On July 23, Viktor Orbán, PM of Hungary, held his annual speech at Tusványos, which has gained international infamy because of one line the Hungarian prime minister used when talking about the difference between the West and Hungary. The line that has received the most international attention is “This is why we have always fought: we are willing to mix with one another, but we do not want to become peoples of mixed-race.”
It makes a big difference whether the state directly funds the operation of restaurants or “merely” mandates the issuance of food stamps, or whether restaurants are funded by paying customers.
Hundreds of tones of dead fish have recovered from the Oder river. First dead fish were spotted already in late July. In early August, some anglers and local politicians from Lower Silesia alarmed regional authorities. There was no reaction. The mass die-off was detected when locals came across thousands of fish corpses near the village of Widuchowa on 11 August.
The solutions to combat inflation that Danuše Nerudová proposes are not good ones. A price cap on energy can lead to nothing but shortages. Financially incentivizing households and industry to reduce energy consumption is useless in a world of market prices.
There are private solutions, for healthcare, schools, and transport. They are popular or at least coveted. Yet, there is a catch. The state always lurks beneath the surface. Many taxi companies are owned by cronies and have a huge lobbying power. There is a fixed rate and no competition in Budapest.
Recently the Polish ministry of education announced the creation of a new mandatory school subject called “Historia i Teraźniejszość”. The coursebook that was written by a former PiS EU Parliament deputy, Wojciech Roszkowski, specifically on that purposes includes numerous political and ideological biases, presenting “the one and only, proper” worldview inclined towards the policy of Polish government.
Starting in September the Polish Ministry of Education and Science will introduce a new school subject and a new school textbook. It is called ‘Historia i Teraźniejszość’ (History and the Present). The author of the book is Wojciech Roszkowski. He is a historian and a former member of European Parliament. He represented the Law and Justice (PiS).
When the international concept of human rights is seen as a threat to sovereignty and national values, such phenomena as antisemitism, islamophobia and xenophobia are politicized, and minorities are marginalized and excluded. In this situation, the main tool for creating attitudes of tolerance and inclusivity is education.
In Slovakia, we have a problem with the drain of the brightest young people to foreign universities. If we want to solve this problem, we need to know the causes. And we can only know these if we understand how higher education works and what its real added value is.
If a quality secondary school can produce a quality graduate in 3 years instead of 4, it will save a quarter of its costs. That means it can cut the price by a quarter!
