Saturday, 20 February 2010
History of ENIRDELM
As the 20th anniversary of our network in 2011 approaches, we are starting to compile a more detailed record of what we have achieved. ENIRDELM friends are invited to use this blog to send in any recollections they may have of conferences and networking activities during the last 19 years. Currently David Oldroyd is updating the list of conferences, themes and keynote speakers in order to place on the ENIRDELM web-site a fuller record than the one we have at present. The archive of newsletters on the web-site extends back only to April 2001, so any colleagues who have supplementary evidence of ENIRDELM (formerly ENIRDEM) and related activities might be able to fill out the achievements of our friendly network that we plan to celebrate next year. If you have any recollections, please send them to David or write them directly on this blog.
Wednesday, 3 February 2010
February musings
The temperature has risen above zero Celsius for only a few short hours during the last month and today the line from the old carol “snow has fallen , snow on snow, sno-ow on snow” sums up our “deep mid-winter”. While the snow falls, the Polish economy rises:
While most of Europe fell into recession last year, Poland’s economy grew faster than expected, fuelled by domestic consumption, infrastructure spending and a slump in the zloty that helped buoy Polish exports. The Central Statistical Office reported on Tuesday that GDP rose by 1.7 percent in 2009, compared to 5 percent in 2008, higher than economists’ mean expectations.
This buoyancy spilled over into the World Economic Forum in Switzerland:
In a speech on the first day of the World Economic Forum in Davos, National Bank of Poland head Slawomir Skrzypek explained that Poland could be prepared to begin the procedure for adopting the Euro by 2013 and that inflation would drop to a level allowed by the ERM-2 procedure as early as later this year. He noted that the country’s budget deficit and growing public debt remained the primary obstacle to Poland’s adoption of the EU common currency. Skrzypek also predicted that Poland’s GDP
would continue growing from the 1.7 percent rise for 2009 announced earlier in the day.
Joining the eurozone would not put an end to the ever-present indecisiveness about when to exchange my pension pounds for zloty. During my time here, the exchange rate has fluctuated from 7.08 to 3.98 PLN to the GBP (4.57 and falling today: I got 4.64 last week at my favourite money changing kiosk). Perhaps the amplitude of fluctuation would lessen for the GBP against the euro but the unpredictability would remain. The way we have resolved this is simply to change currencies when the need arises and subject ourselves to chance rather than trying to ‘play the currency market’. With the amounts we deploy, the aggregate amounts of gain and loss are not huge.
As the economy heals (though at what cost to the environment?) public health is also looking up and new health legislation will benefit the national exchequer at the same time:
Tough new anti-smoking legislation could inflict a painful financial blow on anybody lighting up in smoke-free places. Under new legislation being debated in parliament smokers will have to pay as much as PLN 500 if caught smoking in a no-smoking area. Five times the amount originally proposed.
“This will force smokers to conscientiously comply with the smoking bans,” argued Law and Justice’s (PiS) Boleslaw Piecha, head of the parliamentary health committee. The legislation reflects growing concern in Poland over the effects of passive smoking and could call time on Poland’s traditionally smoke-filled bars. But there was good news for bar and restaurant owners: the law excludes them from criminal responsibility if smokers flout the law on their premises. The only time they could feel the heat of financial retribution is when a minor lights up. Legislators are also pushing for a complete ban on smoking in bars, cafes and restaurants, similar to those enforced in Ireland and the United Kingdom.
Smoking also faces being banned at railway stations and bus stops, and smoking compartments on trains will be axed. But debate still rages over whether to ban electronic, or e-cigarettes. Battery powered, emitting vaporized nicotine without the carcinogenic elements found in tobacco, e-cigarettes are touted as an effective means of quitting smoking.
Smoking in restaurants and cafes is still practised, though less evident than in bygone years, and it will be so much pleasanter and less of an aggravation to any grumpy old man tendencies if the legislation comes into force. A local bee-keeper probably had a better case for being grumpy but took it all very positively, as this report from my source for all the above extracts, the New Poland Express, describes:
A 76-year old man declared dead woke up, inside his own coffin. Jozef Guzy, a bee-keeper from Katowice, suffered a heart attack and was pronounced dead upon the doctor’s arrival. But three hours later when his wife asked to see his body, it was found that he still had a pulse. “The undertaker saved my life. I am grateful and thank him very much. The first thing I’m going to do is give him a big pot of honey,” said Mr Guzy.
