The crisis seems to have no effect on Christmas spending by Poles, but it does have an effect on their readiness to seek advice from fortune tellers. Also – the heated debate on in vitro legislation.

Weekly press reviewed by Krystyna Kolosowska

The weekly Wprost brings a handful of recipes on how to survive the crisis and not get mad. According to the latest surveys, six percent of Polish households have suffered losses as a result of falling share prices. Sixteen percent were affected when the value of assets accumulated in pension funds began to decline, 11 percent had to pay higher credit rates and only 4 percent had problems in obtaining a bank credit. But the panic epidemic has spread so fast that eight out of ten Poles fear that the financial situation will deteriorate, almost a half are afraid of an economic crisis and on in three suspect they may lose their job. Experts calm down those fears. Gary Dugan, director from Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Managements, tells Wprost that Poland will be among the least affected countries by the crisis in Central and Eastern Europe. In his opinion, the Polish economy will grow by 2 to 3 percent annually, even if recession hits other countries. There are no objective reasons to fear that the crisis will ruin our life and will threaten the future of our children, the weekly says.

Traders hope that Poles will not be scared by the crisis and will rush to the shops before Christmas, writes Polityka. Last year almost 90 percent of them bought Christmas gifts, spending a record sum of 7.5 billion zlotys, one billion more than in 2007. According to a survey conducted shortly before the onset of the crisis, the average Polish family planned to spend around 300 euros on Christmas preparations, earmarking half of that sum for presents. Turnover lost momentum briefly in September but now it is back to normal. Though suppliers of computers and TV sets have raised prices by 5 to 10 percent, their sales have not declined. One might have expected that falling demand for refrigerators and washing machines in Europe will make producers offer incentives for Polish consumers. Nothing of this sort happened. Since the high wave of the crisis has not reached Poland yet, producers sent new price lists to shops, envisaging price hikes. Clearly they believe that Poles will buy new equipment before Christmas anyway.

Newsweek Poland says that the time of uncertainty, associated with the global financial crisis, is a locomotive for the astrological business. Back in 2006 almost sixty percent of Poles reached for horoscopes and divination. More than one third believe in them and one in twenty carefully follows horoscope recommendations. The average Pole spends five zlotys on horoscopes, fortune telling and charms. This is not much, but spending on toothpaste, for instance, is even smaller. The esoteric needs of Poles are satisfied by an army of 100,000 fortune tellers, tarot readers and clairvoyants, both professional and amateurs. There are also shops, web sites, periodicals and books, interactive television programmes and astrological schools. The market is worth an estimated 2 billion zlotys or about half a billion euros. A new breed are business astrologists, who determine the best date to start a business, sign a deal or a job contract. Business astrologists predict that the real crisis is yet to come and don’t think much about forecasts of professional economic analysts. After all the latter are just a separate breed of clairvoyants, but without their intuition.

Tygodnik Powszechny writes that work is coming to an end on a bill regulating in vitro procedures in Poland. As soon as the debate on the sensitive legislation started, Prime Minister Donald Tusk declared that he wants to spare Poland “a holy war” and to find a compromise solution. But the devil is in the details. It may turn out, like it was in the case of the anti-abortion law, that what some call a compromise, others will attack as an unacceptable proposal. It is certain that the new law will entail a ban on the creation and freezing of extra embryos, allowing the creation and implantation of only two. Specialists describe this method as much less effective. Critics say that Poland is preparing the most restrictive and the worst in vitro legislation in Europe. The weekly goes on to say that in the present debate, like in the one on abortion, one can hear no voices which look for a compromise. This is not because they are too weak to get through the din. Such voices are almost non-existent.

Poles are bombarded every year with scary reports on dangerous diseases against which they simply must be vaccinated. Gazeta Polska believes that behind the annual outbreaks of the vaccination panic are pharmaceutical companies and the medical lobby. For example, the city authorities of Jelenia Gora spent one million zlotys, a half of the municipal outlays on health protection, to vaccinate children against the pneumococcal disease. But it turns out that complications connected with this disease affect some 18 out of 100,000 children, which means some 200 to 300 kids in the Polish realities.

And the already cited Wprost writes, in connection with the Global Climate Conference, that Poles know little about climate change. According to a survey conducted by IQS & Quant for the Ministry of Environment, only 52 percent of them said the change is caused by greenhouse gas emissions. In 21 countries surveyed by BBC the rate exceeded 80 percent.