Trussonomics sailing into a perfect storm

Liz Truss has had her honeymoon period and she blew it. The fact that it lasted as much as 2 weeks is all down to 10 days of mourning for the Queen, when all political debate was suspended. I had caught a chill after work on Tuesday and kept indoors in my pyjamas for a couple of days so I only caught up with the papers on the Friday when Truss and Kwazi Kwarteng dropped their bombshell. I can accept their cancellation of the national insurance rate increase, though it still left open the question of who pays the additional health and social security spending that the original increase was supposed to cover. But the combination of drop in VAT spending, in corporation tax, and in the highest rate of income tax, and the removal of a cap on city banking salaries, have the making of an ideological statement that the rich must get richer to let the economy grow. 

It is either reckless madness or a courageous gamble. However, by failing to ask the Office for Budget Responsibility for a forecast prior to making their announcement was not an act of courage, but cowardice. If you take these measures at the same time as their decision to fund their levered up cap freeze at £2500 per year for an average annual energy bill, which was to be sourced purely from borrowing on the open market, and therefore placing that cost and the resulting interest fairly and squarely on the shoulders of a tired taxpayer, is frankly a statement of class warfare. No attempt to raise universal credit, no attempt to raise some revenue from other sources, such as the utility companies' vast profits, no attempt to increase the threshold for paying taxes at a time when some wages are being increased to meet the current inflation. Those on benefits are already stuffed, but middle income families without financial reserves are also stuffed. More and more will find themselves in poverty. The inflation will only be encouraged by these measures, sterling will fall, imported goods become more expensive. Confidence in the UK economy in the currency markets has been lower than ever since Brexit, and this true not only in Europe and U.S., but in the Asian markets too. What is more we are now also faced with the possibility of a trade war with the the European Union over the Northern Ireland Protocol. The only good news about inflation is that gas prices have eased a little on the world market. For the average British household it will be hell, as there will there will be cutbacks in heating and food and smaller businesses will go to the wall. I dread the agony many of my friends and colleagues will go through, and the coming rows between Albina and me about heating the flat over the winter.

There is a Labour Party conference at the moment in Liverpool. Instead of joining the picket lines of the Liverpool dockers, Keir Starmer has got the conference to sing God save the King. He is placing the ball opposite the open goal that Liz Truss has left him and will kick when he makes his speech as leader today. He is promising net zero in carbon emissions by 2030, reintroducing the highest rate of income tax, a tax on the energy companies. Actually, he can safely call for more to clinch the deal, including public control of rail, water, gas and broadband and a change in the parliamentary voting system to end the first past the post nonsense. Also time to promise better relations with the EU, including even a customs agreement, which ostensibly makes us a member of the customs union in all but name. Courage, Keir, courage!

A Queen departs

I returned on Monday evening to find the country still mesmerized by the pageantry of a faded institution that had survived on the popularity of the Queen, whose coffin 250,000 had visited in 10 mile long queues. I watched the whole mourning ceremony relived on evening television, including the silent funeral cortege of that morning from Westminster to Windsor. Conceptually it was amazing, with extras and costumes that any theatrical producer would have died for. I can marvel at that array of colour with white plumes, black bearskins, scarlet uniforms, red and yellow standards, a purple catafalque, silver breastplates and the slow deliberate tramp, tramp of marching boots and clatter of horses' hooves on cobblestones. These signify the majesty and the mystique making up the soft power, while the hard power travelled in coaches, with kings and prime ministers, monsters and heroes, huddled like penned tourists, driven to their appointed places on the side benches of the Abbey. There was the US President, arriving late, sitting on a rear bench in the Abbey behind President Andrzej Duda. 

The public came in their thousands and treated King Charles III with sympathy and understanding, giving him the benefit of the doubt that he will really no longer interfere in day to day policy. The presence of William and Kate, and young Prince George and Princess Charlotte were promises for the future; Prince Andrew and Prince Harry and Megan were the question marks about the future. With Charles, as Diana once said, "the jury is out". We will receive enough evidence in the next few years to decide whether the monarchy should have a future. But Charles or Camilla have but to make one serious mistake, one undiplomatic comment out of place, one more petulant complaint about a leaky pen, one more personal (or worse, financial) scandal, and the magic will fail, and the debate of whether the tax payer is getting a right deal for his/her money begins again. Three strikes, and they could be out!

As I chatted to colleagues at my work place next day, all of them oblivious to world affairs, but nearly all of whom had watched the proceedings on television, I noticed that what made a lasting impression on them were the Queen's black horse and the corgis, expectant, sad, deprived of their royal companion for ever. I mentioned that corgis were now the responsibility of Prince Andrew. "Yeah, well he can clear up the shit!" commented one of them. Everyone has their own perspective.

Even Albina, who does not leave the flat for any reason other than a hospital visit or the supermarket, was induced by her friend Wanda to watch the royal progress along the Great West Road. That makes me so pleased. It was her opportunity to participate in a historic event, and she took it.

Ancient capital of a pagan Dukedom

 

We got back in time from Soleczniki to visit the Vilnius town centre with a local Polish lady to guide us. The old city is filled with charming municipal buildings, enticing arched gateways leading from narrow winding streets into secluded courtyards, interspersed with sumptuous Catholic and Orthodox churches, classical academies, crumbling pre-war residential blocks and ruritarian palaces of culture, We approached it from the railway station and that led us from the south on a downward slope through a narrow womb like dark aperture covered by dark yellow plastered brickwork. 

