It is amazing how spring affects people and nature. Everything is blooming and turning green; people and little animals are coming together and mating, while politicians are setting up “limited liability companies.” Politicians are a group of people who connect everything: politics with honesty, truth with naivety, promises with hope, honour with falsehood, public budgets and primary healthcare clinics with companies, and public money with private money. Spring works miracles, but as you can see, our benefactors have so much to connect that they usually get it all mixed up. Hence, instead of saying “things are better,” people say they are getting worse.
Companies in Local Government—A sinecure or a necessity?
As a practitioner and theoretician of the local-government system, I simply cannot understand why any commercial-law companies were introduced into local government, since this changes nothing apart from making the services provided by these business entities more expensive. Social oversight of this part of local-government activity, including the circulation of funds, is also effectively being shut down. The mayor supervises the companies, but since the statutory mayor was separated from the municipal and city council, even cooperation between the mayor and the council has become difficult. Efforts have been made to reduce councillors to extras.
All right. In my view, companies operating on public assets are pure sinecures and money pits—from local governments to hospitals. Both local governments and public healthcare are passing into private hands, bypassing the safeguards contained in legal regulations that define strict medical qualifications and the functioning of primary healthcare clinics. By introducing companies into public life through the “back door,” we have given ourselves an almost uncontrolled outflow of public funds, with primary healthcare as an example. With so many companies in the public healthcare system, “topping up” this institution with money makes no sense. Successive governments double and triple spending on primary healthcare, yet we still spend months standing in suffocating queues. They have even announced the reason for the loss of money in primary healthcare: the patient fails to show up for an appointment. The people are to blame.
Bolesławiec Is Joining with the Municipality—Developers Are Rubbing Their Hands
Another springtime merger—the mayor wants to become the municipal head by joining the rural Municipality of Bolesławiec with the city of Bolesławiec. Brilliant! Only the American army can come to the rescue here, while concerned officials and politicians will announce that this is for the sake of state security.
In my view, the reason is the malaise in the development industry. One can, of course, build in the countryside, but: land is cheap, and who wants to live in a block of flats in the countryside? And which developer will make millions from it? If my theory proves correct, landowners in the rural Municipality of Bolesławiec will soon receive attractive offers to sell, but they will still be small, especially for plots located close to the city. This is a scenario that appears every time investments such as motorways, economic zones and similar projects are planned.
Who Is Fooling Whom Here?
Concern for society is evidently immense—which is why electoral law is also being tampered with, subtly ensuring continuity in power, while society gets the impression that it is choosing. Sometimes someone else appears as a candidate—they surround the person with stooges and he is finished. I am not twisting reality; this is based on observation. I once joked that soon there would be a rule of inherited positions in public administration, but now I think I should not have joked, because perhaps I gave someone the idea.
If this springtime merger of urban and rural zones comes to pass, the new residents of Bolesławiec will wake up to city fees and will quickly start getting rid of their properties. I wonder whether the referendum questions will include something like: “Do you want to pay more for being a town dweller?” That is what I am thinking—what can truth and loyalty to voters be exchanged for or combined with?
I do not know whether I understood Dante correctly. In “The Divine Comedy,” he wrote: “…this lie builds reality…” and that was so many years ago. I wonder how right I am. If elites rule us… what are we in their eyes?