Polish Thoughts on Britain and the British

Urmmm....Yes i'm sure thats really what happened Osiol!!....and you think the English have such a high opinion of the Poles that they all go rushing up to them every time they open their mouths??....Dream on dude!!

can you think of a good reason why anyone would make it up? ...

You will have to ask Osiol why he would want to make it up!....If I spoke English in your home town in Poland would i be surrounded by admiring Poles wanting to know everything about Britain?......I just don't think Poland has that level of interest with the British!.....What do you think?

It depends if an English stag party has been there previously and got completely trollied, groped all the Polish women, mooned a passing nun, pissed in the town quare and up the side of the ancient church, worn Stalin tea shirts, spoke English and patronised those who could not reply, completely disrespected the local culture, behaved like animals and above all THOUGHT THEY HAD A RIGHT TO DO SO!!!!!!

It was a fairly unexpected thing to have happened, but it did.
I have also been to Poland and met people in pubs who were keen to practice their English. This was not in a big city. There was no stag party.

I might add that one was a woman who used to go out with a Polish man. Another was a man who had worked in Czech and had visited Poland on a few occasions.

Most English people seem to be fairly indifferent to Poles. There are a few who are xenophobic - they are probably xenophobic in the direction of any nationality. There are also some people who have a real admiration or at least some interest in Poland and the Polish.

If I want to make up a story, I'd be writing novels, not posting bullsh1t on a forum. I leave that to other people.

Crikey! I've now got a home town in Poland. Which one is it?

Ok Isiol.....I beleive you!!



I disagree with most of that....I don't think the Brits either like or dislike the Poles!....Why would they be Xenophobic towards them? Does the average Brit know enough about Poland to have an opinion?....My personal opinion from what i have read on this forum is that they seem to have lots of Opinions about everything i.e.....Churchill ''selling out Poland'' etc....Most of the stuff is complete Sh-t!....Communist propaganda is to blame for most of it!.....and the stuff about their so called Great Empire (with Lithuania).......Since we are all talking to each other in English!!....Well....we won't say any more about that!!...What i'm saying is.... they have this opinion about themselves that is impossible to live up to.



Ok Osiol....I didn't realise you lived on Saturn!!

F-ck me not that again!!.......Who does all that??.......about 1% of the population!!

I was just talking to my cousins back home. They said that the Poles were "the most admired group of immigrants" in the country, and that every second bus driver was Polish.

Just my .02. (I'm a Brit living in the states now.)

Or even less.
Some former flatmates of my brother's in Ireland went to Prague for a big drinking session.
By all accounts they'd have been better off staying in Cork.


That's why I said most are indifferent.

Yes, just like english propganda is to blame for the whole "churchill was fighting for you guys in Potsdam/Yalta", or "we engaged in the war because of you" wchich of course aren't true. And the truth lies as usually somewhere in between. Churchill didn't sold Poland in 1945, just as he didn't do anything to better our position. He simply didn't had the baragain power to do any of this. Add to that that his position at one pont was undermined by Roosvelt, who felt that by laughing of British forces somewhoe he will break the ice between him and stalin and you see how the things were at that time.

Basically during and just after the BOB, in times where Poland was basically the only ally of Britain Churchill made a lot of promises to polish people. We will never forget your deeds; we wont let you behind, etc etc blabla... The situation changed drastically after the German attack on Russia, when it became clear that there is a chance to construct an alliance with Russia. From that point alliance with Poland changed from a blessing to a very troublesome fact. Stalin didn't hide his intentions of keeping Eastern Europe for himself. Poles openly protested about the treatment of polish citizens by the Russians in 1939, about the invasion of that same year and mysterious missing of thousands of polish officers that were captured after the September campaign ( see Katyń,). At this point it would be better for Churchill to break one of those alliances, but in spite of yours and bubbawoos opinion that the polish contribution in WWII was meaningless, Churchill thought differently. Of course Polands military potential couldn’t be compared to these of Russia, but still 4 million people under arms through out the war which placed Poland on the fourth place when it comes to the number of forces in alliance ( that includes outside and inside the occupied country), polish intelligence that was responsible inter alia for sending information’s as well as pieces of V2 to England or for giving the precise location of place of production of the V1 and V2 (later on bombarded by RAF), polish resistance, which BTW was the biggest in Europe, etc… Because of these aspects Churchill decided to continue the relationship with Polish government on Exile and avoid answering any question about the future of Poland, delaying the resolving of this issue to a more suitable time, read after the war where Polish aid won’t be of any interest to Britain. I honestly don’t think that Churchill sold out Poland in 1945 but I do think that Polish government on Exile was being deceived through put the whole war. Basically priority for Churchill was to protect his people and so he did. He was forced to choose between his word and honor and the well being of his countrymen. Personally I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes but if I really had to choose I think that I would do the same as he did.

Why not? I would be more than happy to hear your view about the Republic Of Both Nations. You would be probably the first brit that knows actually anything about it, because as you rightly noticed in your post, an average brit doesn't know too much about the history of Eastern Europe.And by writing "not too much" I'm being extremely polite.

