On Relevance and Irrelevance

For my brother and my father...

Time marches on, we must not waste it. Not waste it in futile action, nor futile thought.

Futile thought - irrelevance. In my late-20s, I learnt the habit of intercepting irrelevant trains of thought that were going nowhere and stop them in their tracks. Silly thoughts, vaguely amusing to toy with for a while, but ultimately not taking me to a new level. I learnt this habit after my brother taught me to think at the meta-level - to think about what you're thinking. [Today this has become known as mindfulness.] Irrelevant trains of thought that bog down the brain, distract and drag one away from life's search for meaning and purpose - catch yourself thinking them and stop them.

A few weeks ago, on a day far sunnier than today, I sat atop the ballast mountain across the tracks on ul. Kórnicka and pondered the relevance of matter. It was one of those thoughts that come to me, unbidden. The relevance of matter. Matter - as opposed to energy. The M in E=mc² , where c is the speed of light, the speed of causality, the speed at which all things unfold. The electron shell whizzes around the nucleus, perpetually, and inside the nucleus - particles. Which possess mass.

Above: the equation E=mc², depicted in a mural in the booking hall of Gliwice station.

Matter.

What is Hashem trying to tell me? The relevance of matter...? 

I look.

Wiktionary... Relevance, n. Pertinence. I check Pertinence... n. Relevance.

Not useful. Now, I turn to Wikipedia. Ah! Now to the meat. Relevance... [click here] So then. "Relevance is the concept of one topic being connected to another topic in a way that makes it useful to consider the first topic when considering the second."

Now, the relevance of matter (one topic). It must be relevant to something... to another topic. What is that topic? Purpose? If matter has no relevance, it become irrelevant, at least in a philosophical sense.

Because matter exists, it must be here for a reason, rather than it just happened.

Relevant in Polish? Istotny, stosowny, odnośny, trafny, związany z tematem, suggests Google Translate. The first suggestion offered is the best - istotny - from istota - or being, gist, entity, substance. Language seeks meaning for observed phenomena. Matter we can see and touch. It is. But what does it mean, and what is its purpose?

Once again, the Goy's Teeth scene from the Coen Brothers' greatest film, A Serious Man needs to be watched, to give you that wondrous sense of 'neither and both at the same time'.



This time last year:
Apple time down south of Warsaw

This time two years ago:
Poland gets anglicised as Britain gets polonised

This time three years ago:
Ale, architecture and city politics

This time four years ago:
The pros and cons of roadside acoustic screens

This time five years ago:
Moaning about trains again

This time six years ago:
Warsaw street names - Dolna, Polna, Rolna, Wolna, Smolna. Lost?

This time eight years ago:
Ditches, landscapes, autumn

This time nine years ago:
Golden autumn in Łazienki park

Learning to fly

I watched them from the time they were hatchlings; seven of them. I watched them grow as grey cygnets, the brood dwindling from seven to six, to five - and finally down to four. What killed the others, I don't know - virus? anglers' lines? poisoned by food thoughtlessly thrown to them by people? I watched them grow until they reached their parents' size.

Cygnets have an imperative to learn to fly before the ponds in which they were born freeze over. In early October, an unseasonable frost or first snow is still unlikely. Flight, however, remains the most important skill the young swans need to learn.

This morning I walked home from ul. Kórnicka along ul. Dumki. The swan family - two parents and four cygnets - paddled along parallel to me. I was halfway down the length of the northern pond, when the swans stopped, turned round, and faced north. Suddenly there was a great sound of flapping and splashing, as, heading into the wind, they starting running along the water, beating their wings harder in an attempt to get airborne; then retracting their undercarriage, gaining grace and altitude, they slipped the surly bonds of Earth.

I watched them climb higher and higher, bearing north-west. I stood there, until they were out of view. Will they do a large circle and return, or have they headed off (like the large gaggle of 37 geese I saw over ul. Karczunkowska on Tuesday) for the winter? From past years' experience, I guess they'll be back for a while. Last year, the swans didn't leave Jeziorki until the very end of December.