As we emerged on the other side of this short tunnel we found we come under the very beating heart of the old city, the venerable pointed gate, the Ostra Brama, which houses the holy medieval icon of the Mother of God. This is a centre of pilgrimage and homage for thousands of Catholic pilgrims, the basis of countless legends of miracle cures as pilgrims kneel in large numbers facing the large elevated window embedded in a sky blue facade with flat white pillars. The air of veneration still gives this tight little street in front of the gate an aura that carries you down the sloping street into the rest of the city. Left and right of us we passed churches holy to Roman Catholics, Greek Catholics, Orthodox, including a gorgeous baroque St Theresa and the gaudy rococo fronted Basilian Monastery, where, in a quiet courtyard, we were shown the place where the student Adam Mickiewicz was imprisoned, 

From the dominant colonnaded classical frontage of the town hall, the city streets roll down further towards the cathedral square and the banks of the Vilenka River, rolling north to join its larger sister river, the Vilija. In these winding streets encrusted with bijoux shops, filled with amber jewels and hand painted clothes and trinkets, we walked hand in hand with the past Polish romantic poets and writers, and the partisans who fought against the Tsar in the January Uprising of 1863 and against the Germans in the 3 day liberation of Vilnius in 1944, before the liberators were themselves disarmed and deported to Siberia. Here walked the Polish Jesuits and academics who had created the early XVIIth century university with its many halls and courtyards. Yet earlier here in front of their palaces trundled the liveried coaches of powerful magnates and princes, the Radziwills, the Ostrogskis, the Oginskis, the Pociejs, the Pac and Chodkiewicz dynasties, whose wealth and unparalleled arrogance endowed churches, theatres and universities, but corrupted the body politic of the old Poland-Lithuanian Commonwealth. This was the beloved city of Marshal Pilsudski, who was prepared to start a war to ensure it remained in Polish hands. Here too were shadows we Poles were less aware of, the Lithuanian artisans and writers who dreamed of an independent Lithuania, free of Russian and Polish oppressors. Here on pretty Pilies Street they first courageously declared Lithuanian independence.   

From the cathedral square the streets become wider, the traffic more intense. But the ghosts were still with us as we gazed at the classical faade of the Cathedral, where all Lithuanian Grand Dukes were anointed from the times of Vytautas, when the first christian cathedral was founded on this site in the XIVth century and incorporated in the newer structure during later reconstructions. Here Sigismund Augustus flirted with Barbara, while the remains of his uncles, St Casimir and King Alexander, also rest here. Alongside is the reconstructed ancient palace of the Grand Dukes and beyond the true nucleus of the pagan city, the castle keep from founders Gedyminas and Keistutis, high up on a hill dominating the city from above the cathedral. On the other side of Vilija tributary a forested city park surrounding four peaks, including the Three Cross Hill, all of them higher than the hill bearing Gedyminas' bastion.

Vilnius stimulates the imagination, its discrete beauty and modest provincial pride, conceals the splendours, tribulations and tragedies of a small nation which emerged from the sprawling confused  legacy of the former Grand Duchy, quarter Polish, quarter Belarusian, quarter Jewish, quarter Lithuanian. So many of the buildings and monuments we had seen had been bombed and gutted by fire, then rebuilt and renovated, and so many of the older people had been killed, imprisoned or traumized by war, occupation, massacre and population displacement. That trauma had been passed on to their children, behind whose hospitality and gentleness lies latent the sorrow and the national prejudices of the past. For these were the bloodlands, where brutal occupiers invaded, Jews were liquidated in the Holocaust and neighbour turned against neighbour, so that there was no family untouched by war, whether as persecuter or persecuted, or even as both.  

We wandered the streets in smaller groups until late into the evening, encountering its ghosts and ensnared by its charms, even as the shadows of night enveloped us.

Next morning I packed my suitcase, left it at the hotel, and ventured again into that magical city retracing the steps of yesterday and finding new amazing sites such as the late renaissance Dominican Church with a riotous rococo interior, where Pope John Paull II met the Polish community, or the dominant Greek Catholic church of St Constantine and St Michael with its five gilded domes. It also gave me the opportunity to make some more purchases for Albina, namely warm gloves, a hand painted silk scarf and an enamelled pendant handpainted with a white bird, all intended as a thank you for allowing me to make the journey to Lithuania. 

Back to the hotel for my suitcase and home directly to London City Airport by LOT airlines again.

A day in the forest

 

After the conference we had a day to relax. We travelled by coach through the gentle rolling counryside to Soleczniki, a largely Polish town to the south of Vilnius near the Belarus border, to share in the annual harvest festivities. We were greeted by the Mayor who was head of the Soleczniki (Salcininkai in Lithuanian) district who proudly described that 80% of the town's population was Polish, which, he claimed, was the highest density of Polish ethnicity in any part of the world outside Poland. Looking around I could see many distinctive individually built wooden bungalows, many undoubtedly nineteenth century, some beautifully painted, some looking drab and neglected, but the streets themselves were wide and modern, and several supermarkets could have been similar to anything to be found throughout the more prosperous settlements in Europe.

We were guided to the local park, filled with elaborate stalls filled with the produce of the area, bread, meat products, fish, woollen and woven clothes and tableware, wooden kitchenware, as well as artistically carved or painted artefacts. Some of the stalls had been provided by local towns in the Salcininkai district and had elaborate bioramas showing wooden huts with straw roofs and replicas of farm animals and farm produce, but imaginatively presented. You could even pose for a photo as a jolly farmer and his wife, or as a farm animal, by poking your head through a hole in a vertical board depicting the appropriate rural character. Alongside the market was a fun fair, including a small rollercoaster, huge gondola shaped swings, a trampoline, a bouncy castle, and a carousel on a tower some 15 metres high. Nothing there to tempt a 76 year old like me, but fun to watch children and young parents sharing the thrills. 

In the middle of the market was a large open air seated arena which had been set up for a harvest mass of thanksgiving. Priests performed the mass against a backdrop of a large choir of young people in colourful local folk costumes. I stood at first at the back of the massive congregation, but aware that the ceremony was due to take at least one and a half hours, I eased out back among the market stalls and turned for a walk out of the formal park area into the picturesque countryside outside. The further out I walked the less I could hear of the choir and as my path became enveloped in trees, the singing got fainter and fainter, until finally I had submitted myself to the quieter sound of the forest. I must have walked two kilometeres passing nobody on my way and even crossed a modern tarmacked road with no cars or carts passing along it. In the silence of God's trees and fields I felt more in harmony with Him then by attending any mass.

I must have been gone an hour, but eventually I walked back down the path to the fair. I passed once again through the rich tapestry of stalls with handicrafts and food offerings, back through the town, just to reach the cultural centre where a massive array of hot and cold food had been prepared for our group and other guests, including even the Polish and U.S. Ambassadors. The Amercian Embassy actually had a small tent of the outskirts of the market, where two of our Polish-American participants at the conference had run by chance into the Ambassador, unaware initially who he was. They happily shared a joint photo and described our activity in this part of Lithuania.