While most of Europe fell into recession last year, Poland’s economy grew faster than expected, fuelled by domestic consumption, infrastructure spending and a slump in the zloty that helped buoy Polish exports. The Central Statistical Office reported on Tuesday that GDP rose by 1.7 percent in 2009, compared to 5 percent in 2008, higher than economists’ mean expectations.
This buoyancy spilled over into the World Economic Forum in Switzerland:
In a speech on the first day of the World Economic Forum in Davos, National Bank of Poland head Slawomir Skrzypek explained that Poland could be prepared to begin the procedure for adopting the Euro by 2013 and that inflation would drop to a level allowed by the ERM-2 procedure as early as later this year. He noted that the country’s budget deficit and growing public debt remained the primary obstacle to Poland’s adoption of the EU common currency. Skrzypek also predicted that Poland’s GDP
would continue growing from the 1.7 percent rise for 2009 announced earlier in the day.
Joining the eurozone would not put an end to the ever-present indecisiveness about when to exchange my pension pounds for zloty. During my time here, the exchange rate has fluctuated from 7.08 to 3.98 PLN to the GBP (4.57 and falling today: I got 4.64 last week at my favourite money changing kiosk). Perhaps the amplitude of fluctuation would lessen for the GBP against the euro but the unpredictability would remain. The way we have resolved this is simply to change currencies when the need arises and subject ourselves to chance rather than trying to ‘play the currency market’. With the amounts we deploy, the aggregate amounts of gain and loss are not huge.
As the economy heals (though at what cost to the environment?) public health is also looking up and new health legislation will benefit the national exchequer at the same time:
Tough new anti-smoking legislation could inflict a painful financial blow on anybody lighting up in smoke-free places. Under new legislation being debated in parliament smokers will have to pay as much as PLN 500 if caught smoking in a no-smoking area. Five times the amount originally proposed.
“This will force smokers to conscientiously comply with the smoking bans,” argued Law and Justice’s (PiS) Boleslaw Piecha, head of the parliamentary health committee. The legislation reflects growing concern in Poland over the effects of passive smoking and could call time on Poland’s traditionally smoke-filled bars. But there was good news for bar and restaurant owners: the law excludes them from criminal responsibility if smokers flout the law on their premises. The only time they could feel the heat of financial retribution is when a minor lights up. Legislators are also pushing for a complete ban on smoking in bars, cafes and restaurants, similar to those enforced in Ireland and the United Kingdom.
Smoking also faces being banned at railway stations and bus stops, and smoking compartments on trains will be axed. But debate still rages over whether to ban electronic, or e-cigarettes. Battery powered, emitting vaporized nicotine without the carcinogenic elements found in tobacco, e-cigarettes are touted as an effective means of quitting smoking.
Smoking in restaurants and cafes is still practised, though less evident than in bygone years, and it will be so much pleasanter and less of an aggravation to any grumpy old man tendencies if the legislation comes into force. A local bee-keeper probably had a better case for being grumpy but took it all very positively, as this report from my source for all the above extracts, the New Poland Express, describes:
A 76-year old man declared dead woke up, inside his own coffin. Jozef Guzy, a bee-keeper from Katowice, suffered a heart attack and was pronounced dead upon the doctor’s arrival. But three hours later when his wife asked to see his body, it was found that he still had a pulse. “The undertaker saved my life. I am grateful and thank him very much. The first thing I’m going to do is give him a big pot of honey,” said Mr Guzy.
Friday, 8 January 2010
A strange theft, pension cuts for former communists and competition on the railways
It was footprints left in the deep snow that assisted police in tracking down the perpetrators of the theft described below (BBC WEBSITE 06.01.10) from the museum about half an hour’s drive from Tychy:
“Polish police want to question two Swedes over the theft of the "Arbeit macht frei" metal sign from the Nazis' notorious Auschwitz death camp. Polish prosecutors say one is believed to be the mastermind behind the theft, while the other helped with logistics in the 18 December operation. The sign was later found by police cut into three pieces, and five Polish men were arrested in the country's north. Polish authorities have said the theft was ordered by a foreigner. "We have asked Sweden to confirm the personal data of two people we suspect of participating in this crime and we want to question a third person from Sweden as well, but this person has no direct link with the case," Prosecutor Artur Wrona told a Krakow press conference on Wednesday. There has been speculation in Swedish and British media that the theft was ordered by neo-Nazi sympathisers, but there was no confirmation of this from Mr Wrona. He said the next steps would depend on the Swedes, from whom Polish authorities earlier requested assistance in the case.”