If you click on the label 'swans' at the bottom of this post, you'll see how this year's brood of cygnets has grown - and scroll down, you'll see past years' swan history of Jeziorki, from the first time swans found our ponds as a great place to live - since March 2008.

[An excuse to watch the excellent pop video for Learning to Fly by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers from 1991.]

This time two years ago:
Scotland's answer to the Hoover Building

This time three years ago:
In which I don't vote in the mayoral referendum, thus helping to save HG-W's job

This time four years ago:
Gorgeous cars from Czechoslovakia

This time five years ago:
Donald Tusk and Co. get re-elected

This time six years ago:
Poland's wonderful bread

This time seven years ago:
An October Friday in Warsaw

Feel like U.S.A. again

Homeward bound from the bus stop, I catch the wispy clouds in an inky sky and the fields and the house across the road and I am suddenly whooshed to another time, another place...

Put the slide into dad's stereopticon - and suddenly

Deep emotion springs from this life/Wells up inside

Kentucky? Minnesota? The gas station on the brow of the hill - rev the engine, there's a coffee waiting for me up there.

This soul that moves upon the face of our planet has been here before but it was not here before - it was a long, long way away.

It is only a skip of the needle on the arm of the record player from Bryan Ferry's Another Time, Another Place to You Are My Sunshine - and that same song takes me back to O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack and the bluegrass banjos and fiddles, the acoustic blues guitar and the worksongs of the chaingang is there - America, an America that's changed and gone forever like a child grown up to become a middle-aged man.

Time slide, place to hide, nudge reality

Foresight, minds wide, magic imagery oh yeah*

This is deepest memory; where does it reside? In the bones? In the optic nerve? There are memories that can be recovered by thinking back to an event; there are memories that can be triggered by a smell or (as in this case) a sight; there are memories that spring into your consciousness unbidden.

Those moments when that 'time slide' happens fill me momentarily with a yearning to return and to relive them - a brief feeling that evaporates all too quickly, leaving a residue of hope - an expression of experiencing a continuity of consciousness that spans from one brief human lifetime into another, a stone skipping over the surface of eternity, bouncing forward until it sinks into Unity

This time three years ago:
Warsaw's craft ale revolution kicks off

This time five years ago:
Poland's president inaugurates Moni's academic year

This time seven years ago:
Autumn evening, central Warsaw

This time eight years ago:
Short-term future of suburban development

This time nine years ago:
"You'll look funny when you're fifty"

* Big Audio Dynamite, E=MC2, 1986.

On how the Tories have ceased to be the party of economic liberals

The Conservative Party's annual conference, which finished today, has proved to be a milestone in its history, marking a shift in policies that's more radical than anything we've seen since Margaret Thatcher came to power more than 37 years ago.

Theresa May, who became prime minister by default rather than by popular mandate, has at a stroke reversed the party's role as the champion of economic liberalism. The 'stop migration, then get the best trade deal that the EU would allow in those circumstances' approach to Brexit will hit the British economy badly in the years after leaving the EU. I predict stagflation as last seen in the early 1980s as the UK had to deal with stagnant growth and high inflation. As someone tweeted over the course of the conference, this UK is figuring how it's going to learn to walk after it's sawn its own legs off.

The referendum result was a direct consequence of uncontrollable EU immigration. Being part of the single European market, a construct that Margaret Thatcher pushed for vigorously, the UK had to accept the free movement of labour, along with the free movements of capital, goods and services across the EU. All went well until, in 2004, the EU enlarged itself from 15 member states to 25, including eight countries from Central and Eastern Europe that had shaken off the Soviet yoke barely a decade and half earlier.

It was at this point, that Tony Blair's Labour government, continuing the liberal economic policies of its conservative predecessors, opened the door to free movement of labour to over 70 million citizens of the eight new CEE member states. It did not have to. The UK had the right to a transition period of up to seven years before it was obliged to open its labour market to workers from Poland, Slovakia, Latvia and the rest. The Germans waited - but Tony Blair didn't.

