What’s Polish for: Can I fondle your buttocks?

"Proszę, czy mogę pogładzić twój miękki tyłeczek"?

Just one of the lines in a small ‘tourist glossary’ thought up by an Irishman who is a frequent visitor to the weekend tourist hotspot of Krakow.

The phrases in the little dictionary are written out in English phonetics, so the above sentence I suppose would read:

‘Proshe, che moge pogwaghich tfoy mienki tewechek?

The phrase book also includes other chat up lines (all bound to fail, of course) such as: "Jestem twoim niewolnikiem". (I am your slave’).

There have been many stories in the press about Brits on stag party weekends in Krakow, Wroclaw, etc getting stinking drunk and upsetting the delicate sensibilities of the oh, so cultured inhabitants of the city. This is just the latest of them.

The Super Express tabloid even reported in the oh so supiorior tone of the most snobbish of Krakovian – “The locals are disgusted’….’They [drunken British - Irish] deserve a punch in the nose…’. Blah, blah…

They seem to miss the point that the phrasebook is obviously a silly joke.

They also seem to forget that there are well over half a million Poles in Britain and Ireland and many of them are going out nighttime and getting completely hammered.

And long may they do so.

Being a half Brit/Irish myself, I find some of the antics of the British and Irish in Poland slightly embarrassing. But let’s get this in perspective: a few hundred lads having a good time in Krakow should be met with as much tolerance as a few hundred thousand Poles should be welcomed in the UK and Ireland.

The Super Express tabloid – which when reporting the story adopts a high condescending tone (in amongst pictures of topless women and other tabloid trash) is merely reproducing some of the rubbish journalism that has appeared in the British press about Poles since they arrived in high numbers three years ago.

Super Express deserves a punch on the nose.

Update: I can reveal (as the hacks would say) that the origin of this ‘phrase book’ is actually TWO YEARS OLD - that's before the cheap airlines started flying over the British stag parties. This dumb Polish tabloid story is not even fresh news! Dumb, gets dumber. Cheap journalism gets cheaper still. See online phrase book here.

Polonophobia: it's not a phobia

Or: why the personal is not the political.

Since psychologist George Weinberg first described, in 1969, what is basically a politically and culturally produced prejudice as homophobia, the term has slowly grown in acceptance. The EU has even passed a resolution describing a whole country - Poland - as homophobic (i.e. ‘Polish homophobia’).

Due to the success of this term, anyone who finds a point of view objectionable simply labels it ‘a phobia’ - an irrational psychological response.

It all started of course with xenophobia; then came homophobia; then Polonophobia (Poles are not immune to this nonsense either); more recently we have Islamophobia; as a reaction to that we now have Christophobia (yawwwwn) and Judophobia (I mean – we used to have a perfectly good word for that: anti-Semitism).

How to de-politicize a prejudice in one easy step – label it a mental disorder.

Sociologist Frank Furedi demonstrates here how the rise of the ‘phobia’ term coincides with the growth of ‘therapy culture’ in the West and lists five good reasons why politically progressive people should not be using this word.

Me, I'm getting phobo-phobic.

More?
Polish homophobia? It’s not a phobia, the beatroot, April 22

Poland to ban the Scottish kilt?

Apparently, kilt-wearing, pants-less drunken Scots on stag nights have been puking on pavements in Krakow, Wroclaw, Warsaw, and then flashing their naughty bits at innocent passers-by.

Scary!

The Glasgow Daily record reports:

The good burghers of Krakow and Warsaw are sick of the sight of boozed-up "men in skirts" flashing their bits in the street.

And the authorities in another popular stag night destination, the city of Wroclaw, have become so fed-up with the badly behaved minority of Scots they are seriously considering outlawing the kilt.

With beer at £1 a pint and £50 flights from Prestwick, Poland is fast becoming a favourite destination for Scots stag parties.

It reminds me of the joke:

Englishman: What’s worn under your kilt?

Kilt wearing Scot:: Nothing, it’s all in perrrfect working order!

But banning kilts is authoritarian and so this blog can not support such a move.

Why don’t they just ban Scots not wearing any underpants under their kilts? It could be a job creation scheme. A new Polish ‘underpants’ police force, perhaps?

We could give them little mirrors on the end of sticks, like they use when checking for car bombs.