After that, we still had two hours to kill before we were whisked away. In the festival arena, following the mass and the blessing of the harvest, the area was filled with a concert showing popular local folk groups and singers. After 5pm a famous Polish rock band was due to perform but we wanted to slip away before that. In that time, I looked around for presents to take back to London, including a pretty pair of woollen slippers for Albina, a large towered tree cake with frilly sides, and a raunchy carved wooden tablet for our guest bathroom door, showing a man in a Russian sauna being flogged with twigs by a busty young lady. That last could look well on the inside door of our guest bathroom, I thought.

(That evening, on checking a map, I discovered that my walk into the forest was on a westward path. If I had followed a path to the south for the same distance, I could have stumbled into a Belarusian border post).

Conference in Vilnius

It is Sunday 18th September. I have just woken up after a strange but vivid dream where I had come back to work and found shipments that had not been shipped to China and Egypt where the letter of credit deadline for shipment had long since expired. I had no idea why that was, or whose fault it was, but I needed to explain to my anonymous "boss" what had happened. All nonsense of course, as I no longer work in a shipping company (that was in Kimpton Brothers, or even further back in M&S Shipping). But the reality was that I was lying in bed in the Pan Tadeusz Polish centre in Vilnius which doubled up as a community centre and a hotel.

I had had a good conference with a well rceived presentation on Friday on how to run a Polish lobby in the United Kingdom and had presented a well composed resolution on Saturday on the situation in Belarus, where all Polish organizations and schools have been taken over by the governemnt and closed based on information we had just been told the previous day by the delegates from the Union of Poles in Belarus. I was also bery drunk having had at least six or seven shots last night after the conference. In fact, despite my little triumphs I had been tired all day and had dozed a dozen times during the conference.

The conference was called by the World Polonia Council (RPS), an umbrella organzation od Polish community organizations from around the world. The Federation of Poles in Great Britain, which I serve as an adviser, is a member and I was one of four Federation delegates at the Conference. 

It was so long since I had attended one of these international Polonia conferences. My LOT flight from London arrived at 11pm Lithuanian time. A representative of the local Union of Poles in Lithuania met me in the airport and whisked me round to the Pan Tadeusz Hotel (Panas Tadas  in Lithuanian). 

I was concerned that, apart from the UK delegates, I wouldn't recognize anybody. However, it transpired that was not the case. Immediately I bumped into Tadeusz Pilat from Sweden, who was also chairman of the European Union of Polish Organizations, and a candidate for the presidency of the RPS. He greeted me like a long lost friend and said "At last a British face I can consider a friend," This was very embarassing. At our last zoom meeting of the Federation Executive, we were mandated to vote to re-elect the current President, Teresa Berezowski, from Canada. I had been impressed with her skills as a lobbyist for Polish organizations having problems in their home countries around the world, mainly Belarus and Lithuania, and I was happy to support her, while our leading international conference specialist Helena Miziniak had a personal grudge against Pilat for ousting her from a post elsewhere some years ago. Now she started to rake up his supposed Communist past. Funny that, as it had not stopped her from cooperating with him in the past. I had to keep quiet about our voting intentions.

I changed and went to bed in my room. Before long I was woken up by a colleague from our delegation whose Ryaniar flight had arrived at 1am. "Why is nobody collecting me," she wailed. I put some clothes on top of my pyjamas and went downstairs. One of the local members suggested she book a cab by uber as there was no driver to collect her. I repeated that to her and finally went to bed.

Next morning faces and names that I could barely remember greeted me like a long lost colleague. Of course Pilat was the first, obviously still counting on my vote. Surely he was aware that our Federation have always voted as a team, and that had been part of our strength. Soon Helena introduced me to Teresa Berezowski from Toronto, with whom I had corresponded but whom I had never met before. The breakfast room buzzed with life as past links and friendships were resuscitated and the cobwebbed corners of my memory were forcibly breached as past acquaintances invaded my reality.

The first morning session was devoted to close links of the clergy in maintaing the Polish language and traditions, particularly in the East. A film was presented by a priest from Ukraine showing the destruction caused by the war in the Chernikhov area east of Kiev, as he described the impact of the war on the lives of Polish and Ukrainian families in the war zones. The second session I attended dealt with education and Polish saturday schools. One of the speakers was from the Polish Education Society in London. She described the present status of 145 Polish saturday schools, giving the statistics on the rise and fall, and rise again, of the number of children attending these schools. She pointed out that only 15% of Polish speaking children in the UK attended saturday schools and based this on my London statistics which I had been feeding to the Polish Education Society and the Polish community at large for the past 15 years. She thanks me publicly at the meeting for my assistance in this. That was not the only praise I got at that meeting. My old friend Pilat was chairing that session and he gave us the dramatic news fom that week that Lukashenka had suddenly closed all Polish institutions and Polish language schools. Pilat had mentioned how he had raised the issue of Belarus a number of times before in statements issued by his European Union of Polish Organizations and chose to add that these statements had always been translated by me into "impeccable" English. This was an embarassing praise too  much and internally I squirmed with embarassment, but publicly I just shut my eyes.

The afternoon session dealt with patriotism and the Polish lobby. Helena was chairing it. I had circulated a hard printed copy of my paper to the whole meeting, on how to run a local lobby. This gave me a chance not to deliver the stodgy lecture in my printed text, but to freewheel with any comment to match the drift of the discussion at the meeting. However, a lot of the meeting was devoted to the issue of patriotism with a hard headed former Polish Euro MP called Boguslaw Rogalski on the panel, defining patriotism as a "be all and end all" moral obligation for every Pole. I was the last member of the panel to be called to speak and I suggested that patriotism was defind as civic activitism by anyone who saw themselves as a Pole, and proceeded to give examples how, with taking initiatives and working in tandem with others, one could run a succssful lobbying campaign. Also I reached back to my childhood in London to describe how my Polish patriotism was forged as a love of Poland based on the beautiful legends around a country I had never lived in or even visited (until I was twenty). Again my speech received a sustained applause. 