What on earth the commissioners of such a crime were planning to do with the trophy is a mystery that one day may become apparent.
The legacy o the communist era still manifests from time to time in Poland as the following article from the New Poland Express (08.01.10) illustrates:
“As of the beginning of this year, approximately 40,000 ex-communist secret service agents have been forced to take a significant cut in their pensions. The new law, originally set up in March last year, will drastically hit out at the privileges that former communist functionaries had come to expect. Until January 1, members of the Military Council of National Salvation (the military dictatorship set up in December 1981 to administer Poland during martial law) could expect to take home as much as PLN 8,500 a month in pensions. That figure has now been slashed to a much more modest sum of around PLN 4,000. Amongst the many ex-service men to be affected by the new law is General Wojciech Jaruzelski, who, along with members of the National Salvation Council, helped to suppress and crush the Polish worker’s Solidarity movement almost 30 years ago. The controversial decision to alter the pension law comes after widespread anger that people like Jaruzelski and others who helped to prevent the democratic movement have been enjoying comfortable lives in their senior years. However, despite the large cuts, some are still not completely satisfied citing the fact that the new figure is still too excessive - given the fact that a retired doctor can expect as little as PLN 2,000 a month. In total, roughly 40,000 people were employed within the communist secret services until its eventual collapse in 1989. The severity of their pension cuts will depend on their rank when they eventually left their post and the length of time they served.”
As all of you will be aware, the attempted act of suicidal multiple-homicidal terrorism perpetrated on Christmas Day that revealed flaws in the intelligence gathering systems, as well as the inadequacy of screening at airports. The predictable knee-jerk response to the crotch-concealed but failed explosive device will involve further massive expense and disruption for travellers world-wide, possibly to little avail. I tend to agree with Stephen Murgatroyd’s blog on the topic:
“The attempt to detonate a bomb concealed in the underwear of a passenger on a flight to the US as it was passing through Canadian airspace has caused a new wave of security measures for flights into the US from world-wide destinations. Airport security staff now routinely pats down passengers and there is talk of the deployment of full body scanners. These measures are theatre – they would not have detected the explosives carried by the would-be bomber. The full body scanners will detect small metal objects, but will not detect plastics or liquids – the core components of the Christmas bomb. Patting a person down, particularly when it becomes a routine, is also unlikely to detect liquids in small quantities. The substance of the bomb was just three ounces of a dry powder distributed in the front of a pair of underpants. The “trigger” was a liquid held in a plastic syringe. The measures now in place show that the response to a threat is to increase the extent of theatre in the hope that the show of deterrence will be sufficient to deter terrorists. The evidence is that the terrorists just get smarter. Most security measures in place at airports are about appearances, not about the reality of preventing terrorism: the bomber passed through security at a major airport and was on a no-fly list”.
EU membership continues to bring potential benefits to Poles:
"Deutsche Bahn plans to open new rail lines to Poland’s largest business cities, including Warsaw, Gdynia, Katowice, Krakow and Poznan. Opening of the routes by the German railway company was made possible by new EU rules aimed at increasing competition in rail travel. Deutsche Bahn still needs to obtain licenses to operate in Poland, which it should have by March. This would allow it to begin offering service later in 2010. Industry analysts say that the entry of Deutsch Bahn onto the Polish market should lead to increased competition and a drop in ticket prices, as the two companies vie for customers." New Poland Express (08.01.10)
“Polish police want to question two Swedes over the theft of the "Arbeit macht frei" metal sign from the Nazis' notorious Auschwitz death camp. Polish prosecutors say one is believed to be the mastermind behind the theft, while the other helped with logistics in the 18 December operation. The sign was later found by police cut into three pieces, and five Polish men were arrested in the country's north. Polish authorities have said the theft was ordered by a foreigner. "We have asked Sweden to confirm the personal data of two people we suspect of participating in this crime and we want to question a third person from Sweden as well, but this person has no direct link with the case," Prosecutor Artur Wrona told a Krakow press conference on Wednesday. There has been speculation in Swedish and British media that the theft was ordered by neo-Nazi sympathisers, but there was no confirmation of this from Mr Wrona. He said the next steps would depend on the Swedes, from whom Polish authorities earlier requested assistance in the case.”
What on earth the commissioners of such a crime were planning to do with the trophy is a mystery that one day may become apparent.