East Europeans get caught up in UK gun panic

A Lithuanian vet has been putting ‘hundred’s of guns on to the streets of London and Manchester’, apparently.

The Guardian reports:

‘Hundreds of relatively low-powered gas pistols are known to have been converted to discharge live ammunition in a workshop in the [ancient Lithuanian market town of Kedainiai] before being smuggled into the UK. Improbably enough, the man at the heart of the trade was a local vet.’

The vet, Andrius Raba, had apparently been buying up cheap Russian air guns, fitting them with silencers and strengthening the barrels to take higher powered ammunition and then selling them on to gun-crazed Brits at 300 pounds a time.

This news comes in the wake of four nasty murders of young guys in south London, where I am from. One of the victims was only 15 years old.

Of course, a media panic has been full of the usual hand wringing about the growth of gun crime in the UK and what to do about it.

With relief then, they can point to outsiders from places like Lithuania for being partly responsible. Blaming outsiders brings, as usual, some comfort – nasty foreigners are to blame for all our problems.

But the reality of the ‘growing menace of gun crime’ in the UK is very different from the media fantasy land.

Despite gory stories of guns flooding into the UK over the past ten years, the figures of homicide from gun shot in that period look like this:

1998/1999 - 49
1999/2000 - 62
2000/2001 - 72
2001/2002 - 95
2002/2003 - 80
2003/2004 - 68
2004/2005 - 77
2005/2006 - 50

So, over the last few years murder from a bullet has been falling in Britain, not rising.

Those figures account for one murder in ten in the UK. You are much more likely to be murdered by a hand or a boot than you are a gun.

So though ‘Eastern Europeans’ have been flooding into Britain, bringing their custom made air pistols with them, the UK is not in the middle of a gun massacre, and death from fire arms remains a very rare occurrence in Britain.

More?

Shooting down the myth of the ‘gun culture’, spiked

Desperate Poles in UK eat fish heads for Christmas!

No, they don’t actually. But the Wall Street Journal thinks they do in the Beatroot’s nomination for the Most Stupidest Article 2006.

Yup, Poles eat carp, not turkey, for Christmas dinner. And Christmas dinner is not on Christmas Day but on Christmas Eve.

All very confusing. It’s certainly got the angling correspondent for the WSJ, Peter Fritch, in a flap. Reporting from Dorking, Surrey, in southern England he writes:

‘…the fish has great value to hungry Polish fishermen [in the UK] armed with nets, wet suits and even the occasional spear gun.

Unlike Britons, to whom carp are inedible bottom feeders fit only for sport, Poles and other Eastern Europeans eat them as a matter of culinary tradition. And many of the half million Poles who have streamed into Britain in recent years love to serve them on Christmas Eve -- starting with a nice fish head soup.’

Fish head what? Who told Fritch that? On Christmas Eve Poles usually have either beetroot (of course) or mushroom soup. Still, what’s a few facts when you are on a mission.

And note the reference to ‘hungry Poles’…those eastern European desperados…

Poles – Fritch goes on, and on - deprived of the familiar piscine delicacy in Britain are apparently lining the UK’s river banks angling for carp. And this, according to the Wall Street Journal, is a recipe for... culture clash [?].

‘The culture clash [I warned you] threatens to escalate as Britain's river banks become increasingly crowded. In many places the Poles' heavy fishing artillery isn't welcome. "It's a sore point with local anglers when they see (Poles) walking the banks with spear guns and nets [!] ," says Peter Arnold, proprietor of Pro-Angling, a bait and tackle store north of London.’

And Poles are so desperate to get their hands on the slippery beasts that they will poach them from private property!

‘Tony Pearson, owner of several fisheries in county Essex, says he has caught people stealing carp. He has taken the radical step of banning all Eastern Europeans from his lakes.’

The article – read the whole gory lot here – is a sign of the times; when the humble Polish Christmas carp can be an excuse for even a British fishing correspondent [!] to get in some reference to the problems caused by the immigration apocalypse heading the UK’s way.

Personally I have the opposite problem: trying to get my hands on a decent turkey. But then, that's a different kettle of fish...

Merry Christmas everybody from the beatroot.

More ?
Interestingly, Mr. Rago, an assistant editorial features editor for the Wall Street Journal wrote an article this week called The Blog Mob : written by fools to be read by imbeciles. about how all us bloggers are a bunch of half-wits and our readers not that much better.

