orynski.eu
Freelance journalist, blogger, podcaster, translator, and... trucker, who left the UK after 17 years due to Brexit. I live in Helsinki now.
I write, among others, for Britske Listy and the Bylines network. I run Lewackie Pitolenie podcast in Polish.
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I am not sure if that will be enough. I am only sure of one thing: if he loses, everyone in his party will blame young social democratic party Razem again. Because those bloody lefties always stand up to their principles, instead of just voting how Tusk tells them to!
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It will of course not work, so the election will now hang on two things:
- do radical right voters hate PiS enough to decide not to vote for Nawrocki?
- are liberal voters ready to once again pinch their noses and vote for lesser evil with utter disgust just to prevent PiS candidate from winning?
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But of course as the Trzaskowski's party is unable to learn from their mistakes, I am not optimistic. Since he now has to choose if he wants to try to appeal to 20% of ultra right wingers, or 10% of left wing voters, he will probably choose former and turn even more to the right.
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Look what had happened in Britain to Tories, who tried to out-Farage Farage and out-Tommy Robinson Tommy Robinson. Starmer seems to be trying the same and we can already see it does not work for them.
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it means that more than half of the voters decided to vote for populists or radical right.
And what's most frustrating unless you are an utter idiot and/or head of the Trzaskowski campaign, it should be obvious that brown-nosing right wing voters simply does not end well.
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as a result Trzaskowski, who was polling at 40% initially, came up (according to exit polls) at around 30%, barely ahead of his main opponent. Meanwhile radical right candidate got 15% and ultra-radical-pro-Russian-antisemitic wanker got 6%.
As PiS canidate is not exactly a champion of democracy,
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but imaginary issues like immigration or attacking Ukrainians, then the radical right has it all given on the golden plate: not only the discussion is on the topics they are most comfortable and are ready to say the most radical shit, but they now dont' even have to venture out of their comfort zone
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Of course he had no chance in this competition. But by taking the fight to their ground, he not only turned his back on liberal votes, but also made it easy for them. Because if the topics of the campaign are not housing crisis, women rights and LGBT issues - the problems that actually MATTER
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(also, the billboard companies have no issues hanging anti abortion billboards with aborted fetuses... )
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...or at least we'd see who stands where by watching how many countries would have decency to boycott them.
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Nah, that would be anti-Semitic!
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There is a certain historical irony in that, but I'll say no more. :P
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You might be right. Kids would not reach so high up the wall :-)
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Judging from my experience, it's great if you want to talk with viking cats who speak Estonian about a wizard Finn who sits up in the tree because he wants peace and quiet while listening to the music that swings like a moose.
Not much use for real life scenario though.
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I am using drops for vocabulary. There are some minor issues with it, sometimes it can be seen they use AI, but otherwise I am doing well on the free level.
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It's more like an African bush taxi or Marshrutka in former USSR :-)
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But what I would like to see, just once, is for a British train driver to say "yeah, I'd like to make more, but perhaps we should look into how bad nurses have it first".
Is it too much to ask?
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I enjoy driving trucks, because even today, with all that supervision, crazy rules and control, the truck driver has orders of magnitude more freedom in their work than a train driver.
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Don't get me wrong: I think train drivers deserve to be well paid. It's a tough job that I would not want - there is very little freedom, safety protocols are crazy, rules are very strict, bureacracy can be mad, and then all you do is sit and try to be focused for hours doing barely anything...
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or if salaries of train drivers really should be a top concern for the public when nurses and carers are forced to rely on foodbank to survive.
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...train drivers should earn so much when HGV drivers for example who spent up to 15 hours per day stuck in traffic, navigating streets of central London having to watch for idiot drivers, cyclits in blind spots and mind-absent pedestrians, who unload tonnes of cargo manually only make half as much.
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My little "conspiracy theory" is that British train drivers are so active online in telling people how difficult and poorly paid their job is, because if the public was aware that it is, actually, nothing special compared to drivers of other kinds of vehicles, they would start questioning why...
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And none of them claims it's especially challenging or difficult job. If anything, they describe it as "cosy and easy, sometimes a bit dull" and the biggest complain they have is usually buearocracy and the fact, they are not allowed to listen to the radio when driving.
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And what baffles me is that as a Railway College graduate, I obviously have several friends who drive trains or other rail things (like Plasser & Threuer tampers or just trams) in Poland and in Ireland.
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(if some of train drivers does not agree, I'd recomend they take a 25 metre long truck and drive it around Nordic countries in winter then reverse it to an icy loading bay or unload 40 pallets with a tailift on a slippery slope during snowstorm using just a pump truck, then come back to me).
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...drove a train, a tram and rode with my train driver friends on the loco on many occasions (yes, those were different times when it comes to Health and Safety and other stuff, don't ask :P) I can leak you a little secret: train driving ITSELF is actually bloody easy.
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But there is one thing that fascinates me: every British train driver I ever met - IRL or online - can go on for hours how difficult train driving is and how it requires some superhuman capabilities.
Well, I tell you a secret: as a Railway College graduate and someone who actually...
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they were happy to moan how pitiful their wages are and how their kids are just about to starve. But two pints later they were bragging about how much they make and moking me - amongst others - for how little I make in comparision by driving an HGV.
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...but as living costs there are higher, they are able to buy less for their money.
They hate when this fact is mentioned. It's funny, as I knew some train drivers when living in Scotland and it was a running gag amongst our friends that they earn a Schroedinger salary: