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Congress of the Left
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This weekend the SLD have helped organise a Congress of the Left In Warsaw. It brings together a range of groups and individuals from different traditions, although interestingly excludes the liberal populist Palikot Movement. Below is an article (Po...
Poland - The Green Island Sinking into a Sea of Red
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A special edition of the CESifo Journal, (published by the CESifo group Munich) has been devoted to the issue of the Polish economy. It consists of a number of articles, including one of mine entitled "Poland – The Green Island Sink...
The Left Should Learn from the Experiences of France
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Polska Wersja Tutaj.... The recent meeting of the SPD’s candidate for German Chancellor, Peer Steinbrueck, at Warsaw University took place in an atmosphere of optimism. The feeling was that the left is heading towards victory in the...
Cięcia duże – sukcesów brak
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Kiedy MFW zaczyna nawoływać rząd twojego kraju do złagodzenia polityki głębokich cięć budżetowych, to wiedz, że coś jest nie w porządku.Tymczasem właśnie w kwietniu 2012 roku&nbs...
The Myth of Self-Employment
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As Poland's unemployment rate approaches 15%, there are also many other problems on Poland's labour market. It has one of the highest amount of workers employed on temporary insecure (so-called junk) contracts, that has grown rapidly over the past de...
Investment Not Destruction
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Polska wersja tutaj.... These are times of austerity right? Economic growth is slow, government income reduced and public finances strained. Tusk’s government is seeking to reduce its social spending, freeze the salaries of public sector worker...
White doesn’t always mean privileged: why Femen's Ukrainian context matters
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An extremely interesting article has been written by Agata Pyzik in the New Statesman on the controversy surrounding the Ukrainian feminist movement Femen. It places divisions within the feminist movement in Europe, including controversies surroundin...
A Little Less Greener
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The Polish Statistics Agency (GUS) has revised downwards its previous calculations for economic growth in the 4th quarter of 2012, from 1.1% to 0.7%. This means that the Polish economy grew by 1.9% (instead of 2.0%) in 2012. The major reason for...
Some Respect Please Mr Sikorski
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I wasn’t going to write about the death of Thatcher. There’s too much emotion and invested interest in this subject for me to comment on the passing of an elderly woman. But then I read the tweet made by the Polish Foreign Minister Rados&...
Transition Economies After the Crisis
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I I have an article in a special issue of Europe-Asia Studies, devoted to the economic crisis in the East Central Europe area, on the economic and political effects of the crisis in Poland. There are also texts that look at the general effects o...
Cameron’s Anti-Immigrant Populism
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"The Front National hails the speech by the British prime minister which has smashed the taboo surroundingthe unsustainable cost of immigration for European nations. (…) At a time ofmounting unemployment and widening deficits, it has become ur...
VAT Cut Stalled?
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In 2011 the Polish government raised VAT from 22% to 23%, in what was meant to be a temporary measure to help deal with the effects of the economic crisis. From the beginning of 2014 this should automatically go back down to 22%, however it now seems...
Self-Immolations in Bulgaria
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Whilst the world focusses on the social catastrophe unfolding in Cyprus, the politics of austerity are having some tragic consequences in Bulgaria. Mass demonstrations in February brought down the right-wing government that had been impo...
Private Pensions Will Not Be Provided For Whole Retirement
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Elsewhere I have written about the compulsory private pension system in Poland and at how it fails to provide stable pensions, favours the financial markets and sucks resources out of the public finances. I have also looked at how the government part...
General Strike in Śląsk
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Trade Unions successfully organised 4 hour general strike in the region of Śląsk on Tuesday. Around 100,000 workers took part in the strike, which affected amongst others the public transport system, the railways, mines, steel w...
Changing the Voting System Will not help the 'Outraged'
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The American sociologist David Ost, in his book The Defeat of Solidarity, puts forward a very straightforward although accurate thesis. He argues that the abandoning of the working class by the liberal intelligentsia, and its espousal of neo-li...
The Dual Legacy of 1989
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Polska wersja tutaj 1989 changed world history, although perhaps not as expected. The accepted narrative of this time was that the failures of the command economies in Central Eastern Europe had proved the superiority of free-market capitalism.
Far-Right Disrupt Lecture at Warsaw University
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A group of masked far-right nationalists disrupted a lecture at Warsaw University. The lecture was given by the centre-left politician Magdalena Środa. The protestors shouted 'anti-communist slogans (such as - Hammer a...
Papal Fallout
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IN LIGHT OF THE RECENT RESIGNATION OF POPE BENEDICT XVI I AM REPRODUCING AN ARTICLE I WROTE IN 2010 AFTER HIS VISIT TO THE UK. Weaving his way through the crowds in Edinburgh, Benedict stopped for the classic PR moment after being handed a bab...
The End of Palikot?
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‘Maybe Mrs Nowicka wants to be raped, but this will not be by me as I am not a person suited to such an act’. These words have possibly spelled the end of the political career of Janusz Palikot and his ill-named Palikot Movement. He...