Well, us bloggers may be fools, Mr Rago, but on the evidence of the above is the WSJ any better?

Is the Suffolk Strangler a Pole?

Update Monday morning…Englishman arrested on suspicion of 5 murders in Suffolk… more here

Well, according to our old Polonia-phobic friend, the UK Daily Mail, someone from Poland is the main suspect.

Under the headline Strangler police hunt BMW Pole, the Mail reports that Suffolk police are looking for a BMW driving ‘Eastern European’ who works on a farm near where the body of one of the murdered women was found.

One of the murder’s 5 victims (and maybe now a sixth - this story gets nastier everyday), Anneli Alderton, was last seen getting into a BMW.

A witness spoke to the Daily Mail anonymously:

"I noticed the [Eastern European’s] BMW parked on a dirt track and because it matched the description of the car the police were looking for and because it was so close to where the bodies were found, I tried to find out who it belonged to.

"I spoke to someone who knows the owner of the car and he isn't around at the moment.

"I phoned the police and a forensic team was sent down to examine the car. It might just be a coincidence but it was too obvious to ignore."

Last night the BMW was no longer parked on the track and there was no-one at the man's home, where the lights had been left on all day.

Not really much to go on here and the British media is rife with speculation at a time when police are sensibly keeping what evidence they have under raps.

The Daily Mail has been leading a (successful) campaign (here or here or here) against Romanian and Bulgarians being allowed to work in Britain when they join the EU in a few weeks time. They have been doing this by printing all sorts of negative stories about the catastrophic effect of having so many Poles and others from CEE in Britain.

Call me a cynic but isn’t it a bit strange that this ‘exclusive’ report pinning the blame on a Pole just happens to brake in the Mail?

And do I get the impression the Daily Mail, which has led the eastern European scare campaign in Britain, would love it if the apparent serial killer just happened to come from one of the countries that they see has been ‘swamping’ their green and pleasant land with immigrants?

More
Turning murder into reality TV, Spiked

Tony Blair says Poles are not racist and intolerant

Which rather contradicts what the Head of UK’ Commission for Racial Equality, Trevor Philips, said last month.

Blair said today in a speech calling for more tolerance from recent immigrants coming to the UK, who he sees as yet another ‘threat to our way of life’.

"It is not a problem with Britons of Hindu, Afro-Caribbean, Chinese or Polish origin. Nor is it a problem with the majority of the Muslim community [but] a new and virulent form of ideology associated with a minority of our Muslim community".

Though appearing to give the Poles a clean bill of health, Blair seems to think that the UK’s problems come from outside, from crazy mullahs indoctrinating our kids.

His speech from Downing Street then takes a convoluted turn. In a speech about immigrants and their supposed intolerance to other faiths, etc, Blair started going on about the 7/7 bombers, which were second or third generation immigrants, born and bred in northern England. Washing Post quotes him saying:

"Their emphasis was not on shared values but separate ones, values based on a warped distortion of the faith of Islam," Blair said. "It has thrown into sharp relief, the nature of what we have called, with approval, 'multicultural Britain.'"

He said that the London attacks had caused, for the first time in a generation, "an unease, an anxiety, even at points _ a resentment," about Britain's tradition of offering refuge to people from across the globe and allowing people of all religions to practice their faith.

He said money allocated to faith groups would now be tightly controlled, called on all faith schools to team up with schools teaching a different religion and hailed laws that require preachers arriving in Britain from overseas to be able to speak English.

The last bit is very bizarre. If preachers arriving from Britain can’t speak English then that makes them a lot less able to influence ‘our kids’.

A very confused speech by Blair, which tries to sidestep the fact that it is indeed something about multiculturalism and a lack of a uniting value system in the UK that might just be to blame for Britain’s problems. But at least the supposedly racist Poles get left out it this time.

President Kaczynski goes to London

He’s met with Tony Blair and my dear Queen, Lizzie II.

It's part of a three day visit ending Thursday. But how’s the visit going? Well here are two reports.

The first is from Radio Polonia:

The London visit of the Polish head of state has been seen as a very fruitful and friendly one...In fact it is said that Lech Kaczynski did not have such friendly talks with any other officials during his foreign trips as he did with PM Tony Blair. Both politicians underlined they shared common opinions and stand on matters concerning the EU and NATO as well as energy security.

