MacKozer’s Irish diary
Couple of days ago I have started to work on English version of Polish Carlow community web portal - Carlow.pl. English version still needs some improvement, but it can provide usefull information and news. My intention is to create a Carlow Internet portal that provides as much accurate as possible information and news on what is going on in Carlow.
Click on www.carlow.pl/en
Today, Sunday Times devoted its attention to the problem of avoiding Irish health care and dental service by Eastern Europeans. I am quoted in that article.
There is couple of reasons why Poles and other Eastern Europeans avoid it and prefer to cure themselves while visiting the homeland:
1. Price: Total cost of a dental treatment in Poland varies from 20 (simple treatment) to 50 Euro (cleaning channels etc.). It is not expensive, especially when we are in Poland visiting our families. Then we are going to dentist. So usually we don’t go to Poland only for dental treatment. Even if we have to go only for dental treatment: plane tickets cost now even less than 20 Euro one way. (I paid 17,50 one way)
2. Lingo: Most of the Eastern Europeans don’t speak proper English enough to explain what is going wrong or what pains.
3. Confidence: We trust our doctors and dentists in Poland. They are usually like a family ones. We usually have used their services for years and we don’t want to change it. I have just found out that some Poles don’t trust Irish health system and dental service. There are a couple of examples, when my friends had to wait 3 or 4 hours to visit a doctor of the first contact - as we call it.
4. Attitude to the living in Ireland: most of emigrants mentally still live in Poland. I mean they are working here, earning money, but they eat Polish food (which is available here), watch Polish TV (Satelite receivers - kind of SKY - brought from Poland), reading Polish press (issued in Ireland and brought from Poland), and living virtual live in Poland (via Internet). The only thing we can’t bring is a health care and dental service. But we can go and use it while we are in Poland (see point 1).
I have just realised that we have some confusion in the calendar of similar holidays.
Yesterday - in Polish calendar - we had Doughnut Thursday, during that people are eating great amounts of Doughnuts and sometimes even cook them at home.
Polish “Doughnut Thursday” resembles “Pancake Tuesday” or as it is called in Scotland “Shrove Tuesday”
But… 
in Poland “Pankake Tuesday/Shrove Tuesday” is called “Ostatki” (the Lasts) and it resembles Irish (or American) Hallowe’en. When children disguise themselves as a ghosts, deaths, pirates etc., and walk from door to door singing songs and getting sweets, cakes and money sometimes.
There is some confusion, don’t you think?
This Saturday, Ireland will have a pleasure to guest a great or a little father of all ?Äútrue Poles?ÄÌ, a president of Ceathr?? Poblacht na Pholainn (the 3d, a period between the 1989- 2005 was bad and a full of communistic enemies of Poland).
This little man is worldwide well known for his spectacular actions:
1. Baning a legal gay and lesbian parade in Warsaw (while he was a president of Warsaw), which was against the Polish law.
To be honest I am not a big supporter of gay and lesbian movements but they had right to organize the parade.
2. Canceling the summit with German prime minister and French president due to a ironic critique in the German newspaper. Official cause of canceling the summit was an upset president’s stomach.
3. Calling journalist “monkey in red” during the press conference.
4. Saying ?Äúspieprzaj dziadu?ÄÌ (?Äúf..k off you f…ing old bastard?ÄÌ) to an old homeless man once in Poland during his presidency.
5. Ignorance (ok, maybe slip of the tongue) of Polish national anthem ?Äï singing “from land of Poland to land of Italy” instead of a proper original version of words “from land of Italy to land of Poland” , which is meaningful considering a massive emigration. To be honest, I am not so sure, was it hi or just his brother - prime minister. They are very similar to each other (they are twins).
And what is his biggest fault, at least in the relation to Polish emigrants:
6 . calling Polish emigrants in UK and Ireland “born losers” or “feckless” (according to English newspaper). You will probably ask why? The answer is very simple… Poland under rule of the twins (president and prime minister) would have been a paradise, catholic, far right land of clear wealthy and rich Poles, but unfortunately present Poland still suffers high rate of unemployment (it is decreasing due to massive emigration), killing taxation and growing expenses of the bureaucracy of our authorities.
