Value for money for commuters

I've written about the Warsaw travel card before; today I took the unprecented step of buying a 90-day extension to my karta miejska. I'm good for travelling around the capital (Warsaw's zone 1 at least) until 2nd November. My 90-day travel card cost me 196 zloty, which at today's exchange rate is just under ₤41. For three months, mind. A mere 45p a day. ₤13 a month.

A monthly travelcard for four zones of London (a similar radius from the heart of the capital) costs ₤141.40. ELEVEN times as much. And average salaries in Warsaw are only two-and-half times lower than in London.

"Ah, but London has a more extensive network of Underground lines, buses and suburban railways..." the carper will carp. But then how often did I ever wish to travel on a whim to Walthamstowe Central, Penge West, Morden or anywhere else other than Ealing Broadway? 99% of my usage of a London travelcard was for use between home and the office and other points around central London. In, out and around locally. Not for making huge excursions around the endless expanse of dreary suburbia stretching out in a 12 mile radius of Centre Point.

Given the incredible disparity in public transport prices, it amazes me that Varsovians still choose to use their own cars to drive to work, given that cars and petrol cost (roughly) the same in Poland, suggesting that car parking is too cheap here and that a city-centre congestion charge zone should be introduced.

Warsaw's authorities are making it ever clearer that the car is not the city's best friend. More bus lanes will be introduced (Puławska's waiting for that expressway junction, so it'll be a year or more before Piaseczno's benighted commuters are forced to ditch their cars).

The city is getting better with the buses and trams (new stock is regularly being introduced), but I despair for those depending on Koleje Mazowieckie - there are only two town-bound trains from Piaseczno between 7 and 8 in the morning. KM could easily run eight and fill them with refugees from the bunged-up Puławska. Officially, we have to wait for the new rail link from the Piaseczno line to Okęcie airport, as there's single line working here right now - a lame excuse. Where there's a will there's a way - but Poland's railway managers show no will for anything other than sponging more money from government coffers.

The politics of the symbol

Doesn't it occur to any of the commentators about the ongoing battle for the Smolensk cross outside the presidential palace that it's but a distraction?

Politicians on both sides are using the battle over symbols to sideline any meaningful discussions about public finance reform, reducing the budget deficit and national debt. THIS is key. Policy, not politics. (I was interested to see in last week's Economist an Italian minister saying that those two, distinct, words could only be translated into Italian, as in Polish, with one word - la politica/polityka.)

There's a party-political game going on as well, for anyone caring to look an inch beneath the surface.

President-elect Komorowski could have said, "Hey, it's just a cross. It doesn't bother me - or indeed anyone else. Leave it there, replace it eventually with a permanent memorial of some sort, end of issue." But no. He insisted that it be moved. This was a calculated political act, designed to stir up the usual nutters who could be guaranteed to come up with a good show for the media in cases like this. It was bound to provoke the PiSites who would side with the weirdos. In short, a trap for PiS, who walked right into it.

Komorowski and PO are using the issue of the Smolensk Cross to paint PiS into a corner. And they are doing so successfully, if my reading of social attitudes is right. (Well, here in Warsaw, at least.) "Give 'em enough rope," PO is saying. Since losing the presidential election, PiS has been straying ever more deeply into LPR country. And as they do so, their electability declines.

The strategy is working. A wedge is being driven between 'normal' Poles who see themselves as rational, civilised people, siding with the moderate clergymen, scouts, policemen, the vast majority of public opinion and the media; and then we have 'nutters' who see conspiracies, traitors and agents everywhere. PiS is allowing itself to get tarnished as the 'nutters' party.

Nationalist Catholics, to whom the antics on Krakowskie Przedmieście plays, represent one-twentieth, maybe less, of Poland's population. The ones who outside the presidential palace were calling priests traitors and scouts bolsheviks are politically a tiny, weeny, minority. This is where PiS's electorate will end up by the time of next year's parliamentary elections if these shenanigans continue.

I went along to see for myself. The atmosphere this evening outside the palace was tense though I could not feel any aggression in the air. People were discussing the pros and cons, trying not to let emotions run into the debate for fear of sparking anger. A middle-aged woman was discussing with two men, one older, one younger. "Why are you always bringing Jews into it? It only serves to undermine your argument," she said. The younger man replied. "See that restaurant across the street there? Magda Gessler owns it. 14 and 15 year-olds are regularly seen staggering out of it, completely drunk."

I'm sure the very next opinion polls we see published in the wake of this business will show a marked drop in PiS's support at the expense of PO and the ex-communists.

It will stay as long as politicians continue to benefit from it.

