In Brief: Bankier.pl; Schools IT tender; ARiMR; Troubled offset
The value of the transaction was not revealed. Following the acquisition, Bankier.pl wants increase the number of its users to 500,000 from the present 250,000. (Parkiet, p. 5) ... The Finance Ministry has prepared all the regulations necessary to allow the tenders to provide schools with IT equipment to begin. As a result the Education Ministry will soon be ready to announce tenders, the value of which will amount to zł.400 million in 2004 and total zł.1.5 billion by the end of 2006. (Puls Biznesu, p. 5) ... According to Puls Biznesu, the specification of a zł.3 million tender for 300 laptops announced by Agency for the Restructuring and Modernization of Agriculture (ARiMR) contains requirements which can only be fulfilled by Dell and Fujitsu-Siemens. The conditions laid out in the tender cannot be met by the world's two largest PC makers, IBM and HP. Since the provisions of the tender openly limit the competition, ARiMR will be flooded with protests, claims Puls Biznesu. (Puls Biznesu, p. 5) ... More bad news for the Offset program. Aerospace company PZL Mielec, has yet to see Lockheed Martin make good its promises to sell 200 Mielec planes to the U.S. Other companies covered by the F-16 offset agreement are experiencing similar problems. Opposition politician Bronisław Komorowski argues that the offset projects were not allocated based on needs, but rather on the geographic area from where the government's negotiators come from. (Rzeczpospolita, p. B4) E.B./T.J.
It was not at all usual in those days for two School-house boys to have a fight. Of course there were exceptions, when some cross-grained, hard-headed fellow came up who would never be happy unless he was quarrelling with his nearest neighbours, or when there was some class-dispute, between the fifth form and the fags, for instance, which required blood-letting; and a champion was picked out on each side tacitly, who settled the matter by a good hearty mill. But, for the most part, the constant use of those surest keepers of the peace, the boxing- gloves, kept the School-house boys from fighting one another. Two or three nights in every week the gloves were brought out, either in the hall or fifth-form room; and every boy who was ever likely to fight at all knew all his neighbours prowess perfectly well, and could tell to a nicety what chance he would have in a stand-up fight with any other boy in the house. But, of course, no such experience could be gotten as regarded boys in other houses; and as most of the other houses were more or less jealous of the School-house, collisions were frequent.
After all, what would life be without fighting, I should like to know? From the cradle to the grave, fighting, rightly understood, is the business, the real highest, honestest business of every son of man. Every one who is worth his salt has his enemies, who must be beaten, be they evil thoughts and habits in himself, or spiritual wickednesses in high places, or Russians, or Border-ruffians, or Bill, Tom, or Harry, who will not let him live his life in quiet till he has thrashed them.
It is no good for quakers, or any other body of men, to uplift their voices against fighting. Human nature is too strong for them, and they dont follow their own precepts. Every soul of them is doing his own piece of fighting, somehow and somewhere. The world might be a better world without fighting, for anything I know, but it wouldnt be our world; and therefore I am dead against crying peace when there is no peace, and isnt meant to be. I am as sorry as any man to see folk fighting the wrong people and the wrong things, but Id a deal sooner see them doing that than that they should have no fight in them. So having recorded, and being about to record, my heros fights of all sorts, with all sorts of enemies, I shall now proceed to give an account of his passage-at-arms with the only one of his school-fellows whom he ever had to encounter in this manner.
It was not at all usual in those days for two School-house boys to have a fight. Of course there were exceptions, when some cross-grained, hard-headed fellow came up who would never be happy unless he was quarrelling with his nearest neighbours, or when there was some class-dispute, between the fifth form and the fags, for instance, which required blood-letting; and a champion was picked out on each side tacitly, who settled the matter by a good hearty mill. But, for the most part, the constant use of those surest keepers of the peace, the boxing- gloves, kept the School-house boys from fighting one another. Two or three nights in every week the gloves were brought out, either in the hall or fifth-form room; and every boy who was ever likely to fight at all knew all his neighbours prowess perfectly well, and could tell to a nicety what chance he would have in a stand-up fight with any other boy in the house. But, of course, no such experience could be gotten as regarded boys in other houses; and as most of the other houses were more or less jealous of the School-house, collisions were frequent.
After all, what would life be without fighting, I should like to know? From the cradle to the grave, fighting, rightly understood, is the business, the real highest, honestest business of every son of man. Every one who is worth his salt has his enemies, who must be beaten, be they evil thoughts and habits in himself, or spiritual wickednesses in high places, or Russians, or Border-ruffians, or Bill, Tom, or Harry, who will not let him live his life in quiet till he has thrashed them.
It is no good for quakers, or any other body of men, to uplift their voices against fighting. Human nature is too strong for them, and they dont follow their own precepts. Every soul of them is doing his own piece of fighting, somehow and somewhere. The world might be a better world without fighting, for anything I know, but it wouldnt be our world; and therefore I am dead against crying peace when there is no peace, and isnt meant to be. I am as sorry as any man to see folk fighting the wrong people and the wrong things, but Id a deal sooner see them doing that than that they should have no fight in them. So having recorded, and being about to record, my heros fights of all sorts, with all sorts of enemies, I shall now proceed to give an account of his passage-at-arms with the only one of his school-fellows whom he ever had to encounter in this manner.