As the discussion developed a senior Polish civil servant from the President's Chancellery called Badowski suggested that, following the earlier campaigns by our organizations pushing for Poland to join the European Union (then the European Community) and NATO, the new big campaign we should support, concerned support for Poland's massive 1.3 trillion dollar claim against Germany for reparations. Many of the speakers were sceptical, especially a representative of a Polish organiation in Germany itself, who asked why Poles living in germany had not been consulted. Rogalski dived into the discussion pointing out that this claim against Germany was a sign of Poland finally regaining its independence and protecting itself from Germany's attempt to control all of Europe, after the UK's departure. He also quoted Pope John Paul II about patriotism being based on loving one's country, his geography, history, language and literature. I knew the quotation but he had failed to complete it properly. John Paul II had also added to his defintion of patriotism the need to respect the culture and traditions of other countries and he contrasted patriotism, of which he approved, with nationalism, which he did not.

While the cost of 1.3 trillion dollars could be a realistic assessment of Poland's war losses in relation to Germany, a large part of it being incurred by Poland's 3 million Jews, and while it also true that Poland had not been properly compensated by the settlement of 1953 approved on behalf of a subjugated Poland by the Soviet Union, the provocative way that this issue is being handled by Kaczynski and the Polish governement beggars belief. It is obvious that it is not intened to be a serious successful financial bid. Instead it was a tool of Kaczynski's myth-making about a powerful Poland. This power is based on a contempt for the liberal opposition in Poland which he had expected to show its lack of patriotism by rejecting his claim, and on a hatred of Germany whom he hopes to anatagonize by landing them with this bill while they suffer intense fuel shortages and a high inflation rates, with the intention of exposing them for their apparent anti-Polish and pro-Russian stance, as the single power which aims to run Europe. To announce this claim against an ally in the middle of the joint European confrontation with Russia, while failing all along to present a similar claim aginst Poland's true enemy, Russia, is a symptom of rank amateurism by the Polish leaders, disguised as hard headed political realism. It also suggests that Poland's war time trauma is so deep and long lasting that it even governs Poland's current foreign policy, and overrides its true foreign interests. For more than 25 years that extended trauma had been the mark of a minority in Poland as Poland's successive governments appeared on the world stage as being free of any desire to revise or undermine the post war settlement of borders and wartime reparations. It had meant that Poland was a country that supported stability and peace in world affairs. Now, no longer.  I went to bed that night deeply depressed about Poland and where it was going. Did I really need to remain a citizen of such a sick country?

Next morning we licked some of those traumatized national wounds by visiting the site of the massacre in the woods of Ponary near Vilnius, where 10,000 victims (Jewish, Polish, Belarusian) were shot or clubbed to death by German death squads aided by Lithuanian volunteers. We posed for photos in the seperate Polish enclave memorial tothose who were killed, many of whom had been identified and listed, including a large number aged between 16 and 20. I understand many of them were Polish boy scouts. Then we visited the picturesque cemetery at Rossa where Marshal Pilsudski's mother is buried along with the Marshal's own heart, which the old leader had wished to leave amidst the graves of his legionaire soldiers killed in the Polish-Soviet war. The cemetery has numerous Polish graves and a chapel dedicated to the local January uprising leaders of 1863 who were hanged by the Russians after their rebellion wa supressed. Chatting to conference colleagues I was pleased to see that most did not approve of the government's stance on reparations from Germany and largely shared my scepticism. That put me in a better mood.

We then held the conference that afternoon. There were 73 delegates participating of whom 15 were online, in particular, the delegates from Australia. The meeting went fairly smoothly with no ideological debates, but unfortunately the elections for President showed an upset. There were initially three candidates. Teresa Berezowski, Tadeusz Pilat and Jaroslaw Narkiewicz from Lithuania. Pilat, sensing he might lose, withdrew. In the final vote Narkiewicz unexpectedly defeated Berezowski by 38 votes to 34. Still do not know how this came about. The remainder of the evening was spent in carousing and banter as we let our hair down, the business of the conference being terminated succesfully. I went to bed at midnight. Others stayed up dancing and drinking until 4am (or so I have been told).

Gunnersbury Old Boys Reunion

                               

On Thursday morning a Gunnersbury Old Boys Class Reunion 1957-1965 at the Gtange pub next to Ealing Common. There we all were, desperately trying to recognize each other after a near 60 year gap. Some were stouter than before, some thinner. Some who had been unsuccesful and resentful at school ended up content and prosperous. I think the ones who failed in life, also failed to turn up. Len Kaczmarek was now a Professor of some obscure Physics discipline at a University in California and had especially come down to the UK with his wife to join such a reunion for the first time. We only knew each other by our surnames at school and here we were, reverting to the more modern contact by first name, which was strange in itself. You saw faces and remembered the occasional highlight, the joke or the shared reminiscence of a particular teacher, whose failings now seem obvious to us, but with which we had to contend, as the occasional nugget of understanding would lodge somewhere in our minds. It was a Catholic grammar school, as envisaged in the Butler Act of 1944, intended to serve brighter kids, mostly, but not exclusively, middle class, who had passed the 11 plus exam, and my memories and assessment of the school were possibly more positive than some of my colleagues. Many were obsessed now with the physical punishments most of us received, but which would now be considered a criminal act of assault, but such were the times. Live with it.

Certainly my views were more positive than the experience of Paul McLoughlin from our year, who ended his fifth year feeling he had got nothing out of the school, to the great disappointment of his Irish working class parents.  Yet he ended up as a teacher of English, a poet and a writer, but died sadly last year. The main organizers of the meeting, John Axtell and Richard Kennedy, had come across a text full of bitterness and occasional flashes of admiration of the school and of some of the teachers, which Paul had written. They asked me to read it as they remebered that I had one the Speech Competition each year. What a memory. They sent me the text a few days before, and I was delighted to read it out loud with all the understanding and emphasis required to give this spirited lament proper justice. It took 15 minutes to read out and I was listened to in total silence, punctuated by occasional bursts of laughter at his jokes and surreal comparisons. They even applauded at the end, but surely more for Paul, than for me.

