Thursday, December 12, 2019

Hunger in Poland, but there are more food banks...







The city of Lodge (Lodz, Łódź) an informal capital of Central Poland, is full of Christmas decorations designed to give the impression of general prosperity and encourage customers to buy expensive gifts. Unfortunately, all is not gold that glitters. In supermarkets, you see the poor dirty devils more often than the rich men buying gold watches.

In the picture: shopping district of the shopping and entertainment center Manufaktura. The staff of this extremely tolerant international company (salespersons speak English, German or French), unlike some other hypermarket chains, does not stalk the poorest people or drive them out. Of course there are some limits of behaviour allowed at every public place, but these are easily distinguishable from the politics whose name begins with the A letter.


In the small town of Zelow, which is characterized by Protestantism, a non-profit organization set up a kind of refrigerator on Szkolna Street (charytatywna lodówka przy ulicy Szkolnej), which everyone can fill with food. Those who need food aid can then take it out to satisfy their hunger. According to another charity operating across the country, two million people live below the poverty line in Poland, fighting for biological survival. Briefly explained, in the Republic of Poland, where the government is assuring everybody that an economic miracle (or another Miracle on the Rhine) is taking place, there are two million inhabitants who, even if they have a roof over their heads, do not get something to eat every day.


Three times two million: What kind of economic equation is that?

In addition to these two million, there are about two million Polish citizens who have left permanently for Britain, Ireland and the Scandinavian countries in search of work and conditions for establishing a new family. We should also remember two million Ukrainian citizens who want to stay in our country for at least a few years because they have found a job here and have not been able to get a job in Ukraine. Just like that!

I do not intend to make a suggestion to solve puzzles here, so I explain that poverty and misery in Poland are currently mainly targeting people over 50 years old. Their children moved to Western Europe. There they have their own expenses: for the upkeep of small children, for the construction of a house, etc. They cannot afford any significant material help in favor of their getting old parents. And these parents already once had to endure for many years without a steady job due to the horrors of shock therapy and intentionally caused bankruptcy of the vast majority of Polish industry in the 1990s.

In the case of many of these not-so-old men and women, they could still work, but there is no work for them, as the Ukrainians agree to work for a lower wage than the one paid to the Poles (but I don't blame them, as they were also forced to do so). That ended a short period in which you could get a fairly well-paid full-time or part-time job in Poland. Some obvious facts presented...


Can food distribution help with ever new food banks under these circumstances?

That’s quite a rhetorical question, although the fact that the organizers of this initiative want to help those most in need in this way is, of course, laudable. As well as the fact that they want to make sure that wealthy people do not throw food into trashcans because they sometimes have too much food or the expiration date of their food, which they no longer want to eat, will follow soon. This is the third initiative of its kind in Central Poland.


In the reality, an average Pole is not a drinker or drug addict, but a hardworking man whom you can rely on in any situation, provided he’s treated well

To proclaim that the homeless and the hungry people are lame ducks is to look for an excuse for not to do anything for them. That‘s what some manufacturers which were at the same time social reformers of the 19th century already found out at that time. They established something like royal republics here in Central Poland, where factory owners shared their wealth with the workers.

Being liberated from misery and worries about the future, the workers thanked them with great labor productivity. These few factory owners of German, Jewish and French nationality became kings of cotton products throughout the Russian Empire. Perhaps there will finally be someone who will follow the good example and use this reserve army of work, before their soldiers starve to death.


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