Back in 2004, the UK had over 600,000 unfilled vacancies, and employers across rural parts of southern and eastern England were crying out for workers. Not cheap workers, just any workers. At that time, unemployment in Poland was over 20%. Yet somehow the UK civil servants who did the sums worked out that opening the UK labour market to workers from the new member states would result in 13,500 coming each year. They were wrong. The real figure was 250,000 coming each year.

The rest we know. The new workers boosted UK economic growth, but that growth was uneven, distorted. Though the UK rebounded from the depths of economic crisis faster than any other western European economy, it was only London and the South East that truly felt that recovery.

The rest of England - the England that voted for Brexit - has had rather a harder time.

Mass migration from the EU is only one of four major shocks that Britain faces. In this week's Economist, there's a magnificent special report on globalisation. [Five articles, linked from this page.] It is a must-read to get a good understanding of Brexit, Trump, Le Pen, AfD and other rich-world reactions to the process that's been accelerating for the past quarter-century.

The Economist lists four factors which taken together have caused less-well educated people in the rich world to be relatively poorer than they were a generation ago:

• Footloose capital has moved manufacturing to lower cost emerging economies, China's opening to the world being a major event in this respect.
• Migration - be it from Mexico or Poland, migrants from poorer countries are coming to richer ones like the US and the UK and competing for those manufacturing jobs that have not moved to China.
• Automation - be it factory robots or IT-driven industries that run on algorithms rather than bean-counters. Low-skilled and routine jobs are being automated out of existence.
• Finally, on top of all this - a global financial crisis that began eight years ago with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. The deepest and longest crisis since the Great Depression that began with the Wall Street Crash of October 1929 and lasted until WW2.

Now, looking at the above list, the first three were all phenomena that benefited the rich, the business owners and the senior managers they employ. By outsourcing jobs to lower-cost economies, by investing heavily in automation, profits have been boosted, increasing the gap between the rich world's rich and poor from the historically low levels of the 1970s. And the fourth - the financial crisis - hit the poor far harder than it did the rich.

During the 1990s and 2000s, this process was already under way, but few were fussed as economic growth floated all boats, and new technological toys delighted consumers at ever-lower prices. The aftermath of the financial crisis has left many low- and middle-income families angry at the tax-dodging antics of the global corporate giants and the rich elites that own them.

There is another element that the Economist report did not touch on - the seeming lack of a new motor for genuine growth that could help get the global economy out of the rut it's in. Since WW2 the world has seen the car, the television, household appliances, personal computers, mobile phones, evolve, falling dramatically in price and improving dramatically in performance.

The rich world is stuffocated - we have too much of everything, and cannot think of new things that everyone will want to have but currently doesn't. After the smartphone - what next? All that the world of IT is currently offering is solutions to kill jobs - apps that will make redundant entire swathes of workers. Accountants and auditors will go the way of comptometer operators, thanks to fintech and taxtech algorithms.

Consumers will gain in convenience (shopping - I put goods into trolley, load them from trolley to the conveyor belt at the checkout till, load them back into the trolley, then load them from trolley to car) but globally millions of retail jobs will go when supermarkets invest in RFID/IoT solutions.

Back to the Conservative Party conference. Margaret Thatcher and her 'dries' fought the 'wets' (those wanting to shield the more vulnerable members of society from the effects of red-in-tooth-and-claw economic liberalism). The 'dries' won. Now, Theresa May is seeking, as she says, the centre ground by coming down hard on migrants in the belief that this will help the English working class.

Politically, this is very shrewd; it's an existential blow aimed at both UKIP and Corbynite Labour.

But is it economically shrewd?

The policy responses to an issue as complex as globalisation must be global in scope and expert-led, not knee-jerk reactions such as building a wall with Mexico. It is clear that massive tax evasion by global corporations is a huge issue for governments. The only answer is multilateral action to clamp down on tax havens, profit shifting and profit base erosion - this is better done within the EU. And with the UK government now planning to cut corporation tax to 15% and then some more, the UK is heading to become a tax haven in its own right, the proverbial race to the bottom.

