Archive for the 'Polish Emigration' Category

Crime in Ireland: where do you go from here?

Published at March 5, 2008 in Polish and Irish, Irish culture, Polish Comm, Polish Emigration and Ireland. 37 Comments

The brutal attack on two Polish lads who died in the hospital is the most clear example of the “dead end” of changes in Irish society. I don’t know what was the picture of the Irish society 10 or even 5 years ago, but the newspapers provide me the information about the scale of changes and the growing crime and brutality among the Irish society, especially teenagers. According to the Irish Independent (Tuesday 4 March 2008)  knife crime in Ireland had  risen 300pc in four years. The scale and the brutality of the crimes and attacks committed by the Irish teenagers is also horrifying. All the suspects involved in the attack on two Polish lads are in the age of 14, 15, 17 and 19. They youngest o them – 14 years old girl was arrested couple of days ago. The other four teenagers were held by Gardai being involved in a murder of 21 year old man near Grand Canal in Dublin.  I remember many such stories that were described in the Irish newspapers in the last 2 years.

The nationality of those two Polish lads had probably nothing to do with the reason of the attack. There was probably no reason at all. The young thugs were just looking for trouble and looking for the target. How many thugs like the ones who killed my two compatriots are still walking down the streets of Irish cities and towns? According to the all crime reports that were published in the newspapers in the last two years I dare say there is many of them.

How many of the decent people – Irish, Polish, Lithuanian, English or other nations – have to be killed by young thugs to open the eyes of the Irish society, Gardai and the politics?

Some of the readers of my blog are cross with me  becasue of my opinions (that are critical sometimes) about Ireland and Irish people that I present on my blog. Many of them always complains on my compatriots. It is true – we are far from perfect, and there is many Polish troublemakers in Ireland for sure. You can believe or not in the stupid rumors that we hunt swans etc (swans are not in Polish menu), you can accuse us of making troubles, taking your jobs etc. but why many of Irish turn the blind eye on the growing problem of crime and brutality in their own society, or maybe the 300pc rise of the knife crime is also our Polish fault? The crime among the teenagers is really big problem. Can you imagine that those teenage thugs will be adults one day?

By the way, in the same issue of Irish Independent there is more crime stories: one is about 27 years old man who killed his girlfriend and another story is about two mothers who hid cocaine in the childs’ buggy and about the shootings in Limerick.

Have you seen the great film “Boondock Saints”? Do you remember the first scene in the church and the homily of the priest?
“Of course we must fear evil men, but there is another evil that we must fear more… and that is the indifference of good men.”

www.fotoblogi.eu

Two Poles died after being attacked in Dublin

Published at February 28, 2008 in Polish and Irish, Polish Comm, Polish Emigration, Dublin and Ireland. 9 Comments

Two Poles died after being attacked by a group of teenagers while they were buying chips in one of the takeaways in Drimnagh/ Dublin last Saturday. The older - 29 years old Paul has just died in St James’s Hospital in Dublin. They were stabbed with screwdriver.

The gangs of Irish kids and teenagers left unattended by their parents (who are both drunk or stoned) , kids taking and selling cocaine, using shotguns and being extremely brutal it is a growing stereotype picture of the Irish teenagers in the suburbs of Irish cities, and thus a stereotype picture of a part of the Irish society.

I don’t know what happened. Those two Poles were arguing with Irish teenagers. I don’t know if the kids were provoked or not. It doesn’t matter now. Those deaths will rise the racist tensions and build up higher the ghetto wall between Irish society and Polish community.

The stereotypes in both communities will be a bit stronger after those deaths.

www.fotoblogi.eu

Turning Ireland into Poland? I am completely against it.

Published at October 18, 2007 in Polish and Irish, Polish Comm, Polish Emigration and Ireland. 36 Comments

Paddy In Poland has drawn my attention to the interesting news on Thenews.pl about one Polish emigrant who addressed the need of making the Polish language the 3rd official language of Ireland (link). The guy who’s name is Marcin Wrona said that: “We are the most numerous ethnic group, hence we should be granted more rights, like, for instance, the right to use our mother tongue in offices“.

What can I say. Only that I can not believe in such stupidity. I would like to admonish him that we - Poles - are more or less long term but temporary emigrants. In next 10 years most of us would be living in Poland or somewhere else, but probably not Ireland. In that case demanding more rights - having in fact almost the same right like Irish - is completely lack of understanding the situation. His demands are completely childish, and should be regarded in that way. I don’t expect Poblacht na hEirean to introduce Polish language as a 3rd official. The cost of that would be enormous - translating all of the official statements, all of the official signs etc. and for only temporary period of roughly 10 years? Of course many of us will stay in Ireland for longer period or forever. Those who want to stay have to speak English and to integrate into Irish society. Of course they will never be Irish, but I mean to be part of one multicultural Irish society and not to be behind of the wall of ghetto.