The legacy o the communist era still manifests from time to time in Poland as the following article from the New Poland Express (08.01.10) illustrates:
“As of the beginning of this year, approximately 40,000 ex-communist secret service agents have been forced to take a significant cut in their pensions. The new law, originally set up in March last year, will drastically hit out at the privileges that former communist functionaries had come to expect. Until January 1, members of the Military Council of National Salvation (the military dictatorship set up in December 1981 to administer Poland during martial law) could expect to take home as much as PLN 8,500 a month in pensions. That figure has now been slashed to a much more modest sum of around PLN 4,000. Amongst the many ex-service men to be affected by the new law is General Wojciech Jaruzelski, who, along with members of the National Salvation Council, helped to suppress and crush the Polish worker’s Solidarity movement almost 30 years ago. The controversial decision to alter the pension law comes after widespread anger that people like Jaruzelski and others who helped to prevent the democratic movement have been enjoying comfortable lives in their senior years. However, despite the large cuts, some are still not completely satisfied citing the fact that the new figure is still too excessive - given the fact that a retired doctor can expect as little as PLN 2,000 a month. In total, roughly 40,000 people were employed within the communist secret services until its eventual collapse in 1989. The severity of their pension cuts will depend on their rank when they eventually left their post and the length of time they served.”
As all of you will be aware, the attempted act of suicidal multiple-homicidal terrorism perpetrated on Christmas Day that revealed flaws in the intelligence gathering systems, as well as the inadequacy of screening at airports. The predictable knee-jerk response to the crotch-concealed but failed explosive device will involve further massive expense and disruption for travellers world-wide, possibly to little avail. I tend to agree with Stephen Murgatroyd’s blog on the topic:
“The attempt to detonate a bomb concealed in the underwear of a passenger on a flight to the US as it was passing through Canadian airspace has caused a new wave of security measures for flights into the US from world-wide destinations. Airport security staff now routinely pats down passengers and there is talk of the deployment of full body scanners. These measures are theatre – they would not have detected the explosives carried by the would-be bomber. The full body scanners will detect small metal objects, but will not detect plastics or liquids – the core components of the Christmas bomb. Patting a person down, particularly when it becomes a routine, is also unlikely to detect liquids in small quantities. The substance of the bomb was just three ounces of a dry powder distributed in the front of a pair of underpants. The “trigger” was a liquid held in a plastic syringe. The measures now in place show that the response to a threat is to increase the extent of theatre in the hope that the show of deterrence will be sufficient to deter terrorists. The evidence is that the terrorists just get smarter. Most security measures in place at airports are about appearances, not about the reality of preventing terrorism: the bomber passed through security at a major airport and was on a no-fly list”.
EU membership continues to bring potential benefits to Poles:
"Deutsche Bahn plans to open new rail lines to Poland’s largest business cities, including Warsaw, Gdynia, Katowice, Krakow and Poznan. Opening of the routes by the German railway company was made possible by new EU rules aimed at increasing competition in rail travel. Deutsche Bahn still needs to obtain licenses to operate in Poland, which it should have by March. This would allow it to begin offering service later in 2010. Industry analysts say that the entry of Deutsch Bahn onto the Polish market should lead to increased competition and a drop in ticket prices, as the two companies vie for customers." New Poland Express (08.01.10)
Monday, 21 December 2009
Christmas letter from Poland
The Copenhagen Climate Summit has come and gone, not surprisingly with the failure of 192 nations to reach consensus. The New York Times today points out that this framework for trying to reach an agreement is no longer viable after 15 such assemblies and that the big nations who are the greatest contributors of CO2 will probably have to form their own binding agreement.
“The process has become unworkable, many said, because it has proved virtually impossible to forge consensus among the disparate blocs of countries fighting over environmental guilt, future costs and who should referee the results.“The climate treaty process isn’t going to die, but the real work of coordinating international efforts to reduce emissions will primarily occur elsewhere,” said Michael Levi, who has been tracking the diplomatic effort for the Council on Foreign Relations. That elsewhere will likely be a much smaller group of nations, roughly 30 countries responsible for 90 percent of global warming emissions. It was these nations that Mr. Obama rallied in a series of dramatic encounters on Friday to finally ink a deal that starts a flow of financing for poor countries to adapt to climate change and sets up a system for major economies to monitor and report their greenhouse gas emissions.
This smaller group of nations will meet periodically to tackle a narrower agenda of issues, like technology sharing or the merging of carbon trading markets, without the chaos and posturing of the United Nations process. A version of this already exists in the 17-nation Major Economies Forum, which has been a model of decorum and progress compared with what the world saw unfold at the climate talks.