Answers to the problems caused by globalisation? Investing public money in infrastructure. Building railways, canals, roads, pavements [!], water treatment plants, renewable energy plants, extending airports, creating jobs that cannot be outsourced to other countries. But that public money needs to be raised somehow - clamping down on VAT fraud, the grey economy and corporation tax dodgers should do the trick, but only if nation states work together.

The conference which finished today will be seen by future historians as a turning point in British history, one that resulted from the shock result of the 23 June referendum. I predict that the post-Brexit years will be a lean and hungry period. Britain won't see an extra 2,500 young people a year deciding to start studies in medical school to make up the gap left by doctors from the EU. British universities will be hit by a sudden drop in foreign students and lecturers from the EU. British care homes will be short of 83,000 care workers that currently come from the EU. British employers will either have to find huge pay rises to motivate native workers who're currently turning their noses up at the wages that keep those firms competitive - or see their businesses shrink.

Britain's loss could be Poland's gain - but only if the Polish government sees what's really going on and takes appropriate policy measures now.

This time three years ago:
Goodnight Dżerzi - Janusz Głowacki's book reviewed

This time four years ago:
More serious setbacks on Second Metro line construction

This time six years ago:
Leonard Cohen in Katowice

This time eight years ago:
The short-term future of suburban development (How right I was!)

Low water mark

Here's Jeziorki, after a record dry September. Dry - and sunny. Look at this - poppies in bloom in early October. Today's top temperature in Warsaw was 23C.

Here are the retention ponds on ul. Kórnicka, the white lines on the gabions showing the water level from spring 2014. The bottom is still too wet to walk on, but another few weeks of drought and it will be possible.

And the south pond is also dry - drier than this time last year, with more of its surface walkable than ever before. Again, the white line marks what was the water's edge. I'd have been standing up to my knees in water, up to my ankles in mud. Two winters of poor snowfalls have left the water table lower than I've ever seen in 19 years living here.

September 2015, looking north towards ul. Kórnicka. You can make out the water...

But  now - looking the same way, zooming in somewhat - and the water's just not there. In the spring of 2014, all of the vegetation in the foreground would have been under water.

So I figured the Vistula must be at a low level too right now... today I rode down to the river at Obórki, where the Jeziorka meets the Vistula. It wasn't.

And this is how the river looked in late September 2012, photo taken at exactly the same place.

So - the Vistula won't be drying out anytime soon, but on the local level, we are concerned - for the vegetation and the bird life - will a dry pond be able to sustain our swans, herons, egrets, ducks, gulls and coots? It's a local issue. On the one hand, climate change - warmer winters, less snow - hotter and drier summers. On the other - development, better drainage, new houses...

Autumn is looming. The weather forecast for the next few days is wet, with 36 hours of rain predicted to the end of tomorrow and a wet Wednesday. Interesting to see whether the ponds will fill up before the winter sets in.

This time five years ago:
Łódź to Jeziorki by car in four hours
[See how Poland's road network has improved!]

This time six years ago:
What's new on the manor?

This time seven years ago:
The funeral of Tadeusz Lesisz

This time eight years ago:
Socialist realism in the boardroom

A final end to a local landmark

It's gone, torn down and level with the ground. Jeziorki's level-crossing keeper's hut. The last pictures of it I took a week ago. As of today, a local landmark, built around 60 years ago, is no longer.

I managed to sneak inside to get some photos, a few days after the crew from PKP PLK came to take away everything of use, and to switch off all the systems. Below: note the beer bottle sticker on the door - Królewskie Jasne Pełne - looks like it's from the early 1990s

Left: the fuse box, controlling the platform lighting, and in days gone by, the points to the rampa na kruszywa.