Pride and anger

Pride at our Eddie marching through Warsaw to commemorate the anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising on Sunday. Anger at the riot caused by attempts to move the cross placed outside the presidential palace after the Smolensk disaster. Firstly, why move the cross? Let the fools have their tartare sauce (to quote The Simpsons' Montgomery Burns.) Now, that faction of Polish society (who believe that Lech Kaczyński was murdered, the presidential elections were fixed, that premier Tusk and president-elect Komorowski are agents of Moscow) are seen to have won a moral victory.

Who cares whether the cross is here or at St. Anne's Cathedral? Who cares whether the Warsaw Uprising Museum is named after Lech Kaczyński or not? What does matter is decent roads and railways, an efficient and transparent tax system, world-class universities, proper waste-water treatment, an effective healthcare service and an environment in which small business can flourish. The rest is detail. Don't waste time fighting the weirdos. Let them have their way on the symbols. Let the grown-ups get on instead with the substantive task at hand - turning Poland into a globally-competitive economy - for the good of all its citizens. Then the causes of weirdoism - poverty and ignorance - will naturally wane.

Today, Moni and I went to Kino Luna to see the new Coen Brothers' film, A Serious Man, a film we've both recently seen before, but were so taken by that we had to see again, this time in a cinema. Definitely, to us, their best yet (of 14). Waiting for the film to start, I was moved to take this picture (right) of the church on Plac Zbawiciela (Saviour's Place). The film opens with the words, in white, on black "Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you". A good motto for our times.

A century of Polish scouting

Polish scouting celebrates its 100th birthday this year. The movement was set up by Andrzej Małkowski in 1910, influenced of course by Robert Baden-Powell. Every six years since 1969, Polish scouts around the world gathered at a zlot (literally 'a flying together'). There was a shorter interval since the last one (in America in 2006 which Moni attended) to catch up with the centenary. This year it's taking place in Poland. Over 1,500 Polish boys and girls from around the world are present on the zlot at Zegrze, just north of Warsaw.

Above and below: the march-past opening the guests' day at zlot. The Americans stole the show with their drumming; each scout or guide unit was led by a trio of drummers.

The scouts (harcerze) and guides (harcerki) of the Polish diaspora, global in reach, gathered this year in Poland for the eighth world zlot. (The word looks like the one for the Polish currency but has a different root. Lot means 'flight' - as in the airline - whereas złoty comes from złoto - 'gold'.)

The zlot itself consists of several dozen individual camps, each of around 20 to 50 scouts or guides. Each one had an elaborately constructed gate. Above left: Hufiec Szczecin (southern England, all points west of London); above right: Hufiec Wilno (from Huddersfield) and Hufiec Wrocław (from the East Midlands) shared a camp.

Above: The zlot took place on military land; this dummy armoured fighting vehicle is used for combat practice. It was an ideal place for such an event.

Above: Eddie joined his friends from Manchester, with whom he'd gone on many scout-cub camps in Penrhos, North Wales.

The harcerze and harcerki came from America, Canada, Australia, Britain (the largest contingent), France, Argentina, Denmark, Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus (where Poles are routinely persecuted) and Kazakhstan. The boys from Kazakhstan were in the same camp as Eddie; only one of them spoke Polish well enough to communicate with the Mancunian Poles (the rest speaking Russian). And there was a (smallish) contingent from Poland itself.

What makes the zlot so fascinating is what gives the boys and girls their hyphenated identities. Yes, they are proud to be Polish, but they are equally proud of the land where they live. The Australian harcerki had headwear modelled on bush-hats, while the Argentinian guides' hats looked like something gauchos would wear. The American scouts and guides wore neck scarves with stars and stripes, while out of uniform the Canadian contingent wore red t-shirts with the word 'KANADA' in white. We heard a British harcerz saying: "When it started raining I realised I'd left my ręcznik and my materac outside..." which is exactly how we speak in our family - English - with Polish words thrown in for the sake of laziness or precision.

It made us think about identity - we are specifically Poles from the UK. Nothing less, nothing more. We can adapt perfectly into the both nations. I think this is something that most people on the zlot can identify with. Below: the camp fire - the largest I've ever been at in my life. Spot the Argentinian hats - left of centre.

A memorable, thoroughly enjoyable family day out, not least because of the large number of old friends we managed to catch up with - both UK-born Poles living in Poland and those still living in the UK. Greyer.

Accounting for the past, 20 years on

Another blogmeet last night in central Warsaw, featuring Toyah, Adthelad and Lemming. Over curry and beer the conversation was as ever sparkling, erudite and civilised, without a trace of the unpleasantness that one might expect from reading some of the posts and comments at Salon24-land and thereabouts.