And now look at this report from thisislondon.co.uk. Notice any difference?

‘Thousands of 'feckless' Poles are raking in unemployment benefits back home while doing 'very nicely' out of the British economy, according to the Polish President [!!?].

Lech Kaczynski also said Britain has become the 'destination of choice' for many of his countrymen, who have ended up jobless and homeless here.

He was flanked by Tony Blair as he made the remarks, which had to be translated into English before the Prime Minister realised he had been acutely embarrassed on his own doorstep.

Er...eh? Must be two different visits they are reporting. Or maybe Blair was being friendly when he was being embarrassed?

The full transcript of the press conference at Number 10 shows that Kaczynski was responding to a question from the press about what to do with the number of homeless and jobless Poles in Britain. He was also asked if he enjoyed his English Breakfast:

I did enjoy the English breakfast very much, yes, although it was a bit too hearty for me, a bit copious. The hotel is also exquisite, very well located in a wonderful part of London, close to Buckingham Palace. As regards unemployed Poles and homeless Poles in London and the UK, I believe that there are a number of people, not only from Poland but from other countries from the new European Union who are helpless or feckless naturally, but they seek a better life, they go abroad and currently the UK has become a destination of choice for such individuals. Poland does not shirk responsibility for its own citizens. We are aware that this problem exists, we are aware that there are people who aren't doing very well in life but this is something you find in all society. Poland does not seek to avoid its share of the responsibility. We know that there are those who have succeeded in the UK, who have jobs, who are doing very well thank you considering especially the differences between the wages in the UK and in Poland. But these people are registered as unemployed in Poland, so they are living a fiction and they are raising the unemployment figures in Poland while they are doing very nicely here in the UK and their unemployment benefits should rightly be sent to London. And this is something that we would like to do without, but like I said Poland is not avoiding its share of the burden.

Not so unreasonable. Blair responded:

...the vast majority of Polish people that come and work here are working very hard, they are very well regarded and on the whole as I find, and as I think most people do certainly in a city like London, they are both well respected and well liked.

The first report may have dodged the issue altogether, but the other reports are politically motivated, by the usual suspects in the British press, who are trying to stir it up all they can.

More?
Polish president blasts 'feckless' countrymen who flock to UK, Yorkshire Post
Leader in Poles Rap, Daily Mirror

The Sun really is going for it...

Brits are told to get ready for a tidal wave of Romanian gangsters:

ROMANIAN gangs commit 80 to 85 per cent of all cashpoint crime in Britain, The Sun can reveal.

The staggering figure is contained in a secret Cabinet memo which warns the crooks will be joined by a wave of new recruits after Romania and Bulgaria join the EU in January.

The classified document, seen by The Sun, predicts a devastating rise in street violence, people-trafficking, prostitution, tax dodges and cash card fraud.

Gasp! The government memo, apparently written by EU minister Geoff Hoon warns that Romanian and Bulgarian women will be trafficked into the country. Aggressive beggars will threaten money out of the British in the streets. They will steal your mobile, pick your pocket, will smuggle cigarettes and contraband in to the country.

I have no idea how the British government thinks it knows all this. It’s seems incredible. Literally. But Sun readers don’t care: they see an Eastern European apocalypse coming round the corner. In the comments section at the Sun’s web page MarcCoden says:

‘Why have we lost our National identity? Why are we the Country that these people will choose to come to? We are a joke under this Government? Blair is to blame for this and his ridiculous policies.’

Don’t think so, Marc. Actually, more Poles have gone to live and work in Germany than they have to the UK (the figure in the link should read 250,000 by the way). But I am not hearing the same level of screaming about this issue there, even though Poles do not have full rights to work in Germany! And Romanians will probably be joining the 500,000 Romanians already in Italy.

Still, whatever – Eastern Europeans are now well and truly a political issue in Britain. Shame. Immigration is an issue again. And I thought Britain had got rid of this kind of crap years ago.

Now let's watch the left spring into action to defend Eastern Europeans. They have not done much up until now. The silence on the lefty blogs has been deafening.

Waiting...

More?
Eastern Europeans: the new 'white niggers', Spiked, November 3

Fear of the Polish Plumber, part 333

Has the Head of Britain’s Commission for Racial Equality got an Eastern European problem?