In the middle of all this jollity I got one of those inernal nose bleeds in my right nostril. Though I take ointment for it I cannot shake of this irritating trait that always affects when I am happy and totally relaxed, and often when I am in a public event, such as an Embassy reception, a conference, or a happy get together, as on this occasion. I had to absent myself to the pub garden for about 10 minutes, but even then a bit of blood dropped on my trousers and on my shirt, and I have to wear that for the rest of the day.

After barely an hour I had to leave this jolly throng as I had to depart to Vilnius for a conference that same day. I dragged my 17 kilo suitcase, full of copies of my book, to Ealing Broadway station a quarter of a mile away, got the District Line to Cannon Street, walked over to Bank Station, which was a killer in terms of small narrow staircases, as I still had to carry that damned suitcase. Finally, I caught a direct DLR link to City Airport and a flight with LOT to Vilnius. It was frustrating as I waited two hours before I had to check in, and could have spent that time in the pleasant company of my former classmates still drinking at The Grange. 

A deal between POSK and the Polish Stage Company

 A dramatic 2 hour meeting of the Polish Stage Company and the Polish Centre POSK in Hammersmith over access to the use of the theatre. I had been acting as a kind of spokesman for the Stage Company and liaison with POSK, as I was also a member of the POSK Council. The Stage Company are wonderful people and their overall unofficial spokesman and leader is theatre director Helena Kaut Howson, an extraordinary gifted lady, singleminded in her pursuit of perfection, incapable of talking less than half an hour on any topic and completely insensitive to people who in her mind do not share her highbrow tastes. She is a nightmare in all her negotiations with POSK, who are somehow trying to fit her in with other regular and occasional users of the theatre facilities in POSK.

Anyway after two hours she managed to obtain the five weekend appearances for free at the theatre and three Sunday productions in the underground Jazz Cafe. Any extra performances would lead to them sharing their income with POSK fifty fifty for those extra perfromances. I had set the scene for the original compromise and prepared a draft contract. Now POSK needs to prepare the contract and get Helena to sign it. If it happens I will consider that one of my most important achievements in the last few years.

Letter To Braverman

 

With her ferocious fanatical reputation I thought to try and beard the lion in his (or her) den and I convinced the Federation of Poles in Great Britain to congratulate her on her appointment as Home Secretary and raise the issue of fairness in the current treatment of Poles and other EU citizens who were landed only with pre settled status. In the fulness of time they have to apply again for full settled status at the end of a 5 year period spent in the UK. I consulted the Polish Consulate and the East European Research Centre to ensure we had the facts right and had a 3 day struggle with the Federation Secretary Tadeusz Stenzel reassembling the wording of the text, as he kept complaining that the letter was too long and wordy.

Anyway here is the press release and the text of the letter. I bet she does not answer. Few will answer as long as the Federation fails to renew its outdated website.

                                                                       P R E S S   R E L E A S E

On Tuesday September 13th the Federation of Poles in Great Britain, based in London, sent a letter to the new Home Secretary, Rt Hon Suella Braverman KC MP concerning unresolved issues that were causing considerable distress to many Polish and other EU citizens resident in the UK. The letter was signed by the Secretary of the Federation of Poles in Great Britain, Mr Tadeusz Stenzel, due to a temporary illness of the Federation President Dr Wlodzimierz Meir Jedrzejowicz

The Federation acknowledges that the introduction of the settled status scheme has been relatively successful despite the complications and doubts originally raised over its merits and practicality. We know from the March 2022 statistics that 5.7 million applications from EU citizens had been concluded, including 1.1 Polish citizens, and that of these last 76% had been granted settled status and 19% pre settled status. Despite passing the deadline of 30^th June 2021 for lodging applications, the Home Office has  continued to allow many unavoidably late applications being made, including at least 42,750 from Polish citizens. The process of application has been aided by the Home Office funding grants to charities, including the East European Advice Centre in London and Polish British Integration Centre in Bedford, providing support, interpretation, and translation services for vulnerable applicants. 

The Federation and the active support groups assisting in handling these cases are concerned that more than 200,000 Polish citizens find themselves in limbo with pre settled status. Many of them still face the difficult task of reapplying again for full settled status once their 5 year stay in this country is achieved. Often because of their personal circumstances they are unaware that they must reapply or lack the technical knowledge or language skills to make the application. While this matter remains unresolved they are often denied  the rights of UK residents to which they are entitled, such as employment, tented accommodation or even entry into the UK. This uncertainty over their status discourages them from making a proper application for settled status and could leave the Home Office with even more persons living here illegally. This unfortunate situation also affects other EU nationalities. as well as Poles.

In the attached letter the Federation has asked the Home Secretary to ease the problem with three issues. 

The first is to extend the deadline for grants to support groups who have played a vital role in assisting with applications and who are facing an increased workload in the next few years as the 5 year period for settled status applicants matures. Their current grants run out after 30th September 2022,

The second is to increase awareness by those with pre settled status of the need to apply afresh for settled status and to give them a warning of the individual deadline by which each of them must lodge the required application. 

The third is to supplement on request the electronic acknowledgement of both settled status and pre settled status with a valid printed document that will make their status more visible to the relevant landlord, employer, school board, border controls or airline staff.

The Federation of Poles in Great Britain CIO, which is an umbrella group representing the main Polish social and cultural organization in Great Britain since 1947, looks forward to a positive response from the new Home Secretary

Issued by Wiktor Moszczynski

Information Officer for the Federation of Poles in Great Britain. 

el 07786471833

www.zpwb.org.uk

13th September 2022

Rt. Hon. Suella Braverman KC MP, Home Secretary, Home Office, 2 Marsham Street, London SW1P 4DF

 

Dear Home Secretary,

We would like to congratulate you on your appointment as Home Secretary and trust that you will be able to look with fresh eyes at some of the challenges faced by the United Kingdom.

The settled status scheme has been in many ways a success. However, to conclude the settled status scheme successfully and to ensure that Polish and other EU citizens are not left without a clear immigration status in the United Kingdom, we feel three issues still need to be addressed.

