Poles apart

I've been in Warsaw. I took this photo as I arrived at my hotel on the outskirts of Warsaw. It's an interesting place: one of the guys I was with said that it was built in the 1950s as some kind of holiday camp for communist party officials, a sort of Hi-De-Hierarchy. It was quite odd inside, in an ornate but worn way. There was wireless Internet everywhere, but the radio in the room looked like a 1960s East German copy, a special version that could report back to the central committee to tell them what you were listening to.

I have to say that I enjoyed my trip -- traveling on new EU-funded roads across EU-funded bridges -- and next time I go I'm going to take a day or two off to look around more. I was very sad to hear, though, that the well-presented, courteous and hard-working Poles that we find throughout our green and pleasant land are now moving on. The pound has fallen from over 8 zlotys down to less than 5, our inflation is high and I imagine the crime and poverty they find in the U.K. is quite distressing to them. Now their jobs will be filled -- insofar as any of them will be filled -- by the surly and ignorant indigenous population. It's not progess.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]