Below: the crossing keeper's room; the control desk was on the wall facing the tracks; it had already been removed. [Pics here, taken through the windows.] I don't know what was in the padlocked green metal cabinet, presumably nothing of great value. The staff have been redeployed to cover shifts on other level crossings in and around Warsaw.



This morning I got an SMS from Dr Marcin saying the hut's been demolished. Soon after, he emailed me some photos, full of destructive violence, as the wrecking crew comes in to tear the hut down.

Great photos here from Dr Marcin conveying the drama of this act of destruction; clouds of dust as the walls come down.

Ripping through bricks, concrete, metal and glass like a rampaging beast, the digger reduces this redundant piece of infrastructure to a pile of rubble

Below: by the time I got there, the digger was posing triumphant on the rubble, like a WW2 tank atop a conquered bunker.

Later this afternoon, I snapped this scene from the new platform of W-wa Jeziorki station. The rubble was being removed in a convoy of eight-wheel dump trucks.

It's gone. In its place will stand a viaduct, paid for out of EU structural funds; ul. Karczunkowska will go over the tracks, road traffic won't have to stop to wait several times an hour while a train passes through the level crossing; rail and road will have been separated. The construction of the viaduct will take a long time (no way will be ready by the end of this year). I predict early 2019.

[How wrong I was. November 2019, actually. Over three years between the closure of the old level crossing and the opening of the new viaduct to traffic.]

The character - the spirit of place - of W-wa Jeziorki has changed. A road bridge over the railway line will be so different to what's been here since the Warsaw to Radom line was built in 1934.

This time five years ago:
Independence Day

This time six years:
Out and about in Jeziorki

This time seven years ago:
Funeral of Lt. Cmdr. Tadeusz Lesisz

This time eight years ago:
Puławska by night

A guide to naming streets – in Poland and the UK

Street names in Poland appear exotic to Brits, who are used to a rather dull conventions, such as tending to name streets after towns, monarchs or battles. I have lived on Croft Gardens, Cleveland Road and Ribchester Avenue, and for 16 years I worked on New Oxford Street. All named after towns. Note - one's a Gardens, one's a Road, one's an Avenue and one's a Street. 

But in the UK you can also live on  a Square, a Place, a Crescent, a Drive, a Way, a Vale, a Terrace, a Close, a Mews, a Lane, a Court, a Row, a Gate, a Rise, a Hill, a Walk, a Park, a Fields, a Meadows, a Common, a Grove,  a Circus, a Boulevard, a Chase and a Croft. Or no suffix at all – just the street name prefixed with 'The' followed by a plural noun – The Ridings, The Little Boltons. Or 'The' plus any one of the above-mentioned toponyms – The Avenue, The Mews, The Grove, The Common etc. I doubt if this list is exhaustive – and there are some exclusively Scottish ones too (Bells Brae in Edinburgh, for example).

In Poland, there's an ulica, an aleja (Aleje with an uppercase 'A' in the plural) – an aleja has to be broad, straight, multi-laned and it should also be reprezentacyjna [translation challenge for you there]; a plac or skwer– which is Place or a Square – and that's pretty much your lot. The last three are relatively rare; 95% of  streets in Poland are ulice and that's that.

But then in Poland you get naming conventions that are alien to Britain. Alien, for instance, is the practice of naming streets after dates of historical significance. To a Brit, this smacks of banana republics where streets are named after the date of the Revolution. Poland has fewer of these than it used to in communist days (gone are all the Aleje 22 lipca), but there's still many ulice 3 maja – 1 maja even. As well as oddball ones – ul. 29 listopada (29th of November Street). And Warsaw still has an ul. 17 stycznia ( 17th of January Street – the date the city was 'liberated' by the Red Army).

Far more Polish streets are named after famous people than in Britain. It tends to grate on the British sensibility to come across a 'Councillor Reg Sprott Avenue' (it smacks of lefty-ism rather than commemoration of a lifetime of service). If British streets are named after individuals, it's nearly always without first names (so 'Shakespeare Way' not 'William Shakespeare Way'). Poles are happier to accept streets named after people, including – I would argue – far more foreigners than the insular British would deign to name their streets after. Warsaw has four streets named after Indians, for example – two Gandhis, Nehru and Tagore.  Categories of people that British streets are named after tend to be great poets, writers, artists, long-dead generals and admirals, as well as generic royalty (King Street, Queen Street, Princes Street).

