UK's Non Fascination with Poland/Riots

I wasn't going to post this so soon but Mr Dembinski's post here about Poland's fascination with the riots and the UK generally prompts me to look at this relationship from the opposite perspective.

On the riots: the Polish press seem very interested in the racial element of the riots - that the majority of the rioters are black- as part of a greater interest in the "dangers" of multiculturalism.

It's easy to jump to that conclusion but that doesn't seem right to me. This is not the 1980s. This to me is more about an organised criminal element of (mostly black) gangs, using networking technology and highly mobile tactics that have wrong-footed the Police and encouraged other groups to join in.

These are not race riots, but they are riots by gangs that have been hitherto ignored. They can't be ignored any longer.

A bit of rough maths - If only 0.5% of London's 8 Million inhabitants rioted on Monday, that's still 40,000 rioters and a 1 in 80 chance of being one of the 500 people arrested. Free stuff, adrenaline charge, joining the group mentality and getting that kudos, minimal chance of being arrested - who wouldn't feel at least a temptation to join in if they had no stake in society and no responsibilities to answer to?


These are the people who you feel nervous passing in the street but otherwise, as a policy maker, generally ignore, placed in the "too difficult to think about" box.

That said, these have the potential to become "race riots" a la Bradford 2005, if vigilantes and gangs continue to clash. Watch this space.

Anyway,  on my return to Poland last Saturday I saw on thenews.pl that Jarosław Kaczyński is saying, following the publishing off the Miller report, that he intends to bring the world's attention to what he sees as the cover-up and involvement of Russia and her minions in the Smolensk disaster. 

I am afraid to say that the world might not listen much. I was in the UK at the time of publication  and not one TV report even mentioned the findings. I eventually found 8 lines on it in the Daily Telegraph - on page 15. Even a report on a new facility to "Rate your Vicar" got 24 lines on page 13. 

This seems to me to be indicative of a general lack of interest in Polish matters in the UK (and a lack of interest in our European neighbours generally). A look at at the aggregate news service Tutkaj News shows that most of the regular mentions of Poland are a local news hotch-potch of murders, thievery, drunk drivers and so on. 

Maybe that shouldn't be a surprise but it does seem to me that the relationship is not yet one of mutual interest.