Kenny Shovel said:
Life in the Ukraine is more illogical than pretty much everywhere!
Yep. BTW, have you heard about one Valentin Kryzhanovsky (sp?), a colonel in the Ukrainian Security Service, who has recently revealed some corruption, contraband and other criminal activities among the highest echelons of contemporary Ukrainian government and security forces. Almost immediately after the press conference was completed - he was shot at twice by some killer, survived that, fled the hospital and escaped Ukraine (supposedly to Russia).
The "Orange Princess", Mrs. Timoshenko, millionaire and businesswoman, declared her incom, capital savings and property at some pretty low figure, asked for (and received!) financial help, intended for low-income citizens. Then she pretended that all of her gowns (they say there are hundreds of them, with the names of all the fashion designers between those) were given to her by her husband, who is officially unemployed for some time, and, according to Mrs. Timoshenko's declaration, has no property or any means of living other than Mrs. Timoshenko's.
As my wife's parents (former supporters of Mr. Yushenko) told us, general attitude of the people towards the new government have drastically changed lately. It doesn't surprise me a bit, if you ask me.
Kenny Shovel said:
So do you think this is a case of ‘it will become worse for a while before becoming better’ or is the new system a mistake?
I will give you the plain facts so you could decide yourself. It seems that now we have a dilemma: to go on with "grey" scheming - economising only on customs payments and taxes, but showing real nomenclature of goods, or come to "black" schemes, paying almost nothing through the official channels, but spending large sums on bribing. (Almost nobody seriously considers "white" scheme for the reasons I've already mentioned before).
It is strange that now, it seems, the "grey" schemes became much more risky than the "black" ones: we have another two trucks detained on a Moscow governmental warehouse (they were stopped on the way FROM customs to our WH last Thursday) with nothing really illegal about them, and "black" trucks are going to and fro unhindered, according to what I am told.
So with all my personal negative attitude towards contrabanda scheming, it seems that we could be made to use them in near future.
Kenny Shovel said:
I always ask local when I’m on holiday who their best National writers are; my interest in Czech writers comes from my first trip to Prague. Then it’s a case of expanding from there. I quite often use the ‘people who liked this also liked this book’ feature on Amazon, it’s allowed me to find some interesting authors.
Yes, I also used that feature once or twice.
Wow, how good it could be to sit somewhere and to do nothing but reading a book at leasure...
Kenny Shovel said:
You know, your friends the Finns seem hopelessly incompetent to me.
So to me, though these latest mistakes were made not by TNT people, but by Transval Oy company, supposedly well-known in Finland professionals at warehousing management. TNT has subcontracted them to do their warehousing for them. And that pretty much gives the overall picture...