Genitives and Adjectival forms

Another thing about Polish street names is that they take the genitive (possessive) form of the noun, or they are in the form of an adjective. So it's ul. Dembińskiego (literally, Dembinski's Street, or the street of Dembinski), not ul. Dembiński. Adjectival forms – ul. Słoneczna, sunny street, are the other form. As a result (genitive noun or adjective), very nearly all Polish street names end in the letters a, i, o, y or j. Rarer plural forms will end in -ych or -ów. Exceptions prove the rule – ul. Wylot, ul. Przeskok, ul. Widok, ul. Giewont, ul. Solec, ul. Foksal – these are older names, in their non-genitive, non-adjectival form; they are rare.

A Street Name From Old Desire

This makes Polish street names sound less distinguishable from one another than the foreign visitor would like. Once I turned up for a meeting on ul. Prosta when in fact it was on ul. Pańska; another time I went to ul. Chłodna instead of ul. Chmielna. Or asking the taxi driver to take me to ul. Sienna when I meant ul Zielna.

Warsaw is home to ul. Dolna, ul. Polna, ul. Rolna and ul. Wolna, as well as ul. Smolna. [See this post.] It feels like half of all Warsaw street names are bisyllabic ending in an 'a'. And, as in the photo above, <joke> Warsaw has too many streets named after Russian generals, including of course Targov, Dvortsov, and Tovarov. </joke>

Victorian Britain, when most of the nation's urbanisation occurred, liked to name its streets after Victoria and Albert, but also after 19th century battles. So Waterloo, Trafalgar, Balaclava and Sevastopol. The Empire provided names for many British streets – Adelaide, Melbourne, Bloemfontein, Jamaica, Singapore.

There is a new practice in Poland of going full-on Polnische Romantizmus – ul. Spełnionych Marzeń (Yes! Literally a 'Dreams-Come-True Street'); ul. Malinowy Gaj (Raspberry Grove), Pachnącej Wiśni (Fragrant Cherry), Kwitnących Kwiatów (Blossoming Flowers) etc etc. Check out Baszkówka, an exurb south of Warsaw. Dawidy Bankowe has a Tulipanowy Zakątek (Tulip Corner Street). Another one of my favourites is ul. Posag 7 Pań ('Dowry of Seven Maidens Street'). Now that developers and estate agents have got their hands on the instruments of street-naming, gone are the days when no thought was given to whether a street name might put off prospective buyers; ul. Bagno (lit. 'Bog Street'), ul. Wysypiskowa (lit. 'Tip Street' or 'Dump Street'), or ul. Asfaltowa – in Poland today, the newer the street, the more poetic and less prosaic the name.

Common in both countries are streets named after trees - Dębowa, Bukowa, Świerkowa, Topolowa (pronounced 'Topple Over'); Yew Tree Lane, Old Oak Common, Elm Street, The Firs. And just like Acacia Avenue is the stereotypical English suburban street name, so are Akacjowa, Bukszpanowa, or Polnych Kwiatów.

Roads that point to somewhere – or not

Here's a subtle one; the use of the definite article 'the' in front of the road name, as in 'the Uxbridge Road'. No Londoner would say "My office is on Uxbridge Road." They'd say "My office is on the Uxbridge Road". But then writing the address on an envelope, you'd write, for example, 255 Uxbridge Road, Hanwell, not 255 The Uxbridge Road, Hanwell. If a 'Road' is prefixed by a definite article, something only locals would know, it suggests that the road goes there. The Great West Road, the Old Kent Road, for example, go west and to Kent respectively.

