanan, a big problem. Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse Dung and other monsters tend to suggest that to a certain extent he is right. They were not driven by money. They were driven by ego - their need for power, their need to be loved by the millions and destroy millions along the way. The motivation of ideologues in positions of authority needs closer monitoring than that of run-of-the-mill venal, corruptable types who are not peddling any ideology.

But Hayek and Buchanan are wrong; altruism most certainly has an important role to play; evolutionary biology and genetics are proving this. But altruism needs to be better harnessed; bureaucracies are not the kind of place where altruism flourishes. It is in the voluntary sector, the NGOs, well-run charities, where things get done; enthusiasm must be the principle driver of motivation, not advancement up Sir Humphrey's 'greasy pole' of the Civil Service career path. For these 'third sector' bodies to function properly, they need the same quality of professional management, the same financial and reporting systems that are to be found in private companies run with the profit motive at the fore. NGOs' management must have a clear, hard-nosed view of what they are doing and why. Even in a charity, the money-motivated manager is needed to instill efficiency.

Mercenaries will compete with one another. That is their alpha nature. This is where the Ladder of Authority comes in. But mercenaries and missionaries have to work together, harness one another's motivations to move mankind forward, checking one another not out of self-interest but essentially in a spirit of trust.

This time last year:
Spectacular sunrise over Jeziorki

This time two years ago:
Where am I? In the village.

Not like the neighbours, indeed

For anyone following the Polish economy, the article in this week's Economist is a must-read. Compared to its neighbours - and indeed to the rest of the world - Poland is doing well. At the BPCC's annual conference in Warsaw last week, four chief economists presented their growth forecasts for this year and next which were as synchronised as an air display team in formation. This year growth will be between 0% and 1%, next year between 1% and 1.5%; a tighter bunch of forecasts than what we'd been used to (last autumn the spread between optimists and pessimists was as much as five percentage points). Bear in mind that Poland's neighbours in the CEE region are expecting their economies to contract by 3% to 15%. Indeed, a perusal of economic forecasts published by The Economist suggests that Poland's economy will grow faster than ANY in Europe - and globally, will only be outperformed by China, India and Pakistan.

Why has Poland managed to avoid the worst of the global downturn? One counterintuitative argument is that because Poland is a difficult place to do business, the size of the pre-crisis 'bubble' was relatively small. And a reason it was smaller than in western Europe and the USA - and indeed in other CEE economies - is that Poland's inflexible financial institutions were not bending over backwards to foist business loans and mortgages to people who could not afford to pay them back. More - banks would not lend to people who could afford to pay them back.

As a result, depending on sources, between 60% and 70% of Polish entrepreneurs have no debts, and finance their ongoing business activities from their cashflow. And while 800,000 Polish households (mostly young and urban) have risky mortgages denominated in Swiss francs, another 12,200,000 households don't.

Poland is ranked 76th in the World Bank's Doing Business survey. Drill down into the data, and you'll see that in see that in terms of 'ease of starting a business', Poland comes 145th in the world (out of 175 countries!) and 'ease of obtaining a construction permit', Poland comes 158th - which places it among the economies of sub-Saharan Africa. Other surveys are less kind. The latest Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom places Poland 82nd in the world.

Poland's obstructive and decision-averse bureaucracy has held back the country from growing at an unsustainable pace. But this 'handbrake-on economy' cannot be held back at this time of global recession. The handbrake must be released if jobs are to be created and the huge demographic potential of Poland's young and well-educated workforce is to be realised.

Twenty years of democratically elected governments (of all hues) have failed to transform a bureaucracy that remains anything but a 'civil' 'service'. Roads do not get built, state-owned enterprises do not get privatised, EU funds do not get spent - because of the mindset of lower- and middle-ranking officials in Poland's ministries and government agencies. Part of the problem is that many of them are political placemen, who get a cushy office job for four years through connections with the ruling party. These here-today-gone-tomorrow bureaucrats are not experts in the area they working - nor do they have any ambition to be. What Poland desperately needs is a thoroughgoing reform of its bureaucratic workings, rather like the one implemented in Britain over a century and half ago - the Northcote-Trevelyan* report which led to the establishment of a Civil Service Commission in 1855. This clearly set out the rules for a professional, apolitical administrative body to implement policies of elected governments.

(*Not to be confused with Northcote-Parkinson, whose adage 'work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion' was coined a century later. It is as true in Poland's government offices as anywhere else on earth)

UPDATE: February 2010. The final figures for Polish growth have been posted; the economy grew by 1.7%! Faster than anyone could have dared imagine.

This time last year:
Jeziorki in bloom
Visitors from the east