The deal worked out in Copenhagen is a political agreement forged by major emitters to curb greenhouse gases, to help developing nations build clean-energy economies and to send money flowing to cushion the effects of climate change on vulnerable states. But even if countries live up to their commitments on emissions, a stark gap remains — measured in tens of billions of tons of projected flows of carbon dioxide — between nations’ combined pledges and what would be required to reliably avert the risks of disruptive changes in rainfall and drought, ecosystems and polar ice cover from global warming, scientists say”.
I have been following the excellent blog of a fellow Yorkshireman Stephen Murgatroyd now based in Alberta, Canada whom I met in Turin recently. http://themurgatroydblog.blogspot.com Stephen encouraged me to read Christopher Booker’s sceptical treatment of the issues that I mentioned in my last letter and his daily blog has offered a more balanced perspective than most mainstream journalist. He offers a perspective similar to that referred to in the NYT extract quoted above:
“So what now? As far as the UN is concerned, it is busy organizing the next summit for Mexico in December 2010. They will try again to secure an agreement on CO2 emission reductions, funds for developing nations, technology transfer and intellectual property and the verification and governance mechanisms required to enforce what they hope will be a legally binding agreement. Talks have failed, so let us have more talks is the mantra.Others, like Bjorn Lomberg, the skeptial environmentalist, are suggesting that its is time to change the fundamental focus for negotiations. Rather than focus on a global, legally binding agreement on CO2 emissions, he suggests that the focus should be on technology and mitigation efforts. Rather than live out the fantasy of “stopping climate change”, we should instead focus at the international level on dealing with the effects of climate change, while at the same time reducing emissions through national and bilateral agreements. He is not saying “don’t cut emissions”, but rather he is promoting the idea that climate change is something that has to be managed through investments in innovative technology and adaptation.This is an unpopular view, since many have bought the fantasy that action now can stop climate change. The religious belief in CO2 reduction as mankind’s only choice is now invested in so heavily, in more ways than one, that shifting the basis for the conversation is politically and economically difficult. Nonetheless, it is what it needs to happen if the world is to make progress”.
Perhaps this theme is not what one might expect in a Christmas letter but it reflects my own high priority for action in my retirement and follows in the wake of the disappointment, likely inevitable given the impossibly large assembly of nations, in Copenhagen. Global consensus, let alone governance, seems doomed to remain a pipedream of idealistic liberals. The topic is, however not unrelated to the family news with which I started this letter, nor is that family news unrelated to the festive season that is, after all, at time for celebrating a birth seen by huge numbers of humans as heralding (angels notwithstanding) hope for the future. The two awaited grandsons (whose safe deliveries would both be unlikely were we living among the ‘bottom billion’ of our fellow humans) will be 40 years old in 2050 the date of the CO2 emission targets and their parents approaching my age. So my Christmas message, in addition to “Wesolych Swiat” (Joy to the World), “Wszystkego Najlepszego” (The best of everything) and “Szczesliwego Nowego Roku” (Happy New Year), is “Let’s try to keep these possibilities for the coming generations” and also spread them to those vast numbers in 2009 whose conditions are anything but hopeful.
With thanks to all of you who took the trouble to write your own greetings or send us cards, and with apologies if I appear too sombre for this festive season – From a snowy Zwakow-Suble at minus 15 as my wife and I prepare to walk the dog at 2300 hours through our quiet deserted streets.
“The process has become unworkable, many said, because it has proved virtually impossible to forge consensus among the disparate blocs of countries fighting over environmental guilt, future costs and who should referee the results.“The climate treaty process isn’t going to die, but the real work of coordinating international efforts to reduce emissions will primarily occur elsewhere,” said Michael Levi, who has been tracking the diplomatic effort for the Council on Foreign Relations. That elsewhere will likely be a much smaller group of nations, roughly 30 countries responsible for 90 percent of global warming emissions. It was these nations that Mr. Obama rallied in a series of dramatic encounters on Friday to finally ink a deal that starts a flow of financing for poor countries to adapt to climate change and sets up a system for major economies to monitor and report their greenhouse gas emissions.
This smaller group of nations will meet periodically to tackle a narrower agenda of issues, like technology sharing or the merging of carbon trading markets, without the chaos and posturing of the United Nations process. A version of this already exists in the 17-nation Major Economies Forum, which has been a model of decorum and progress compared with what the world saw unfold at the climate talks.