We have this in Poland too; ul. Puławska heads south out of Warsaw, and go far enough in its general direction and you'll get to Puławy. Likewise ul. Raszyńska heads out towards Raszyn, and ul. Radzymińska towards Radzymin, ul. Grójecka towards Grójec. But you need some local knowledge to know which streets behave this way – ul. Rzymska does not lead (or even point) towards Rome, nor Brzeska towards Brześć nad Bugiem.

Out Jeziorki way we have Musical Names given to streets that were developed after the war, named after dances, songs or instrument(alist)s (Puzonistów, Drumli, Baletowa); on the other side of ul. Puławska are Bird Names (Pelikanów, Tukanów, Kuropatwy).

In the UK, most small villages will have names assigned to streets even though there may only be a handful of thoroughfares present. In the Polish countryside, larger villages might have street names (ul. Kolejowa, ul. Owocowa, in Chynów, for example), whilst smaller villages, even those with several streets, will just assign a house number. Given that these tend to be assigned in chronological order, you cannot assume that, for example, Jakubowizna 59 is anywhere near Jakubowizna 53a. 

This brings me to another little difference. Strip-farming is common in Poland. Farms tend to be long fields coming off the road at 90 degrees. When a farmer sells one to a developer, the ten or 20 houses that pop up on the narrow plot will typically be numbered, say, [street name] [number] A-J or A-T. So, ulica Polnych Kwiatków 20G is not an uncommon address for an exurban house. The further down the alphabet the letter, the further from the street the house lies.

My final note is about translating the word 'ulica' into English when used in an address. DON'T. Leave the address in Polish as it is. To translate ul. Chopina 39 as 39 Chopina Street is just WRONG. I know lots of people do it; they are all WRONG. You don't translate Rue St Michel as St Michel Road, nor do you translate Bahnhofstrasse as Bahnhof Street, or Alexanderplatz as Alexander Square. So leave ul. Chopina 39 just like that – or (and this is probably the cause of this mistake) – because ulica is almost always abbreviated in Polish to 'ul.', it can seem a little unfamiliar in English, so my advice if you're doing literary translation is to spell it out in full – ulica Chopina. As in: "She lived in a small flat on ulica Chopina, which in spring was filled with the scent of lilac trees in blossom" etc.

This time five years ago:
A glorious month

This time six years ago:
My grandfather

This time seven years ago:
My home-made fixie bike

This time eight years ago:
Well-shot pheasants

On conservatism - a personal view

Old Polish saying: Umiesz liczeć? Licz na siebie. - 'Can you count? Count on yourself'. Counting on others - counting on the state - to bail you out when times are tough is not a good idea. Self-reliance is, I believe, the cornerstone of conservatism. Not nationalism, not traditionalism, not allegiance to a leader, but the notion that you are the master of your fate, and that this ownership should not be delegated to any higher authority.

I was inspired by Margaret Thatcher the most when she spoke of conservatism in terms of a household's balanced budget, of taking responsibility for your own actions - or indeed inactions.

I've written several times about the differences between British and Polish conservatism, and how as a British conservative I cannot feel at home around Polish conservatism.

On the spectrum of individualist vs. collectivist, I veer towards individualism. Obviously no man is an island, we need roads, schools, hospitals, security, territorial integrity. We need the rule of law to defend the sanctity of private property. Courts to enforce it fairly. Yet these are the constructs of a society, of a collective. Good to have; a framework within which an individualist can thrive and prosper. I'm glad that such a framework was there for me as I was growing up in the UK, and I'm delighted to have been able to witness such a framework being created around me here in Poland.

But I expect nothing from anyone. No help, no cheery word of encouragement, no free lunch, no Christmas presents. Should these things happen - hey! I'm delighted. I am truly thankful. As I am for health.

But I can't - I don't - expect these blessings. As Jacek Koba commented on my blog a few months ago, happiness is when the ratio of your expectations to reality is 1:1.

Suddenly, a crashing change of gear as this post takes another direction.