We talked about post-war West Germany. My thinking is that if you compare the Federal Republic in 1965, 20 years after VE-Day, and Poland today, 20 years after the fall of communism, you could expect to find certain parallels. None of us confessed to knowing too much about the ins and outs of West German politics, but an investigation into the extent to which former Third Reich allegiances shaped the divide between the CDU/CSU (Christian Democrats) and the SPD (Social Democrats), but the parallels concerning reconcilliation with a guilty past are obvious.

The key is lustracja (screening) of ex-Nazis and former communist apparatchiks. Lemming informed us that out of 12,000 German staff running the death camp at Auschwitz, only 800 – one in 15 – were ever brought to book for their role in the genocide. So the rest were running around being proper West Germans.

Krzysztof mentioned a book, Co u pana słychać?, written by Krzysztof Kąkolewski in 1975. The investigative journalist tracked down prominent Nazis who had managed to settle into comfortable careers in West Germany – a Bundestag deputy, university professors, lawyers – or else were living in comfortable retirement. Among those he tracked down was Heinz Rheinefarth, the SS general whose troops were responsible for countless atrocities during the Warsaw Uprising; mayor of a sleepy village in the Friesian Island.

What difference is there, I asked, between the way Germany handled its Nazi criminals, and the way that Poland is now torn by its reconciliation with its communist-era past? Surely the scale is entirely different ("total war", said Lemming) but I think it's also worth looking (beyond Spain after Franco or Ireland, where the political divide is still 'whose side was your grandfather on in the Civil War') at countries that had shaken free of foreign occupants, and the way they dealt with collaborators.

Poland's communists were in the first instance willing collaborators with the Soviet occupant, but over the decades party-joiners became opportunists, people entirely free of any ideological imperative. This is why I think the PiSite ideology can't stomach them - they are devoid of a moral compass, of virtue. People who could slip into capitalist corporations as easily as into the upper echelons of party cadres.

I guess that when it comes to saying 'forgive and forget', it's not easy for me or Adthelad or any other Pole born and raised outside of communist Poland to imagine the day-to-day humiliations that our countrymen and women would have had to endure during that period. This I can appreciate. But many of the people currently having dogs hung on them (to use a Polish metaphor) by the PiSites - Adam Michnik, Leszek Balcerowicz, Lech Wałęsa, Bronisław Komorowski, Donald Tusk - did their bit (and more) in the opposition, helped to bring down communism. Their sins were either to have (once upon a time) been in the communist party before going into (personally risky) opposition, or to have not distanced themselves sufficiently from the Old Order. I wonder how this looked in 1965 West Germany (indeed 1965 France or Norway, 20 years after the Nazi occupation). Or in 1995 (20 years after the death of Franco).

It would be sad if Polish politics turned out like Ireland's; nine decades of recriminations about what the correct way of dealing with the aftermath of British occupation which ended in 1920 - a fight to the finish ('Ulster for the Irish') or accepting the status quo.

The new Toyota Yaris - driving impressions

Driving to Dobra and back gave me the chance to assess our new Toyota Yaris and compare it against the previous one (written off on the way to Dobra last November).

The engine of the new one is rougher - to be expected given that it's a new three-cylinder unit, and three-cylinder engines will always sound rougher than fours, which will sound rougher than straight-sixes, which will sound rougher than V12s. But given the near-silence in which the old 1-litre unit worked, the harsher engine note was an immediate, if only slight disappointment.

In the UK, we'd often hire 1-litre engined Vauxhall Corsas, and the name 'coarser' seemed highly applicable when compared to our refined old Yaris and Micra. A shame, then, that the new Toyota's engine delivers a rougher sound than the old one.

On the sounds front, the relative racket is more than compensated by a proper sound system that takes MP3s. Instead of being limited to 20-30 track .wav format CDs, I can now create music on the go that contains 150+ tracks on a single CD. Enough music to get from home to Dobra and back without having to listen to any piece of music on it twice.

When specifying the car, my wife insisted on air-con, and I must admit (grudgingly) that she was right. At dual-carriageway speeds when it's +35C outside, having the air-con set to 1 or 2 is enough to stop the car being uncomfortably hot without having to wind down the windows.

The real Achilles' heel of the old Yaris was its ventillation. With a bit of rain outside, two people inside, external temperature below +15C, the windows would mist up terribly, and the only remedy was to blast the (noisy) ventillation at full power, temperature cranked up to max, to clear the condensation. Which was very uncomfortable. The new Yaris, however, isn't prone to condensation quite so easily, but when it does appear, the ventillation system clears it effortlessly, without having to either blast away so noisily or having to heat up the interior so much.

Electric window opening I don't like; it's an unnecessary gadget and lacks the precision of a manual winder.