The deal worked out in Copenhagen is a political agreement forged by major emitters to curb greenhouse gases, to help developing nations build clean-energy economies and to send money flowing to cushion the effects of climate change on vulnerable states. But even if countries live up to their commitments on emissions, a stark gap remains — measured in tens of billions of tons of projected flows of carbon dioxide — between nations’ combined pledges and what would be required to reliably avert the risks of disruptive changes in rainfall and drought, ecosystems and polar ice cover from global warming, scientists say”.
I have been following the excellent blog of a fellow Yorkshireman Stephen Murgatroyd now based in Alberta, Canada whom I met in Turin recently. http://themurgatroydblog.blogspot.com Stephen encouraged me to read Christopher Booker’s sceptical treatment of the issues that I mentioned in my last letter and his daily blog has offered a more balanced perspective than most mainstream journalist. He offers a perspective similar to that referred to in the NYT extract quoted above:
“So what now? As far as the UN is concerned, it is busy organizing the next summit for Mexico in December 2010. They will try again to secure an agreement on CO2 emission reductions, funds for developing nations, technology transfer and intellectual property and the verification and governance mechanisms required to enforce what they hope will be a legally binding agreement. Talks have failed, so let us have more talks is the mantra.Others, like Bjorn Lomberg, the skeptial environmentalist, are suggesting that its is time to change the fundamental focus for negotiations. Rather than focus on a global, legally binding agreement on CO2 emissions, he suggests that the focus should be on technology and mitigation efforts. Rather than live out the fantasy of “stopping climate change”, we should instead focus at the international level on dealing with the effects of climate change, while at the same time reducing emissions through national and bilateral agreements. He is not saying “don’t cut emissions”, but rather he is promoting the idea that climate change is something that has to be managed through investments in innovative technology and adaptation.This is an unpopular view, since many have bought the fantasy that action now can stop climate change. The religious belief in CO2 reduction as mankind’s only choice is now invested in so heavily, in more ways than one, that shifting the basis for the conversation is politically and economically difficult. Nonetheless, it is what it needs to happen if the world is to make progress”.
Perhaps this theme is not what one might expect in a Christmas letter but it reflects my own high priority for action in my retirement and follows in the wake of the disappointment, likely inevitable given the impossibly large assembly of nations, in Copenhagen. Global consensus, let alone governance, seems doomed to remain a pipedream of idealistic liberals. The topic is, however not unrelated to the family news with which I started this letter, nor is that family news unrelated to the festive season that is, after all, at time for celebrating a birth seen by huge numbers of humans as heralding (angels notwithstanding) hope for the future. The two awaited grandsons (whose safe deliveries would both be unlikely were we living among the ‘bottom billion’ of our fellow humans) will be 40 years old in 2050 the date of the CO2 emission targets and their parents approaching my age. So my Christmas message, in addition to “Wesolych Swiat” (Joy to the World), “Wszystkego Najlepszego” (The best of everything) and “Szczesliwego Nowego Roku” (Happy New Year), is “Let’s try to keep these possibilities for the coming generations” and also spread them to those vast numbers in 2009 whose conditions are anything but hopeful.
With thanks to all of you who took the trouble to write your own greetings or send us cards, and with apologies if I appear too sombre for this festive season – From a snowy Zwakow-Suble at minus 15 as my wife and I prepare to walk the dog at 2300 hours through our quiet deserted streets.
Monday, 30 November 2009
December 2009 Letter from Poland
I may have finally put the lid on my professional consultancy career and moved into voluntary mode. My last paid work – an edited book of case studies of innovative schools in South East Europe and a policy paper on Albanian education - have been filed with the European Training Foundation and I am now free to devote to voluntary projects whatever energies and skills that I retain. Unless of course, something else emerges to tempt me out of retirement. So this seems like a good time to start a blog and join the rest of the self-indulgent invaders of cyberspace.
Paul Wachter is less self-indulgent. He is a journalist in New York and the son of my good friend in South Carolina. Paul has just launched a website http://www.againstdumb.com/ It is a goldmine for distant readers wanting to have quick access to an intelligently selected sample of US high quality journalism without subscribing. The articles are targeted against cant of all types but primarily in the arenas of politics, world events and culture.
My recent trip to the British Isles enabled me to reconnect with my own culture, origins and language as well as to deepen friendships and family solidarity. On my journey from Leeds to Dublin I observed the heartless Ryanair official charging two diminutive old ladies an extra 35 GBP each when their cabin bags proved 2 cms too wide to slide into the frame that they use to measure the 20x44x55 cms. dimensions allowed. My backpack was similarly too wide but I managed to sneak past with it on my back hidden from the censor’s view. Thankfully my overcoat has several large pockets in which I can secrete some of my new book purchases.