I read that the output of the construction sector in Poland is down 20% compared to last year. I look out of my window and see this (below). Dear readers, this is the private sector at work. Individuals, privately owned companies, operating for profit. Hard at work. A skyline of cranes. Warsaw is full of them - in the centre, in the suburbs. A barn. A distribution centre. A car showroom.

So why's there a big fall in Polish construction?

Because the public sector is postponing its investments.

The money (from the EU, mostly) is there - but the local authorities, the government agencies, the national infrastructure operators - don't know how to spend it. They don't have the know-how in project management. They don't have the people. Those that are involved in having to spend public money to procure projects live in fear of being sacked for taking the wrong decision. For taking any decision. And so construction companies who were counting on the state to give them work are going hungry. Licz na siebie. Trakcja PRKiI, the company that's modernising the Warsaw-Radom railway line, has just announced that it will be laying off several hundred people come next July, as this and other rail modernisation contracts comes to an end. There's plenty of money for further projects - it's just that the tenders have not been issued, decisions are being postponed.

Conservatives want to see a small, efficient state, not a bloated bureaucracy that's employing people for the sake of giving them jobs - that add little or no value for the taxpayers' money.

At a conference I'm speaking at this week, I gaze down the delegate list and a certain local authority will be sending nine people, when most private-sector firms will send one or two.

The public sector should be a tight ship, everyone pulling their weight for the public good, getting paid a competitive salary with the private sector, but with the expectation that their employment will be for the common good.

The dobra zmiana promised by the current government is merely a replacement of one lot of party political placemen with another - though the new ones lack the expertise or experience to do their job properly.

This is not conservatism. This has nothing to do with small-state government, nor promotion of self-reliance.

My brand of conservative government focuses on education - giving a solid grounding in basic facts for the bright and the less-gifted up to high-school level, then universities that teach students to think for themselves, to question, to push the boundaries of human knowledge. My brand of conservatism focuses on delivering a world-class infrastructure, which would enable private business to thrive and create new jobs and wealth. Not just railways, roads, airports and waterways, but broadband internet connections. And a paperless state, where you don't have to visit your local urząd twice when you simply wish to register a vehicle. An environmentally friendly state that is awake to the danger of climate change and wants to step back from burning fossil fuels to generate electricity and power vehicles.

It's easy to hold a view about abortion, in vitro fertilisation or gay rights. Anyone can launch into a heated discussion on these subject. You don't need to be an expert. However, you do need to be an expert to plan urban drainage systems, balance the nation's energy needs with carbon emissions, negotiate trade deals with emerging nations or set the optimal monetary-policy course for forthcoming years. Wise regulation, balancing the interests of different groups, is crucial. This government is focusing its energy on those issues that merely raise heat and social division rather than on doing solidly those things that a modern state needs to do to provide a strong framework for a strong economy and happy (yes, happy) society.

A final point about British conservatism. Since the days of Mrs Thatcher, the dividing line within the Conservative party seemed to have been Europe. Now, after the EU referendum, it's now clear the split lies far deeper than arguments that have their roots in the shape of post-war Europe. No, we now go back to the 1840s, to the repeal of the Corn Laws, where the real argument is Free Trade vs. Protectionism. The supporters of Hard Brexit (i.e. the UK leaves the single European market and imposes visa restrictions on visitors from the EU) have roots going back to the landowning classes who wanted the British market in wheat protected from imports. Those militating for a more open trading relation with the EU are heirs to the free-traders who wanted the Corn Laws repealed, so that traders could trade freely and consumers would benefit from lower prices. In this configuration, who are the 'Wets' and who are the 'Dries'? It looks like the free-traders are being branded 'wets' by the protectionist, nativist wing of the Conservative party. How times change.

I am for free trade - I am an economic liberal (and for the record a social liberal and environmental illiberal).

This time two years ago:
Between equinox and equilux

This time four years ago:
Heritage or high-rise?

This time five years ago:
Shopping notes

This time six years ago:
My grandfather

This time eight years ago:
Surreal twilight, ul.Karczunkowska

This time nine years ago:
From Warsaw to Seville, via Munich and Madrid