Most of readers of my blog - both Irish and Polish - know well that majority of Poles in Ireland is living behind the ghetto wall built of lack of knowledge of English among Poles, that gives lack of communication with the Irish, and further - indolence of many of them to learn English, since at present almost everything in Ireland is translated to Polish already. In fact - Poles in Ireland don’t have to speak English at all, because all information is available in Polish. Majority of Poles in Ireland mentally is still in Poland, they are in Ireland only 8 hours a day at work. After that they are back in Poland, in Polish shops, in their homes - where everybody speaks Polish, where they have Polish satellite TV and Polish internet. I don’t blame them, since - as I wrote before - they are going to stay not for long, and… the situation makes them lazy - it is enough to speak Polish in Ireland, so they don’t need to learn English. However this is a ghetto. There are some negative stereotypes about Polish among the Irish, there are also growing slowly negative attitude to Poles among the Irish. Sitting behind the wall of Polish ghetto, which now is strengthen by those negative stereotypes and attitude of some Irish won’t make any good. Mental ghetto with walls built of Polish language will make a big harm to Polish emigrants in Ireland sooner or later.

The attitude of that man - Marcin Wrona - is a clearly example of the attitude “when somebody is giving you a finger you want to get a whole arm”. I am very sorry for him, his lack of understanding real needs of Polish society that are education in English language and destroying the walls of Polish ghetto rather than building these walls higher and higher and making a 2nd Poland behind them.

I will never be Irish and I will always be Polish, but in Ireland I am Polish member of Irish society, a man who communicates in English, who reads Irish newspapers, who is interested in all the aspects of life in Ireland.

I am completely against the ideas of Marcin Wrona. In Ireland we should be able to speak at least English. I say NO to any attempts to rise the walls of Polish ghetto.

and I hope that I am not the only one Polish person who is against Polish ghetto (or 2nd Poland) in Ireland.

kick it on kick.ie

www.fotoblogi.eu

Irish - Polish discussion board

Published at September 30, 2007 in Polish and Irish, Poland, Irish culture, Polish Comm, Polish Emigration and Ireland. 4 Comments

I have just set up Irish - Polish discussion board. I have been thinking about that for some time. The main reason is to help us to understand and to learn each other, to help Polish people to integrate into Irish community, and to solve any issues that appear during the such a big migration of one nation to the other country. I hope that forum will help us and will produce many interesting conclusions.

Enjoy and browse to: www.irish-polish.eu

Please let me know about any issues that you encounter using the forum and about any of your ideas, what would be good to add to it, or to change.

kick it on kick.ie

www.fotoblogi.eu

Polish elections and limitations of democracy

Published at September 29, 2007 in England, Poland, Polish Comm, Polish Emigration and Ireland. 6 Comments

Since Polish parliament elections are coming in about 3 weeks I was wondering about under what conditions we will be voting in Ireland. Facing massive emigration from Poland, our - Polish - government should give the possibility to vote for every Polish citizen abroad, and of course it is possible. However, if you look closely, you will see how our far right government and Kaczynski brothers’ party are preventing people of voting abroad. The reason of doing that is very simply - majority of the emigrants are against our government, especially after some insulting words spoken by our president about emigration while his visit in Great Britain.

So let’s see how do voting conditions look in Ireland.

Polish law gives the right of free vote for every citizen of Poland over the age of 18. Every Polish citizen who is not able to vote in the place where he or she lives is entitled to vote in the other region of Poland or in Polish embassy or consulate abroad after being registered in the period from 25th of September till 16th of October. The way of doing that is quite simple and shouldn’t be any kind of limitation, since you can do it via phone, online or personally in the office. The problem begins visible when you compare the number of Poles in Ireland entitled to vote and the number of voting points. According to the website of Polish embassy in Dublin, there are going to be only 3 voting points in Ireland - in Dublin, Cork and Limerick. However, on the website there is no information about the addresses of voting points in Cork and Limerick, there is also no information about the opening hours of the voting points.
The situation is even worse for UK. On the website of Polish emabssy in London there is even no information about the elections and voting points in UK at all. Using the built-in search form with keyword “wybory” (elections), you get 0 results.

As for the Ireland, there is about 150 thousands of Polish emigrants roughly, but there are rumours that there is even more. I assume that there is at least 130 thousands of us entitled to vote. Dividing it by 3 we have 43 thousands voters for each voting point roughly. Can you imagine a queue of 43 thousands standing in a front of Polish embassy in Dublin, voting point in Cork and another one in Limerick? Assuming that each voting point will be open for 12 hours, there will be about 3600 voters every hour, that gives us about 60 voters for 1 minute. And that is over optimistic assumption. I presume that the voting points will be open for 10 hours only and that will give 4300 people for 1 hour and 72 people for 1 minute. Both options are impossible - the voting points won’t be efficient to service for such big number of people.

From the other hand, people won’t be willing to vote, due to the possibility of standing for hours in the queue without an end. Especially people from the other towns of Ireland. Will anybody want to come to Dublin from Carlow and spend 5 - 6 or more hours in the queue? I presume nobody.

Of course, it would be very hard and it would be quite expensive to set up a temporary consulate in every bigger Irish town and city (such as Gallway, Kilkenny, Carlow, Portlaoise, Tullamore, Drogheda and many more) it is quite clear. However our right side government seems to forget about the invention of the letter and post office. In some of the European countries you can vote via post, especially if you are abroad. It would be much more fair, when we would have a chance to vote via post, registering themselves in the embassy and getting special voting form to send back to embassy (to Dublin, London or whatever) using the local post.

In my opinion the conditions of voting prepared by Polish state are a clearly limitations of democracy.

kick it on kick.ie

www.fotoblogi.eu
« Previous Entries