Opinion

Cut Off

As fire and brimstone pour down on the UK as the ultimate woeful symbol of this Labour government, I am limping back across the continent after my flight home from Geneva was cancelled yesterday. Next stop – an attempt to get to Caen and board a ferry. I may be […]

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Arsenal Jabberwocky – Slain!

Things do not get much more frabjous than this: 

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Greek Debt: Explained

Tim Worstall puts us (and the Guardian) out of our confused misery with a simple lesson in Greek debt. He explains that two factors are in play: How much debt one has When one has to pay it back Imagine you have a number of credit card debts and loans. Some payments […]

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Poland’s Disaster: National Memorial Arboretum

Last September at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire a solemn ceremony was held to dedicate a new Polish Armed Forces Memorial in honour of Poles who fell defending their country and freedom in World War Two. Three Poles who played a prominent part in that ceremony were killed in […]

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Lech Kaczynski: Poland And Russia

I have written extensively on this site about what the Katyn Massaces represents for Poland, for Russia, for Europe – and for civilisation. Type Katyn into the site’s Search function and get the links. See for example this extract from my final FCO telegram, sent to London from Warsaw as […]

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Lech Kaczynski: A Very Polish Conservative

A somewhat reshaped version of my earlier appreciation of Lech Kaczynski has been published at National Review Online in the USA. Here it is: Conservative? For sure. But not snooty, paternalistic conservatives. Rather, their conservatism was based on rock-hard core beliefs and unshakable private integrity. Yet it was not a […]

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Polish Spelling

This is a well turned article in the Guardian about Poland’s sorrow, marred only by dismal errors in two Polish names. The Kaczynski family home is in Zoliborz, not Zoliborcz. The rz on the end of Zoliborz is not the ‘ch’ sound on the end of the non-existent Zoliborcz. It’s the difference […]

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Poland’s Disaster: Jaroslaw Kaczynski

Part of the human drama of the Polish aircrash lies in the fact that President Lech Kaczynski had a twin brother Jaroslaw, who shared with him all the tumultous ups and downs of their political and private life. Jaroslaw never married, and lived with the twins’ now elderly mother Jadwiga. […]

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Poland’s Disaster: The Passenger List

Here from the Polish Interior Ministry’s website is the official list of victims of the Smolensk disaster, excluding the crew. Look at this unbearably poignant series of photographs from Poland’s main tabloid Fakt, which like the rest of the Polish media is doing a magnificent job. I have highlighted those nineteen […]

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The Legacy Of Lech and Maria Kaczynski: Si Monumentum Requiris, Circumspice

Here (below) is the text of my appreciation of the life and times of Lech and Maria Kaczynski, now up at Radio Free Europe. Welcome Steyn Online readers. * * * * * I attended a smart Warsaw dinner party in 2006, not long after the Kaczynski twins and their Law […]

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