The last post

Well...kind of. After three years and 646 posts, the beatroot is going into a summer hibernation - as all root vegetables should do at this time of year - only to re-emerge in the autumn bigger, better…etc.

We will be back in a slightly different form, however, taking a little more multimedia approach. And I am still going to write for other places. In fact, I can write more often elsewhere.

Thanks to everyone who has passed through here, at some time or another - and particularly the regular commentators, who helped give us a reputation for being a bit better than the ordinary blog.

And there has been quite a few folk passing by.

From January 1, 2008, we have had 289,248 hits with 238,814 uniques.

In April, the last full month, we got 79,542 hits and 65,303 uniques.

I know some commercial web sites in the English language in Poland that would be pleased with that.

The reasons for the summer break are many: over work, the need to recharge batteries, etc.

The Beatroot Republic

But mainly it’s because the beatroot has run out of a subject. This blog was really about Poland under the Fourth Republic - that two years of lunacy from the Law and Justice government.

It’s been six months since the demise of one of the strangest governments in Europe, certainly in my lifetime. And little did I expect to be caught up in it all.

So in case your memory has dimmed, let me remind you of how it was.

At one time we had a government with a cabinet made up of six inch nail swallowers, bearded ladies and other circus freaks.

The PM was Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leading the charge against what he thought was a cabal of communists, still clinging on, post 1989, in public institutions, government, organized crime and media. Jaroslaw didn’t just think there were legions of Reds huddled together under his bed - he was of the impression that they were under his nose, his hat and probably under his pet cat’s basket (I never did find out what his cat‘s name is, so let‘s call him Sebastian).

Jaroslaw launched an assault on what became known as the uklad by setting up a counter uklad. The nepotism that Poland has indeed laboured under since the fall of communism continued - except now we had a different bunch of cronies fighting over the spoils of being in power in this poor, long suffering country. Why a decent people like the Poles can’t ever get themselves a government good enough for them, we can only ponder on as one of those great unanswered questions - like, how large is the universe; or why it is we can’t tickle ourselves?

So close was the net he weaved around him that many expected Sebastian the Cat to get a job as Minister of Feline Affairs.

But he resisted. He did, however, end up by doing something even stranger - appoint Roman Giertych and Andrzej Lepper as his vice prime ministers.

This was too much for many of Kaczynski’s supporters, and it was all down, down from there into an inferno of madness.

Still, for a blogger, it was groszy from heaven. Every day brought some gory fascination. It was like watching the political equivalent of a slow motion car crash, on a loop.

If you came in late and have no idea what I am talking about then feel free to look back through this blog….and I never had to make one word of it up….Cue here wobbly screen like they do in old corny movies when cutting to another time, a memory, or when it’s a dream sequence.

Yeah, perhaps it was all a dream. And now we have woken up, haven’t we?

Haven’t we?

That's all, folks.