The usual nonsense of Polish politics runs on unabated. Lech Walesa, first president of post-Communist Poland is currently suing the present president Lech Kaczynski for libel as this extract from the New Poland Express 27.11.09 indicates:
A bitter and seething feud between Lech Walesa and President Lech Kaczynski found its way to court last week with the Solidarity icon suing the nation’s leader for libel. Their lawyers faced off in a Warsaw district court with Mr Walesa demanding an apology and PLN 100,000 in damages for the president saying that he was a communist spy, code-named Bolek, in a television interview last year. Making his anger over President Kaczynski’s comments evident the former union leader pledged to “get him”, and reminded the world that a court hearing in 2000 had already cleared him of being Bolek. “When he took office the president vowed to respect the law,” said an angry Mr Walesa. “I have a verdict from a court proving my innocence. A legal expert cannot behave this way, refusing to respect the verdicts of our justice system,” he added, referring to President Kaczynski’s possession of a doctorate in law. The president failed to put in an appearance although his lawyer called for the case to be dismissed, arguing that a district court had no jurisdiction over the nation’s head.
While the legal battle between former president and serving president provoked a flurry of interest in the Polish and international press, it also testified to the acidic relationship that now exists between two men who once battled communism together. “It’s fair to say that they are sworn enemies,” said Doctor Jacek Kucharczyk from Warsaw’s Institute of Public Affairs, adding that the state of affairs dates back to the early 1990s when the then President Walesa dismissed Mr Kaczynski from his staff. Since then this, coupled with the belief that Mr Walesa had worked for the communists and betrayed the Solidarity revolution, has fuelled a desire in the president, adds Doctor Kucharczyk, “to pay him back.” “For Kaczynski, he is the main enemy and a symbol of what has been wrong with Poland since 1989,” said Doctor Kucharczyk. “In fact he is not just a symbol of what is wrong, but a reason behind a transformation that in their view is phoney.”
The ‘phoney transformation’ refers to the view of Zaczynski and his twin brother, leader of the former government and now defeated Law and Justice Party ,that the communists apparatchiks were never properly rooted out (lustration is the term for this process). Many of them became the new capitalists and now enjoy great affluence, envy of which the populist Kaczynskis used to win the popular vote in becoming the previous ruling party.
As the Copenhagen Climate Summit approaches one would hope that Polish politicians might use their energies on larger issues focused on the future not the past. My own pre-occupation with ‘world-saving’ has been marginally challenged by recent encounters with people, literature and internet sites that question the validity of conventional wisdom arising from the UN IPCC’s studies and projections on global warming and the role of human-produced carbon emissions. In particular the case presented by Christopher Booker “The Real Global Warming Disaster” has caused me to start a reassessment of those threats. Reading the book coincided with revelations that East Anglia University Climate Research Unit, one of the four sources of IPCC climate data, had been manipulating their results: Professor Phil Jones, the climatologist at the centre of the leaked emails row, said last week that he “absolutely” stands by his research and any suggestion that the emails provide evidence of a conspiracy to manipulate or hide data that do not support the theory of man-made climate change was “complete rubbish”. This quotation from the Guardian has been superseded by subsequent calls for the professor’s resignation by the Guardian’s environmental campaigner George Monbiot: ‘I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign. Some of the data discussed in the emails should be re-analysed’ (Guardian, 27.11.09).
Good for Monbiot! His passionate and satirical columns and books have fuelled the highly emotional, even ‘religious’ attitudes of many ‘greens’ and he sees Jones as discrediting the campaign. I am trying to balance my own understanding by examining both what are tagged the ‘warmist’ and the ‘sceptic’ cases. The way that ‘conventional wisdom’ is constructed by the media and spreads around the globe to inform public policy underpins this conundrum. Certainly the upward trend of globally averaged temperature measurements has levelled off and declined since 1999 despite continuing increases in CO2 emissions. But ‘truth’ about causes, consequences and trends in the immensely complex global atmospheric system, past and present, and speculation about its future remains elusive.
Zwakow-Suble, Tychy, 29.11.09
Paul Wachter is less self-indulgent. He is a journalist in New York and the son of my good friend in South Carolina. Paul has just launched a website http://www.againstdumb.com/ It is a goldmine for distant readers wanting to have quick access to an intelligently selected sample of US high quality journalism without subscribing. The articles are targeted against cant of all types but primarily in the arenas of politics, world events and culture.
