Fathers will soon have a couple of days off work to take care of their infants, writes Gazeta Wyborcza.

Press reviewed by Alicja Baczynska

Fathers will finally have the opportunity to take time off to be with their children, writes Gazeta Wyborcza. They will be entitled to a weeklong leave as of 2010, extended to two weeks in 2011, at any given time within a year after the baby’s birth. Experts from the Gdansk Institute for Market Economics claim this would allow the fathers to bond better with their children and would also level the women’s chances on the labour market. It looks as though the action, launched by Gazeta Wyborcza, has found approval of parties of both the left and right, and is fervently backed by the ruling Civic Platform. If the leave catches on with the fathers, it may be further extended, writes the paper.

Online shopping for alcohol has become quite popular among youngsters, writes Polska daily. Teenagers can easily get away with it as parental consent for receiving parcels is obviously not necessary. And so parcels with booze may be delivered home while the parents are at work, or somewhere away from the house, such as a parking lot. The forbidden fruit is just one click away since all it takes is to confirm that you are 18 in the purchase order, which is not verified by the retailers. Also, the post office is not allowed to peer into the packages, so the postmen have no reason to check the recipient’s ID. The State Agency for Prevention of Alcohol-Related Problems claims that this is why online shops should not be allowed to sell any alcohol whatsoever. Their recent survey conducted on 15-year-olds has proved that drinking is common among teenagers; it has shown that 65.8 percent of the respondents have drunk alcohol within the last 30 days, whereas 29.2 percent have been intoxicated. The problem is not any easy one, as even when the parents catch the kids red-handed, they are rather unlikely to report this to the police.

Dziennik gives insight into yet another chapter of Poland’s Euro 2012 preparations. This time the government wants gamblers to chip in towards the construction of stadiums for the championships. This means that bookies, owners of casinos and penny arcades, as well as organizers of lotteries and phone-in competitions will have to pay a gambling tax, which is expected to yield a whopping 1.5 billion zlotys by 2012.

Thirty-seven percent of Poles, concerned with the current financial crisis, opt for Leszek Balcerowicz as premier, writes Gazeta Wyborcza. The former finance minister and former head of the National Bank of Poland is one of the three best prime ministers for the times of trouble according to the findings of a poll commissioned by the newspaper. The economist known for his radical reform programme of the Polish economy in the 1990s, has since been very unpopular among the populists and associated with the phrase “Balcerowicz must go” coined by them. It therefore comes as some surprise that his name is now listed just a step behind former prime minister Kazimierz Marcinikiewicz, and current prime minister Donald Tusk.