It's the first time somebody uses the word Empire in regards to RoBN though. A quite good attempt to ridiculoute it, but still, RoBN was a country of about 20 languages, several if not a dozen or so, religions and beliefs, which had a major impact in this part of the world for over 300 years. In times when people where being persecuted in the west for their beliefs every polish king was forced to sign a document that guaranteed the freedom to believe in what ever God one wanted. In times of absolutism polish king was being democratically elected by the nobles, and was forced to acknowledge that he has responsibilities for his people as well as had to ask the parliament if he wanted to declare war, rise taxes, etc. In it's peak moment it was 990 000 km square big. That's pretty big if you ask me.



Sorry aj, but just because you weren't thought about history of the whole Europe in your school days and just because Discovery still didn’t do a program about RoBN it doesn't mean that it wasn't a successful country.

It is not the only point the problem concerns the overall general knowledge of certain parts of British society. The level of education in some inner cities is close to third world levels. Brits have little or no knowledge of history other than their own or of languages. Of course, there are certain sections of British society extremely well educated and because of this it remains a world leader in certain areas. However, the above problem left undealt with will start to create a two and three tier society with little or no social interaction between groups.

youre being called out matty - i have never said this, quite the contrary infact

that's happening already, the gap between rich and poor is the greatest it's been in over 50 years. And research has shown that fewer working class children are going to university than 30 years ago.

I once asked a Polish girl what she thought about the British.

She said she liked them as they were so optimistic! As an Australian I found that comment amazing as I thought they were anything but.

She later admitted that older Poles are generally irredeemably pessisimistic - hence why the British made such a favourable impression.

I accept the chalenge. :)

Quoting: BubbaWoo

WWII was primarily fought by two countries - england and germany - history tells us which side won... for the second time...

...apparently there were a few other countries involved but history tells us very little of the role they played so we can conclude that it was largely insignificant...

URL

Ooops...

ERRATA

In the sentence : You would be probably the first brit that knows actually anything about it, because as you rightly noticed in your post, an average brit doesn't know too much about the history of Eastern Europe.And by writing "not too much" I'm being extremely polite.

I seamed to ate the "that I had the pleasure to meet who" part. So it should have been:

You would be probably the first brit that I had the pleasure to meet who knows actually anything about it, because as you rightly noticed in your post, an average brit doesn't know too much about the history of Eastern Europe.And by writing "not too much" I'm being extremely polite.

None of us are average - many British people don't even know our own history, let alone anyone else's.

Dear james123, I have no problem with Brits don't knowing the history of Poland. Ask any average Pole what does he know about Belarus for example and I can assure you than accept of the name the capitol city, Łukaszenko or the location of the country you wont hear much from him. Ignorance isn't a British phenomenon. But what I do have problem with is people that talk about things that they surely don't have an idea of.

PS: As for the level of education problem, I do hear from young parents that something similar is starting to happen here as well. Maybe it's an international problem caused by our technological development? Who knows.

Because you idiots usually don't know any other language.

C'est vrai!

Privet..
Kak u vas dela. Kak tvoyo zdorovie?
Govorite li vy po angliyski?
Da..? zaebis'!

OK. I'm sorry. Should be idiot instead of idiots.

I've heard and read besides Polish immigrants also other Eastern European immigrants like Lithuanian are kind of full of themselves about their looks and what they don't have that the U.K has like fastfood McDonalds which is good imo. They say that they are too beautiful for British, Irish schools. Which made me laugh. Because you get pretty, plain, average, ugly, and beautiful people in every country.

This is true

which is why


this is a generalisation


My cousin's first husband was Lithuanian, he was quiet, modest, considerate and totally hen pecked and nagged by my cousin.

People are people and we're all different, thank God.

geez matty - if you took that patriotic vitriol with anything other than a pinch of salt then theres not a lot i can say...

and if think you will probably find it was directed at our friends across the pond ;-)

Never in the field of drunken stuper
have so few - caused so much grief - to so many!!!!!!

Hey ajgraham also don't forget that it was the Poles that broke the Enigma
code in the 30's and gave it to England just before the war. The Brits just kept up with the German upgrades. The Enigma machine contributed to the success over 70% of allied operations.

What do I think about UK, historicaly we had neutral relationship, sometimes we were enemies (because of our good realtionship with France) we were alied durring WWII.

So all in all we had better friends as well as enemies

According to present, I m realy glad you opened for our citizens your country, I m surprised that after coming about 0.5-1 mln of our citizens there are no tensions or they are not so common.

I have been to London myself, only for 4 days, but London was realy nice. I noticed that Paris is more about culture and London is more about money (as to your competition with France) I really enjoyed London ;))) And all in all you opened your country for Poles, and France is still partly closed ...

I think that UK have made good investition by this move, your reputation in my country increased, and I think you will use it for long time. What means English products are more popular, more people study your history, and your point of view in different cases is better undestood ...

I have trade contact with UK and I find british people as a good business partners.