Jonathan Freedland keeps popping up in the Guardian on the subject of the dishonesty and falsehood of equating Soviet and Nazi crimes. Here he was in October last year. And now again today: For one thing, the equation of Nazi and communist crimes rarely entails an honest account of the former. […]
Just to alert my sprawling army of fans that I have a couple of notable public speaking engagements coming up. First, I open the proceedings for the Speechwriters Guild Leadership and Communication conference in Bournemouth on 17 September. Here’s the website – come along and hear a range of top-end […]
A nicely turned piece in the Guardian by Kamil Tchorek on how a more mellow Jaroslaw Kaczynski missed becoming Poland’s new President by only some 200,000 votes. Update: the final gap in Komorowski’s favour was a full million votes out of some 17 million cast. Look at the map via […]
The second and final round of Poland’s Presidential elections takes place today. Bronislaw Komorowski (Citizens Platform) is hoping not to get pipp’d at the post by Jaroslaw Kaczynski (Law and Justice), twin brother of President Lech Kaczynski who died in the Smolensk disaster. Which of them is the more ‘right-wing’? […]
Two weeks ago I made my prediction about the Polish Presidential elections: My bet this evening? Komorowski to edge home in two weeks’ time, something like 53% – 47% Earlier today it looked as if Kaczynski might have squeaked home, but that bet looks more or less to be the final […]
The 2010 Presidential elections in Poland, brought forward following the Smolensk air disaster in which President Lech Kaczynski died, have been taking place today. The results indicate that as expected Bronislaw Komorowski of the Citizens Platform party has won a clear victory over Jaroslaw Kaczynski (Law and Justice) with Grzegorz […]
While we are thinking about Poland, check out the blog of Monica Ogrodowski, an American of Polish descent now over in Poland on a Fulbright award. She gives us a beautifully illustrated piece about the Tapestry Triennial exhibition in Lodz, once the ‘Manchester of the East’ – a huge C19 regional […]
A Polish reader Ludwik Kowalski now long established in the USA has sent in a link to this unusual free online memoir, namely extracts from his diaries which he wrote while growing up in the USSR then Stalinist Poland: This is my “book of life.” It is based on what I […]
A handy To-Do list for William Hague as he tries to drain the FCO swamp: … End PoMo gimmicks: Issue instructions that any Ambassador using an Embassy flagpole to fly a gay rights Rainbow flag, a Save the Whale flag or any other trendy private ‘campaign’ symbol will be sacked […]
Here is my long interview (in English) with George Matlock over at Radio Orla, a successful London-based radio station with a strong Polish angle. I normally can’t bear to watch or listen to myself after doing such media slots. But I started to listen to this one – I found it […]