The first issue is to extend beyond September 30th the current financial support for those organizations which are providing an invaluable service to vulnerable applicants with language or IT technical difficulties, in order to obtain the eventual settled status to which they are entitled by the Citizens’ Rights Agreement. Without the support organizations’ help many would have been unable to apply at all or would be at the mercy of rogue advice companies charging extortionate prices for their supposed services. As you are no doubt aware, the work of these support organizations will increase considerably in the next two years as many Polish and other EU citizens, who have received pre settled status, approach their likely deadline for having to make a new application for settled status.

The second issue is to make the pathway easier for applicants who have already been granted pre settled status but now need to obtain the permanent settled status to which many of them would have been entitled to in the first place, if only their documentation had been presented properly. So many are not aware that they have to apply afresh as their current status would not be extended automatically. It can be very difficult to obtain the relevant evidence covering a 5 year period for eligibility to stay. Ideally the Home Office could provide pre settled status holders with an automatic update warning them of their deadline to renew an application for settled status, like the warning on booster covid jabs issued by the NHS.

The third issue is the continued difficulties for Polish and other EU citizens with settled status in having their status recognized by employers, landlords, airline officials or UK border guards, due to a lack of printed documents confirming their status and their rights. The View and Prove platform is not understood by all, as the status details are “flashed” in front of them on a mobile phone.

We are sure that you would share our wish to have this difficult transitional post Brexit period for Polish and other EU citizens concluded positively, as it would also assist the Home Office in clarifying the legal status of all EU citizens remaining in this country. The last thing we would all want is to have disheartened EU citizens failing to apply for settled status in the proper way and statistically increasing the number of people living in the UK without proper immigration status.

The Federation of Poles in Great Britain is an umbrella group representing the main Polish social and cultural organization in Great Britain since 1947. Our members share with you an appreciation of the potential that first and second generation immigrants can bring to the economy and to the social and cultural fabric of this country. We look forward to your positive response to our proposals.

 

Yours sincerely

Birthday dinner at Daquise

 

On Sunday another walk along the canalside to Hanwell, then I catch the bus back. It is 3 miles of lonely pleasure that is true "me time", as I observe human and animal life in the serene surrounding of the canal. Spotted a strange black bird with a white beak. A friend at work checked with his ornithologist grandfather. It turned out be a cormorant. Not something I had seen before. I even put my discovery on Facebook and got a bit of a reaction.

Albina decided to celebrate my birthday, which was on Tuesday, by ordering a meal this Sunday with traditional Polish cusine at the Daquise restaurant in South Kensington with four friends, Stefan and Ewa Przedzrymirski, Maria Young and Wanda Gerzon. Two bottles of Barolo and some lemon vodka shots with some great foods put us in the best of moods. Daquise is a leftover from the days when post war Polish exiles saw Kensington as their second capital, with numerous posh Polish clubs and restaurants dotting the area. The sides of the restaurant walls were covered with pictures of Polish war time leaders, often with their British or American counterparts, such as Sikorski with Roosevelt. Stefan and Ewa presented me with a nifty little telescope for our cruise next year. Albina volunteered earlier to foot the bill as this was all her idea, but I secretly transferred £200 to her current account to ease the financial pain. Then home and deep sleep in time for work next morning.

Iga Świątek wins U S Open

Iga Świątek won the US Open at Flushing Meadows last night. She beat the Tunisian Ons Jabeur in straight sets. I didn't watch the match as it did appear on any of my TV channels. Why does this victory fill me with such joy? So far, I have admired her aggression, her athleticism, her psychological strength, and loved her for her modesty and lack of self-regard and for her impressive performances at press conferences. She admits she takes toilet breaks not to cry and give vent to her emotions but to coolly plan her next tactics and change the nature of her game. She has a psychologist in her team with whom she exercises as often as with her physical trainer. Perhaps she lacks the mishievous charm of Agnieszka Radwanska who was my previous tennis idol, but she has a sense of humoir. Above all, I love Iga for being Polish and making me proud of being Polish. I have few opportunities to feel that kind of pride these days. 

I am not a great sports fan and interested largely wth football only when we get to international matches. I used to support Ipswich Town in the 1970s, when I lived there, and when they won the FA Cup. More recently I supported Arsenal when it was managed by Arsene Wenger, and Liverpool now with Jurgen Klopp. Last year the local Brentford FC joined the Premier League and has had an impressive first season, so my loyalties are stretched again. But I have cared so much as to watch a match on TV from beginning to end, let alone go to a match. I once attended a match between Ipswich and Barcelona with Kruyff playing for the Spanish team. Ipswich won 3 nil. And that is my total sporting experience. Politics, history, the arts, that is why my real interests lie. 

New face for a cheaper pound

 A quick visit to the hosptal this morning for a second blood test. The nurses filled five test-tubes with her blood. Something is making them nervous and so making us nervous gtoo. We asked a nurse as she was leaving and she said that Albina's creatinine is rising steadily but is not yet at a seriously high level. That suggests problems with her one single remaining working kidney. We shall wait to hear further bulletins from the hospital. I am very concerned that things do not deteriorate to the extent of affecting out great trip next year.

I bought a copy of "i" (for me) and the "Daily Mail" (for Albina) in the hospital shop. The assistant was handling a 10 pound note. Mischievously I asked whether she would be ready to accept new notes with King Charles' picture, instead of the Queen's. She was shocked. "Oh, no," she cried, "I never thought of that. It would be terrible!" "We'll have his pictures on our stamps as well," I goaded her. "Oh, no. Please no," she moaned, visibly distressed.

Later that morning we drove to Ealing Broadway for Albina to sort out a new PIN number for her Santander account, which she keeps for her cousin Hania. In the meantime I bought some sourdough bread at the bakery and we met at Costa's. I still heard a little devil whisper in my ear as I returned to the fray over new currency. I heard the female customer, who was in front of me in the queue, speak in Polish to the Barista girl, so I asked them both in Polish, whether they were ready for pound notes with Charles' head. The Polish customer just scoffed. "They'll have to show him with an L plate," she blurted. 

So, like Diana once said, the jury is still out on Charles' fitness to fill his mother's shoes. He has prepared all his life, he is well informed (too well informed) on a number of issues, especially on climate change, traditional architecture, homeopathy and gardening. But will he know when to shut up?  