Here are words of deep wisdom from Trevor Phillips of the CRE, on the BBC this week. He said that the new wave of Poles etc to Britain are, “frankly with attitudes towards black people which date back to the 1950s. That is unacceptable.”

The remarks come the same week as the UK announced that it will not be accepting workers from Romania and Bulgaria when they join the EU next year.

Poles, of course, don’t have the same experience of having a significant number of immigrants come to Poland from their recently collapsed empire (coincidentally, in the photo above, Trevor Phillips is holding up his semi-prestigious OBE – Order of the British Empire, awarded to him by the Queen. I bet he'is now a proud member of the New Labour Establishment). Some may be a bit naive but Poles aren’t a threat to the national way of life in the UK, as that idiot Phillips seems to suggest.

What is shocking is that nobody has complained about his remarks. It seems that it’s true: PC speech code means that the only types of people you can say negative things about these days are central and eastern Europeans and the white working classes.

Nobody has complained apart, that is, from Mick Hume in the Times, who, after comparing the Head of the Commission for Racial Equality unfavorably to Borat writes:

Phillips’s veiled warning that Eastern Europeans could cause a “conflict of diversity” reveals what today’s elite think of the white working classes — as an ignorant ethnic pogrom waiting to happen.

Like Borat’s joke, the furore over Eastern Europeans is really about us rather than them. The way we look at immigrants reflects how we see ourselves. In a more self-confident moment, the British authorities would not be worrying about whether a few thousand hard-working Bulgars might tear apart the fabric of society.

Helping Poles in Scotland – it’s child’s play!

Clueless Scottish politicians turn to the kids for ideas on how to fight sectarianism.

As I have noted before, it is in parts of Scotland and Northern Ireland where you find the strongest negative feelings towards Polish immigration. There have been beatings. Many complain that ‘they are taking our jobs’ etc.

For instance, a reporter for the Scotsman, talking to people in an Edinburgh pub, reports:

Out of earshot [of the Polish barmaid] a young single local man is quick to voice his anger. Taking a swig of his drink, the 21-year-old, who refuses to reveal his real name, rants: "I can't get a job because all the Polish are taking over here. The Waterfront is full of Polish, and people from other countries. The fish factories are the same.

"I've been trying to get a job for about two years and I'm really angry. A lot of other people feel like I do too about all the immigrants…I think people in the city should be given jobs first."

You would think they were talking in an area with many thousands out of work, wouldn’t you? But Edinburgh has an unemployment rate of just 2.2%, one of the lowest in Scotland. Poland has an unemployment rate of 15%.

Others think that the attacks against Poles are part of the sectarian divide in Scotland (and N. Ireland) between Protestants and Catholics.

To the rescue comes the Scottish Assembly (a glorified parliament) with a great new idea. The Evening Times reports:

The Scottish Executive has launched a new initiative aimed at promoting a clear, concise and strong anti-sectarian view.

And young people aged between five and 22 who can sum up the country's stance on sectarianism are being asked to submit their ideas.

A five year old? Submit ideas? About sectarianism?

It really has come to something when the political class in the UK are so clueless that they have to create Kindergarten Think Tanks to sort out the sectarian divide.

Polish goalkeeper given red card by Scottish authorities for making sign of the cross!

Artur Boruc, Celtic FC’s goalie has been cautioned by the Glasgow Fiscal Prosecutor for making the Catholic sign of the cross before a game with Rangers, his team’s arch Protestant rivals.

Confused? You shouldn’t be. Welcome to the wonderful world of Scottish sectarian football.

The religious Lifesite reports:

According to the Crown Office, [back in January this year] the goalkeeper of Celtic, Artur Boruc, gave three gestures, which incensed the home crowd of the opposing Rangers during a heated Old Firm match at Ibrox stadium in Glasgow. Artur Boruc, gave a “V” for victory and an obscene gesture toward the crowd; however the crowd also complained about Boruc’s crossing himself at the start of the second half of the February 12 match.

For clueless non-football fans I should explain that Glasgow has two teams: Celtic, which is traditionally supported by Scottish Catholics, and Rangers, which is followed by Scottish Presbyterians.

Apparently, a Polish goalkeeper who crosses himself for luck can be cautioned for inflammatory behavior.