My biggest gripe with the new Yaris is with the instrument display. Whenever the headlights are switched on, the the brightness of the display is dimmed. Given that in Poland it is obligatory to have your lights on during daylight - even in summer - this means the instrument panel display is dim by default. In the old Yaris, there was a mode setting that allowed you override this and have a bright display even when headlights are on (which is always). Now, in summer, one tends to drive with sunglasses on. This means - you can't read the instruments. Especially the smaller digits (range, fuel consumption, odometer etc).

Best part of the new Yaris was the price. 42,000 zlotys on the road compared to 48,000 złotys for its predecessor. [This comes from shopping around, waiting to buy the last of last year's models]. And overall a better car. Better build quality. Until the old Yaris was shaken down, there'd be a fair amount of minor rattling coming from doors and windows. The new one feels more solid.

The size of the car is fine for four adults on day trips of up to 150km each way. Luggage space I'd say is OK is you want to take three adults on holiday - four plus four suitcases will simply not fit. Two adults and two children - we've done this many times in the similarly-sized Nissan Micra.

If you look at what driving schools use, you'll see it's Toyota Yaris. Never mind the fleet discounts that other 'B' Segment car manufacturers offer - when total reliability is called for, a driving school business counts on the Yaris, which I think means something when it comes to potential longevity. This, for me, as I've explained, is a key factor in choosing a car. I hope (fingers crossed) the Yaris will serve us as long as our wonderful Nissan Micra - 17 years old and still working well.

UPDATE 27 JULY 2026: The Yaris, now driven by our son, is 16 years old, and still working well. My daughter's 21-year-old Nissan Micra (she's the second owner) is still working well.

On being motivated

A primary question that I'm forever asking is: "Does there exist a gene determining strong will?" I've written about this in the past, in my quest to determine to what extent a person's likelihood to succeed in life is predetermined. For policy-makers this question has huge implications. Do laissez-faire systems encourage an advantaged group to leverage that advantage at the cost of the less-well motivated masses? Do redistributionist welfare systems sap motivation from those whose levels are the lowest? Speaking to many UK employers with Polish migrant workers, I constantly hear the opinion that the British welfare system has created an entire class of people unwilling to cross the road for a job.

In blogging, there's no doubt that prolific bloggers with something to say (viz. Toyah, Charles Crawford linked from this blog) generate ten or even hundred times as much traffic as those who post only infrequently. It's the same in one's career, in one's business - work hard at it, and the rewards will come in multiples. A truism - but then, why is it that some people work their nuts off while others just can't be arsed? What makes a billionaire work 16-hour days to make his next billion?

How much is learned, and how much is innate? The 'muscle memory' of action is something I'm aware of whenever I cycle in town. Unbidden, my head swivels this way and that to see what traffic's coming from the left, from the right, what's behind me. Urban cycling requires total situational awareness. Nine years of riding around central London has resulted in an instinctive reaction to look down sidestreets and across junctions without needing to think before doing so. This is the result of basic, evolutionary self-preservation.

But can muscle memory function in the everyday tasks that face even children? Making your bed in the morning, putting plates and cutlery into the dishwasher, brushing your teeth twice daily? So as to do what needs to be done, without even thinking about it?

There was an interesting book review in last week's Economist (linked here): Choice by Renata Salecl (and a link to a review on Amazon here). The book looks at the choices we have in life and the theory that the more choice you have, the happier you are. Child-rearing in considered. As the Economist puts it, "[p]arents who make their offspring's choices for them create one set of problems; those who farm out choice to their children at an early age risk another." Making children put away their toys after they've played with them does create a sense of orderliness, but is this, in itself, a spur for enhanced motivation in adult life?

Incidentally, how do you say 'a failure' and 'a success' in Polish in reference to people? (don't bother searching the dictionaries - your own suggestions please).

Googling the Renata Salecl book, I came across this fascinating TED lecture on the same subject, but dating back to 2005. In it, psychologist Barry Schwartz argues convincingly that more choice makes us less happy. I tend to agree with him.

Hot in the city

Eight o'clock in the morning and it's already +26C. Right: on my way to my first meeting today, strolling along ul. Piękna, the sun is glaring off the pavement and tarmac. Holidays mean far fewer people around than usual, which is a blessed relief. By mid-afternoon, the temperature will reach +35C; it would not fall back below +30C until ten o'clock at night.

In the office I reflect upon the regenerative properties of a good active holiday (as opposed to the blobbing out in beachfront hotel variety). I feel energetic and in a very good frame of mind, despite the heat. And I ponder upon the following: if atoms can store energy, surely they can also store memory? Remember, the atoms you and I are made of have been around for billions of years.