My recent trip to the British Isles enabled me to reconnect with my own culture, origins and language as well as to deepen friendships and family solidarity. On my journey from Leeds to Dublin I observed the heartless Ryanair official charging two diminutive old ladies an extra 35 GBP each when their cabin bags proved 2 cms too wide to slide into the frame that they use to measure the 20x44x55 cms. dimensions allowed. My backpack was similarly too wide but I managed to sneak past with it on my back hidden from the censor’s view. Thankfully my overcoat has several large pockets in which I can secrete some of my new book purchases.
The usual nonsense of Polish politics runs on unabated. Lech Walesa, first president of post-Communist Poland is currently suing the present president Lech Kaczynski for libel as this extract from the New Poland Express 27.11.09 indicates:
A bitter and seething feud between Lech Walesa and President Lech Kaczynski found its way to court last week with the Solidarity icon suing the nation’s leader for libel. Their lawyers faced off in a Warsaw district court with Mr Walesa demanding an apology and PLN 100,000 in damages for the president saying that he was a communist spy, code-named Bolek, in a television interview last year. Making his anger over President Kaczynski’s comments evident the former union leader pledged to “get him”, and reminded the world that a court hearing in 2000 had already cleared him of being Bolek. “When he took office the president vowed to respect the law,” said an angry Mr Walesa. “I have a verdict from a court proving my innocence. A legal expert cannot behave this way, refusing to respect the verdicts of our justice system,” he added, referring to President Kaczynski’s possession of a doctorate in law. The president failed to put in an appearance although his lawyer called for the case to be dismissed, arguing that a district court had no jurisdiction over the nation’s head.
While the legal battle between former president and serving president provoked a flurry of interest in the Polish and international press, it also testified to the acidic relationship that now exists between two men who once battled communism together. “It’s fair to say that they are sworn enemies,” said Doctor Jacek Kucharczyk from Warsaw’s Institute of Public Affairs, adding that the state of affairs dates back to the early 1990s when the then President Walesa dismissed Mr Kaczynski from his staff. Since then this, coupled with the belief that Mr Walesa had worked for the communists and betrayed the Solidarity revolution, has fuelled a desire in the president, adds Doctor Kucharczyk, “to pay him back.” “For Kaczynski, he is the main enemy and a symbol of what has been wrong with Poland since 1989,” said Doctor Kucharczyk. “In fact he is not just a symbol of what is wrong, but a reason behind a transformation that in their view is phoney.”
The ‘phoney transformation’ refers to the view of Zaczynski and his twin brother, leader of the former government and now defeated Law and Justice Party ,that the communists apparatchiks were never properly rooted out (lustration is the term for this process). Many of them became the new capitalists and now enjoy great affluence, envy of which the populist Kaczynskis used to win the popular vote in becoming the previous ruling party.
As the Copenhagen Climate Summit approaches one would hope that Polish politicians might use their energies on larger issues focused on the future not the past. My own pre-occupation with ‘world-saving’ has been marginally challenged by recent encounters with people, literature and internet sites that question the validity of conventional wisdom arising from the UN IPCC’s studies and projections on global warming and the role of human-produced carbon emissions. In particular the case presented by Christopher Booker “The Real Global Warming Disaster” has caused me to start a reassessment of those threats. Reading the book coincided with revelations that East Anglia University Climate Research Unit, one of the four sources of IPCC climate data, had been manipulating their results: Professor Phil Jones, the climatologist at the centre of the leaked emails row, said last week that he “absolutely” stands by his research and any suggestion that the emails provide evidence of a conspiracy to manipulate or hide data that do not support the theory of man-made climate change was “complete rubbish”. This quotation from the Guardian has been superseded by subsequent calls for the professor’s resignation by the Guardian’s environmental campaigner George Monbiot: ‘I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign. Some of the data discussed in the emails should be re-analysed’ (Guardian, 27.11.09).
Good for Monbiot! His passionate and satirical columns and books have fuelled the highly emotional, even ‘religious’ attitudes of many ‘greens’ and he sees Jones as discrediting the campaign. I am trying to balance my own understanding by examining both what are tagged the ‘warmist’ and the ‘sceptic’ cases. The way that ‘conventional wisdom’ is constructed by the media and spreads around the globe to inform public policy underpins this conundrum. Certainly the upward trend of globally averaged temperature measurements has levelled off and declined since 1999 despite continuing increases in CO2 emissions. But ‘truth’ about causes, consequences and trends in the immensely complex global atmospheric system, past and present, and speculation about its future remains elusive.
Zwakow-Suble, Tychy, 29.11.09
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