Church spokesman Peter Kearney found the decision "alarming" and said, "It is extremely regrettable that Scotland seems to have made itself one of the few countries in the world where this simply religious gesture is considered an offence."
According to the Sunday Herald, the Catholic Church is seeking the Crown Office to clarify “whether or not it deems the sign of the cross to be an offensive action, which is the equivalent of gratuitous hand gestures”.

“This is not simply a Catholic issue but a human rights issue,” said a spokesman for the Church. “Freedom of religion is part of the UN Declaration on Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights.”

Human right? This is football, mate. It’s just a game.

Poor old Artur Boruc must also be confused about the other ‘offensive’ gesture he made to the crowd: putting two fingers up in the air.

Of course, in Britain this is the sign of ‘F#ck off!’…but in Poland the same gesture is made with only one finger – as in ‘Spin on it’.

And I am sure that fans of the Protestant Glasgow Rangers – no angels themselves - can take a couple of innocent gestures made by a newly arrived Polish goalkeeper (he’s only been playing at Celtic since last season).

One of the favorite songs of Rangers fans that can be heard sung at the Ibrox stadium (and a song that has got the PC UEFA football authorities up in arms recently) goes something like this:

Hullo, hullo, we are the Billy Boys!
Hullo, hullo, you’ll know us by our noise!
We’re up to our knees in Fenian blood!
Surrender or you’ll die!

Winding up the opposite team is part of the game of football. Always has been.

Scottish racists sent to Poland to learn about tolerance!

Thugs who have attacked Polish immigrants in Scotland will be sent to Poland to make them more caring and sharing.

Here is a little gem in the Times (London)

A [Scottish] council is planning to send teenage troublemakers to Poland to learn about tolerance after a sharp increase in attacks on migrant workers and their children.

Moray Council [northeast Scotland] wants young Scots who have been involved in racist attacks to make the trip to help them to understand why so many Poles seek work in Britain.

A council spokesman said that children of migrants were hurt in racist incidents every week. “A lot of the kids involved are from third-generation unemployed families and some of them have been asking their youth workers why Polish people need to come here, why they can’t stay in their own country,” he said.

So, let’s get this one clear. Scottish youth from unemployable families who have attacked Poles who have come to Scotland to work, will be sent to Poland to show them why so many Poles leave Poland in the first place?

Moray has seen a growth in redundancies in some areas recently, though still has an unemployment rate of only 2.6%, which is below the average for both Scotland and the UK as a whole.

Many have the suspicion that the Pole bashing young Scots are not being given a punishment but a bit of a holiday.

“Och, I”, says Scotish racist thing when he turns up in Warsaw, “now I see why yer come to Scootland in the furrst place. Yer drink pissy beer, yer clean yer teeth with hot water (?) and yer put tomata ketchup all over yer pizza!”

But still, a treat’s in store when they get to Poland. These delightful Scottish kids (bless them!) are going to be taught about ‘tolerance’. Tolerance for who, exactly? Gays? German journalists? Unemployed gay German journalists?

I think Moray's Council’s new bright idea (“Let’s teach them, not chastise them", liberal therapist gurgle gurgle) - scheduled to start next summer - needs some…..(to be polite)...rethinking?

More? Other race attacks in the UK recently...
Victim is discharged, Lancashire telegraph, Aug 17
Polish men hurt in 'race attack', BBC Aug 17
[Belfast] House set on fire in racist attack on Poles, Observer, Aug 13
Search for Polish man's attackers, BBC, Aug 11

Jacek the Ripper?

The Ripper was a Polish Jew. That was the opinion of the head of the investigation into the Whitechapel murders in 1888, according to ‘evidence’ released today.

Handwritten notes by Chief Inspector Donald Sutherland Swanson, just put in the Crime Museum at Scotland Yard, identify Aaron Kosminski as the man who butchered at least five women in the one of the most infamous unsolved cases of all time.

This is Local London reports:

‘JACK The Ripper was a Polish immigrant who died aged 54 in a Hertfordshire mental asylum - 31 years after he terrorised the dark streets of east London.

Mr Swanson wrote in the margins of the memoirs of the retired assistant commissioner Robert Anderson, "The Lighter Side of My Official Life", that the killings stopped after Kosminski realised detectives had identified him as the prime suspect.

Kosminski, who worked as a barber after arriving in London in 1882, was never interviewed because he was insane.