The rate of the emigration is very inconvenient to Kaczynski brothers (p. minister and president) and to their imagination of national socialistic Poland ?Äï one folk, one idea, one though and one (or two, twins) father of the nation.
There is a big anger among the Polish emigrants. They blame both brothers and their party in rule for wasting time on hunting spies, communistic collaborators and destroying the worldwide regard for Poland.
Will there be a demonstration of Polish emigrants in Dublin during visit of the president?
A couple of times I mentioned Polish troublemakers in Ireland and growing numbers of Poles involved in crimes, fights and acts of vandalism. It seems there is no change for better or bad, but the problem touch not only Poles but all non-nationals from new EU countries, Russia, Ukraine and so on.
The aggressive individuals stand out especially during the weekends after the payday. You can find them in the bigger pubs and in the nightclubs (I am glad that they are not visit a smaller pubs). Groups of muscle men with the faces of ?Äúsmartarses?ÄÌ. Some of them wear red t-shirts with Polish white eagle ?Äï they don’t care that being drunk and aggressive has nothing to do with patriotism and it is rather an insult to their compatriots. They are going to the nightclubs to meet girls (doesn’t matter Polish, Russian, Czech, Lithuanian o Irish) and to provoke ?ÄúIrys??w?ÄÌ (Irishmen in a Polish slang in Ireland) to show them who is the master here in Ireland. In the opinion of the aggressive Poles (or other Eastern European emigrants) ?Äï we are the masters and Irish are fools or dumbs. As I wrote almost year ago, non-national troublemakers don’t speak English enough to be understood properly , that usually prevents of fight. Usually… but not always, because Irishmen scallywags are not better (or worse) than Polish troublemakers, and if they are insulted they won’t let you wait for the reply. That’s why sometimes, in the passing of time, more often, we can see fighting in the front of the nightclubs. Last time I saw it on Friday night in Nenagh in the front of Maximus nightclub. There were Irish fighting versus some Easter Europeans. The two Garda officers that arrived at place were scarred and they were trying to talk to the fighters.
There is not only a problem with non-nationals. There is high crime rate among the Irish community itself. Let me mention a gang war in Limerick which is probably one of the most dangerous places in Ireland if not in the whole European Union (at least in my opinion). The explosion of the consumption of drugs make the gangs strong and very active. Most of the Poles in Limerick hadn’t met such problem before they left Poland. We don’t have people shooting shotguns on the streets in the areas almost completely off the jurisdiction of Garda and town authorities.
In some parts of Poland we have high level of crime, and mafia structures, but not gangs like in Limerick. Many of them (some of my friends too) were attacked at their places by a young gang members just because they tried to prevent them of i.e. pissing in the garden. Of course there is no witnesses and the investigation got stuck in place though the attack was recorded by cameras of the nearby gas station.
In my opinion there is a growing problem of crime caused by both Easter European emigrants and Irish themselves. It is probably the effect of the high consumerism ?Äï consumption style of life of nationals and its dark side ?Äï a growing drug market. It is also an effect of the clash of the native and alien cultures, especially both native and alien troublemakers.
The thing that made me think the most is a visible lack of Garda forces, especially in the towns like Limerick, and some areas of Dublin. I don’t know if Garda has something like American SWAT units, but it would be a good solution for some problems. The gang areas of Limerick and of other town are not so big, they are rather small, so the military action of Garda special forces should solve the problem, or at least prevent the gang members of committing crimes. If there is no forces like SWAT, then why don’t the government use the Irish Army against the mobs?
Another question is a role of regular Garda officers in the small towns like Carlow, Nenagh etc. There is a number of fight during the night at weekend. Maybe police forces should be armed to be respected by drunken troublemakers, because at present the picture is both funny and grim. Garda officers fear the troublemakers and they don’t fear Garda at all.
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