Luckily the changes of the royal features will only be introduced gradually. At least then that will not be a contributory factor to the fall in the value of sterling.  

I mentioned this anecdote about his face on our currency in my appearance on TVP at 1 o'clock on Friday, when I was interviewed about my assessment of King Charles III. I wanted to sound positive and I suggested that his balance of tradition (classical architecture, pompous ceremony, history, his readiness to serve to his dying breath) and progressive modernity (organic farming, vegetarianism, pioneer commitment to tackling climate change for many many years, when it was still considered quirky) reflects the current attitudes in Britain. I also ventured the opinion that if he keps a control of his public utterances, and channels his energies and opinions more carefully, then he could earn himself a popular reputation as a seer. Not sure though how he would put up with the negativity of climate change sceptics like Jacob Rees Mogg and Suella Braverman. But the UK is starting a new Carolean Age wth a new king and a new government.

The Queen is dead

 

                                        P R E S S          R E L E A S E from Federation of Poles in GB

The Polish community in the United Kingdom has learned with great sadness of the passing of Britain’s monarch, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, for whom it felt great affection and respect, as well as admiration for a long reign which gave this country a stability that Poland for many years could only envy. We express our deepest condolences to the Queen’s family and to the people of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, who have all lost a mother.

Long live the King.

Contact: Federation spokesman Wiktor Moszczynski

Truss package unwrapped

 

Of course Liz Truss won, though not with as big a margin as some believed. 

She has completely ditched her earlier statement about no handouts and is proposing a cap for average energy price at £2500 a year, still a horrendous increase, but for a possible 2 year period, and paid for, initially by borrowing, and later of course by the taxpayer, when Labour take over in 2024.

It is an interesting counterbalance to the earlier Labour suggestion of a freeze at £1971 lasting, initially, for only 6 months, and paid for by a windfall tax from the profits of the large energy companies. The Tories say no to the windfall tax, as it is likely to discourage investment in the UK and could prevent growth of the economy. As for inflation, the very act of freezing, should reduce the level quite quickly. 

Truss is starting from a very low level of public support and while her  programme will win many over, currently the public still want that £100bln loss to the Treasury to be covered from the windfall tax and not later taxation.

The rest of the Truss mythical programme remains. The national insurance rise to pay for NHS support will be withdrawan, green taxes will be suspended for a year, no new taxes of any kind to be imposed, more illegal immigrants to go to Rwanda, and we must face a full confrontation with the EU over the Northern Ireland Protocol. She still holds back from confronting the DUP, who are angry now that they are losing the demographic battle, as well as the European one. She defies Scotland's independence lobby. The government will only be paying lip service to the green agenda as they encourage fracking and encourage more investment in North Sea Oil, while more green belt could be opened up for housebuilding. In the meantime rents remain high, industrial action is likely to increase and the relentless war in Ukraine will go on, while the UK suffers from possible increased sanctions from Russia and the EU. The "bonfire" of EU regulations on health, safety, the environment and consumer protection is still scheduled to continue. 

Will Truss manage to wrap her free market blanket of optimism around a sizeable section of the still very sceptical electorate, while paying an adequate lip service to "levelling up"? She will need to be effective in that strategy over the first few weeks. If she fails to change public opinion by Christmas, the disgruntled Tories left out of the new ministries will sharpen their knives and their rhetoric against her. Currently, her cabinet consists almost exclusively of proven loyalists and the lack of a broader base in the Party could eventually tell against her. On the other hand, she may hold back possible rebels by planning a spring reshuffle which would be more inclusive to party rivals in future. This would give her a second wind to take her up to the next election. What wonderful times!

In the meantime ROL Cruise contacted us to ask if we want to upgrade to a more exclusive level than junior balcony. Cost? £750 per head. For someone with plenty of funds that would be a bargain, but we have to remain careful and keep to our little balconies, in which we can individually sunbathe in private. A bit of nude sun bathing perhaps? In the meantime, a pharmacist is working out for us what inoculations we may need for the 12 or so countries we visit and will contact us nearer the date for an appointment. I imagine India, China and Egypt will be the major concerns.    

Dystopia rules - I am changing planets

 I get up in the morning still with the nightmares of Ukraine. In my latest dream I was the London link of a Ukrainian patrol captured by the Russians. They had a link to my phone while they were being interrogated and tortured, one by one. Those with Russian accents from the east were particularly targeted as traitors to Russia and the Donetsk republic. I felt frustrated and impotent. As usual, ultimately, it made no more sense than Alice in Wonderland's game of cards. It was a product of my anxiety and despair about the current state of my life and of the world around me. 

God knows the world is bad enough. The uncertainty over the future of the Zaporozhe power station continues depsite the latest UN visit. Could an enterprising Russian officer still mange to distinguish himself by causing a nuclear malfunction that would poison more than half of Ukraine and many of its neighbours. That would be a true "victory" for Putin, amid a sea of his preplanned denials and with no need to press any nuclear button himslef. 

And he can continue his war against the West as Nordstream 1 is closed indefinetely. It's a total collapse of Angela Merkel's well-meaning but naive belief that Russian imperialism can be tamed by trade and the prospect of prosperity. Only a hungry, angry, deprived population would sustain the dreams of empire. Putin knows that; Merkel did not.

The nightmare continues in Pakistan, as at least a thousand perish under the waves, four thousand are injured and several million lose their homes, their livelihood and their hopes. Pakistan becomes the next safety valve for the world's climatic self-destruction. The worst flooding has subsided in the north but the waters are still rising and the rains are still falling further south in Sind. Waterborne diseases are increasing and the miserable aftermath can be seen throughout the whole country. The scale of the disaster can be measured by the size of the initial 33 million dollars of the US aid package. Liz Truss as Foreign Scretary oferred a miserable £1.5 million from an existing aid package, but that is utterly shameful.