The only eyewitness to The Ripper murders was alleged to have identified Kosminski in an identity parade at a Metropolitan Police convalescent home in Brighton.
But Swanson wrote that the witness refused to testify against Kosminski because they were both Jewish.’

Aha! Another Jewish conspiracy theory.

Kosminski has always been identified as one of the numerous suspects of the grizzly murders. But many feel that the guy was only included in the list due to the wide spread anti-Semitism in London at the time.

But it still hasn’t stopped local journalists, apparently, from rehashing the story.

In fact many of the suspects were Polish Jews. Apart from Kosminski there were:

David Cohen (1865–1889). A Polish Jew whose incarceration at Colney Hatch asylum roughly coincided with the end of the murders.

John Pizer (1850-1897). Pizer was a Polish Jew who worked as a bootmaker in Whitechapel.

According to the great casebook.org, widespread social unrest in the East End of Victorian London led to:

‘...the belief that this “rising tide of Jewish immigration was reducing native Englishmen to destitution [and this] led to an increase in popular anti-Semitism”.

This anti-Semitism found its expression in a deliberate attempt to connect the Jews with the Whitechapel murders.'

Jack the Ripper, who ever he was (and who really cares?) was of more use as an anonymous monster than as someone who could be identified.

Much like today’s terrorists it is comforting, perhaps, to think of them as from an alien culture ‘over there’ – as a threat from outside.

Which is why it was such a horrible shock for Londoners to discover that the 7/7 bombers were not from ‘over there’ at all, but seemingly normal British Asians who played cricket at the weekends and plotted their weird trip to London on a white water rafting trip in Yorkshire.

For what it is worth, one of the most promising suspects was actually a Catholic Pole, Seweryn Antonowicz Kłosowski. A trained doctor from Warsaw medical school, he took the English alias George Chapman when he came to London from Nargornak in 1887.

He was convicted of murdering three women, including his wife. So, undoubtedly a very nasty man indeed who had all the skills to do the darstedly deeds.

But there again, Polish Catholics can make convenient folk-devils, too.

Polish cockles mafia in UK

Some Poles are falling into dangerous jobs in their search for the good life in the UK.

Two years tomorrow, 18 Chinese immigrants drowned when poaching shellfish off the English coast.

Last week a gang of Polish workers had to be rescued – on two different occasions - off the coast of Solway Firth in Scotland, digging for cockles in the sands when the tide cut them off from the shore.

At night, when the tide is low, immigrant workers go out with buckets – sometimes as much as eight miles from the shore line, and look for cockles.

Sometimes, however, the cocklers get trapped by the returning tide. The BBC:

South of Scotland MSP Mr Morgan said he fears an incident where many lives could be lost.

He said: "The potential dangers of the upper Solway cannot be overstated when we are talking about large numbers of people undertaking such operations miles from the shore in the middle of the night.

"Some of the gangs have ventured as much as eight miles offshore.

"Add to that the treacherous conditions underfoot and the ease with which someone who does not know the area could lose their bearings in the dark, as well as the notorious tides and we have without doubt a recipe for disaster."

But Poles – who have gone to Britain but not found a decent job – are also involved in twenty different gangs operating in the same area of Morecambe, England, where the Chinese cocklers died two years ago.

Polish gang masters team up with local ‘business people’ and recruit from the new, and out of work, community. Open Democracy reports:

Each day on Knott End and Pilling Sands, where the bay's flatness guarantees fast tides, two hundred Polish workers can be seen working in pairs. Many of them work two exhausting shifts a day, getting paid £10 per 25-kilo-bucket by the Polish gangmasters.

The cockles are sold for 1,000 pounds a tonne, processed in Wales, packaged in Holland and then retailed mainly in Spain and…Poland.

Polish plumber revisited

An article I wrote turns up in some weird and wonderful places.

The term the 'Polish plumber' was first used by French politician Philippe de Villiers (although this is disputed - see comment) to explain the fear that French voters felt about an expanded EU during the time of the referenda in May. I wrote an article about it called Polish plumber puts a spanner in the works.

Since then it has turned up in all sorts of places, such as freerepublic.com etc, UK Ratifiers for Democracy and even a blog with the title fuckfrance.com!

So it is with delight then that I learn that a political article such as that one about the EU has turned up in...Daily Plumbling News - a blog for plumbers!!!

Polish plumber puts a spanner in the works

A new spectre is haunting Europe. He’s called the Polish plumber. He’s not necessarily Polish, and he isn’t even necessarily a plumber. But, if some commentators are to be believed, he has been endowed with almost supernatural powers.

If you thought that a plumber was just someone who, at enormous cost, comes to your home and bleeds your radiator and fiddles with your ball-cock, then think again. The Polish plumber will fix your tap, for sure, but then he charges you less than the normal price!

“What’s his phone number”, I hear you cry. But that’s not all the Polish plumber can do. He can also affect the result of referendums on the EU constitutional treaty. He can persuade French people in particular to throw a bucket cold water over the EU political elite. He can make voters say “non” when the Eurocrats want them to say “Oui”.

A remarkable chap is the Polish plumber. But he is not actually a person at all. He is more a symbol of a European Union that has, for some, got out of control.

The Polish plumber is what many in the suddenly eurosceptic French media call the influx of goods, services and labour that have entered western Europe from the east since the expansion of the EU last May.

With 10% unemployment and almost zero percent growth the Polish plumber has come to be a figure to be feared in France. He is working harder, for longer and cheaper than many of his western European counterparts.

When the French voted ‘no’ on Sunday few were directly reacting to something that is in the 250 pages or so of legalistic and technical language that makes up the proposed – and now terminally ill – EU constitution. What the French were saying no to was not the constitution itself. They were saying no to what they are calling the ‘anglo-saxon model’ of what the EU has become.

And that’s a model that Poland has been moving towards – albeit slowly and painfully at times – ever since the fall of communism sixteen years ago.

The model that the Polish economy is working towards is the one they have in Britain. During the general election there a few weeks ago the New Labour government loved to trumpet the talents of their finance minister, Gordon Brown, as the reason for the UK’s uninterrupted and healthy level of economic growth and low level of unemployment.

But the real reason why the British economy is out performing the German and French is that these are structurally different economies, and have been since the reforms forced through by the Margaret Thatcher governments of the 1980’s.

Britain, unlike France, has comparatively low levels of tax; it has a comparatively flexible and mobile work force; it has comparatively high levels of home ownership. It also helps that the UK, many argue, has not adopted the Euro as its currency.

But the French do not like this model. They wave a derisive baguette in the direction of the UK and point to the fact that British employees work longer hours than anyone in Europe. They snigger at Britain’s second class and under invested public services. The French like their 35-hour week and they like their joy de vivre and that’s the way they want to keep things. They do not want the anglo-saxon model that most in the ex-communist countries, including Poland, are trying to adopt.

And they do have something to fear. The change is painful. I have experienced the transformation from a regulated economy to a freer one twice now. Once in the 1980’s in Britain – and it wasn’t pretty – and now again in Poland. And it is still pretty ugly.

You get mass unemployment, a widening gap between rich and poor, rising crime, homelessness, and public services, such as the health system, that are starved of funds and in need of intensive care.

Reforming Poles, on the other hand, point to the fact that the British economy is thriving at the moment and the French and the German economies have all but stagnated. And this leaves them vulnerable to the influx of cheaper labour and services epitomised by the Polish plumber.

It’s no coincidence that the British and the Irish are the only countries to have opened their arms without restrictions to Polish and other workers from the accession nations. Those two countries have the strength of economy to take the new competition from the Polish plumber. The French economy, like much of the Euro-zone, is weak and can’t react flexibly to the new circumstances that EU expansion has brought about.

Hence the no vote on Sunday.

Many Polish politicians here are quite pleased with the French voters. They didn’t want to have a referendum on the constitution anyway. One of things that the treaty is trying to change is the relative voting rights of each country. The way things are at the moment gives Poland more clout than if the constitution was voted through by all 25 members.

But it doesn’t seem now that this will be the case. The EU constitution as written at the moment is like a burst water pipe, with EU politicians desperately trying to stop the water from ruining their best carpet. What will happen in the future is uncertain.

But what is certain is that the Polish plumber has apparently put a spanner well and truly in the works.


Read on:
Polish plumber, Tony Blair and job fears unite to spell ‘Non’ The Herald, UK May 30

Polish plumber symbolic of all French fear about constitution Financial Times, UK May 27
‘Plumber’ image takes both sides in EU constitution debate
Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, IN - May 24,

This article originally was published on the Radio Polonia web site