Not that the people of Jackson, Mississippi, are that much better off as they are told to keep their mouths shut while taking a shower to prevent the ingestion of contaminated water. This has gone on for months as the National Guard distribute free bottles of water in a city with 75% black population. There is a sense, in parts of America, that the social infrastructure is collapsing as Republicans fight for a "small state" economy, and the whole country is splitting in two, divided by wealth, by education and by ideology. The two sides not only differ fundamentally over the future of their country, but have no proper common dialogue with each other. Trump considers Biden an illegal aberration as President and Biden has called Trump and his supporters a threat to democracy in America. Nearly 50% of Amercians believe there will be a civil war in the next 10 years. China and Russia have but to wait and the world will be theirs'. The EU will be too divided to withstand those pressures as well, especially as Italy is about to join the illiberal anti-EU alliance with Poland and Hungary.

The idiocy continues in Poland which has now, in the middle of a confrontation between Putin and the West, chosen to present Germany with a 1.3trn euro claim for war reparations. The task of war reparations for the horrors of German Nazi occupation of Poland is a massive subject and, in terms of natural justice, quite justifiable, and it is also true that the earlier settlement made through the Soviet Union in the 1950s, when Poland was not a sovereign state, was totally unsatisfactory. However the post 1990 Polish government chose not to pursue further claims, leaving the moral onus on Germany of investing in the Polish economy and Polish democracy. It was still a somewhat naive if well-meaning decision, as Poles thought they would be more effective if they were not a revisionist state, seeking to undermine the world order. That decision in 1990 by the semi independent Mazowiecki government required correction, but not in the ridiculous way that Poland has chosen to do it against an ally in the Ukraine war. What is the Polish government's response to the possibility that 1/ this claim could cause so much resentment that some Germans may wish to seek recompensation for property they lost in 1945, when they were expelled with their families from Silesia and Pomerania, 2/ what proportion of whatever they lay out in their claim would go to Jewish families, who were the main victims of German war crimes, albeit with many of them already compensated, and 3/ why this moment could not have been utilized better by staking a claim for war crimes and loss of property to Russia? Had they consulted other possibly interested countries, such as Serbia, the Czech Republic, Israel or Ukraine? Sadly, it is an ideologically driven claim aimed at prolonging Polish-German emnity and keeping alive the electoral prospect of a corrupt PiS victory at the next parliamentary election. The Oder-Neisse border was partly created by Stalin in order to foster this historical emnity, and Kaczynski is doing everything possible to let it fester on. Even the current pollution on the Oder River is automaticaly blamed on Germany, even though Polish industrial users in the upper reaches of the river have been unbridled pollutants in the past.

Tydzien Polski has again failed to publish my latest article on the Sikorski Institute, its underfunded museum and its conflict with the Polish Undeground Study Centre. I understood perfectly why they refused to publish my earlier article about the SPK building in Kirkcaldy, because of their dependence on the possible generosity of the SPK in setting up the website for the newspaper. But why this coyness over an article about the Sikorski Museum? 

And then, on top of all this, Albina refused to get up this morning for an important blood test for glucose at 9.30 in the morning. I was due to drive her to the clinic but she decided that, like a spoilt immature child, she was too lazy to get up. Those are her words by the way, not mine. I was furious, but speechless. 

The world is going to the dogs. I am waiting for the Artemis programme to get under way, and I will be changing planets.

 

Radio interview on Sami Swoi.

I started the day with allocating a new printer, a Japanese Brother, recommended by Sandro, to my laptop. It took me four hours to learn how to connect the printer to the wifi, and then the laptop to the printer. But ultimately - success! Sandro will be proud of me.

Turned up at the Sami Swoi studio in Ealing to record my comments on the Tory leadership race. They asked how it would help Poland and the Polish communty in the UK. Not a lot of difference, as Polish-UK relations were good, because of mutual hostility, first to Russia, and (the second agenda) to a united Europe, the first hostility being pivotal, and the second futile and self-defeating. However I talked about Liz Truss having spent some time in Poland and hoping to raise with her the issue of speeding up pre-settled status upgrading for Polish citizens in the UK. I pointed out that unless Truss came up with a massive rescue plan in the first 2 weeks after taking office, then whatever her optimism and energy, she and her fellow Tories will not regain public trust and go crashing down in the next election. The interviewer seemed very pleased with the 15 minute interview and said it would be broadcast in the next few days, and also used in allocated snippets for later comments. No fear. I'm not going to listen to my own voice on radio.

He suggested that perhaps I could record progress bulletins on my world trip next year. Maybe.

Also booked up an appointment for Albina and me at Specsavers for a hearing test. I think we both feel our hearing has deteriorated recently. We shall see.

Roof top tales

 Travelled on Wednesday afternoon to the London Chamber Head Office for a rooftop party. Gorgeous day and a vivid 360 degree view of London city landmarks including St Pauls, the Shard, the Walkie Talkie and the Cheese Grater. Unfortunately, my favourite, The Gherkin, was obscured by other high towers. These exciting shapes restore my faith in modern architecture, aided no doubt by the more fexible planning authorities in the City. 

Most of these people work in the Head Office so I only see them two or three times a year, and on the odd occasions, it's normally a very stilted meeting. However, yesterday, stoked by a decent pizza and prosecco, the conversation flowed as wantonly as the alcohol, as I could chat and flirt with all these young people. Tatoos and travel were on the menu, and then male-female interaction. The majority present were ambitious young women of foreign origin, so the conversation turned into a souffle of anti-male put downs. I notice that when European women complain about their husbands they talk of possibly leaving them; Latin American women talk about killing them. They don't believe in divorce.

However, they were all fascinated by the fact that I had managed to celebrate a 50th anniversary. How did I manage it? How did my wife manage it, would have been a more pertinent question. Did I know her long before we got married? Yes, for three years, the bulk of which time we had no communication, as she was in Poland and I was pursuing my career and love life in England. In 1969 we had an intense relationship lasting one month, then nothing. In 1972 we had an intense relationship lasting one month, then marriage, and then again nothing. Only in January next year did I finally ask her to return to London, as I decided I couldn't live without her. I explained how I "only" got married to avoid UK immigration interrogation, but that "only", unromantic as it sounded, still lasted, despite arguments and sulking silence, for 50 years.  So how did we celebrate 50 years? they asked. Very quietly. But of course the round the world cruise is our real celebration and culmination of our joint life together.