Uncategorized – Rude Kitchen

The Platform Directive. Round One

Rude Kitchen — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 14:50:38 +0000

Not all heroes wear capes. This one wears a suit and glasses and is bald. No wonder — come September 2026 he turns 70. And I’d love to know how to stand my ground like that, at any age, the way he just did.

I have an important message for couriers working on civil-law contracts. Announcing that their contracts will be terminated soon will not stop our inspections, and wherever justified, we will issue orders to convert these contracts into proper employment — and if that doesn’t work, decisions mandating such conversion.

An old commie, PZPR-bred, and the best thing this coalition has done. A pro with years in the labour inspectorate behind him. Chief Labour Inspector Janusz Krasoń. He’s practically opening his time in the job with this declaration. He’s been head of the National Labour Inspectorate for barely 3 weeks. And he’s already got on the wrong side of some 250 billion dollars. Because that’s what the companies offering so-called platform work, like Just Eat Takeaway, are valued at.

And however important and needed these words are for the workers of Just Eat Takeaway’s Polish arm, Pyszne.pl — it’s deeds that count.

On 22 July, the National Labour Inspectorate launched an inspection at Pyszne.pl, which decided to sack 5,000 couriers and have them hired through fleet partners.

The corporation’s decision, contrary to fairly common belief, wasn’t triggered by the inspectorate’s new powers.

Last year Lieferando, the German arm, sacked 2,000 couriers; in April the layoffs hit the Netherlands.

These are attempts to shield themselves — practice will show how well — from the consequences of the platform work directive the workers fought for and won.

It covers more than delivery couriers, but they’re the most active trade group in the fight against this pathology.

One of the platforms’ basic strategies is shifting costs and risk onto the workers.

In delivery you have to buy the bag, pay to rent a bike from the very company you work for (sic!)…

If the platform directive gets implemented properly, practices like these will be eliminated, or at the very least seriously curbed.

That’s exactly why the Pyszne.pl case matters so much.

It’s the first big employment inspection since inspectors got the power to convert illegal civil-law contracts into Labour Code ones (employment contracts), and the first clash for the new European law recognising platform workers… as workers.

To put it a bit more precisely: the law recognises that with platforms an employment relationship exists, and so an employment contract should be signed.

And all the labour-rights regulations matter — the ones that don’t protect people on civil-law contracts.

It’s not just the right to holiday, but the rules on working in high heat, on days off, or at night.

And yes, of course, if someone thinks they’ll have to pay more for a delivered pizza (or kebab). They will. And very good.

Because there’s always a chance they won’t order at all — they’ll take a walk instead or cook for themselves (if they can manage), and either way that’s better for their fitness and health. And if plenty of people do that, then thanks to the effect of scale it’s a win for public health and takes a bit of weight off the health service.

And of course the delivery business could take a big hit. And very good. If a company can’t offer decent working conditions and decent pay, better it goes under.

But customers won’t stop eating. This isn’t buying new gear, a phone or a car. Where maybe I’ll wait for a sale. Or won’t buy at all, too pricey.

We have to eat every day. And customers who don’t buy food through a platform will buy it elsewhere.

And it’s not the case either, whatever some loudmouths say, that people doing courier work dreamed of this career path and have plenty of better options.

Well, they don’t. That’s why they work in delivery. Or stack supermarket shelves, or sit at the till.

Poland is a country where these Morlocks were, after ’89, stripped of their rights with premeditation — the cornerstone being the anti-union law of May ’91, in which the new elites cut back trade union rights, starting with the unions’ most important weapon: the strike. A grim paradox of Polish history, that the people who came to power thanks to striking workers stripped those workers of their rights.

And it’s probably just a coincidence, mere timing, but I’d like to think it’s something more — that the new Chief Labour Inspector began his reign not long after the new mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, called a socialist by just about everyone, whether with hatred or delight, backed the Starbucks union workers right after his win.

We will leave no one without our support. I hope this gives food for thought to businesses planning moves that hurt their employees. The rules apply to everyone equally and we will make no exceptions in applying them.

Janusz Krasoń

How to be safer in the city. 5 simple rules

Rude Kitchen — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 06:47:51 +0000

A post caught my eye on LI about extra insurance against accidents and incidents, for trips and holidays
And my thought was:
I don’t buy any insurance, because I trust the Lord to see me through safely
And for a few years now I’ve been knocking about places where the fact that I’ve only once taken a smack in the gob, and even that ended harmlessly, clearly shows that trusting the Lord works better than insurance.
Of the 5 most dangerous districts in Hamburg, I’m a regular… in every one.
Just as regularly though less often I hang around the most dangerous parts of the most dangerous city in Germany, Bremen
And only once did I get smacked in the mush
And, how could it be otherwise, by a fellow Pole
So either the tales that Germany’s finished and mad immigrants are raping, murdering and robbing in the streets, not necessarily in that order, are not necessarily true, or I somehow (probably by magic) dodge the dangers.
Both. Tales of streets full of criminal immigrants are as overblown as calling the World Cup a celebration of sport. Well, there’s supposedly some sport in it, but it’s about something else entirely.
Because statistically, me getting smacked in the mush by a fellow Pole is no accident. Poles top the German crime statistics for foreigners. Poland has exported its social problems to Germany (and probably to England too, for example) in the shape of 100 thousand homeless Poles living in Germany. Germany has also imported plenty of criminals, beggars and homeless people from Romania.
And the main problem and threat on German streets is growing poverty and homelessness and above all hard drugs, headed by Crack, King of the German Streets.
Particularly dangerous places in Germany are the railway stations in big cities, which have become gathering points – Brennpunkt, as the Germans call them – for homelessness, petty crime, drug dealing and drug use.
The situation was at its most dangerous 2–3 years ago. Since then, tighter checks have come in at the stations. Run jointly by railway security, the state police and the federal police. In Germany the federal police are responsible precisely for stations and airports but their surroundings are down to the local (state) police
In Hamburg they’ve built a new, second police station by the railway station.
Pro Tip: In Hamburg, take special care coming out on the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe side and towards the bus station (ZOB), next to which you’ll find the “junkies’ square” and the Drob Inn, a help point for addicts.
Right now there’s a big square set aside for addicts. The idea is to shut them away a bit in something like a ghetto (and Germany has nearly a thousand years’ practice in shutting the element away in ghettos) or a bit like monkeys in a cage, except they’re not monkeys in a cage. Remember, these are people just like you and me and they have the same rights and human dignity.
There’s also the fact that, probably thanks to my old crew hand’s look, veteran of the subculture wars, currently weighing 82 kg and not the can’t-see-your-own-knob kind, I don’t look like an easy victim. More like I look the sort the element bumps fists with, the drug dealers ask what I’m after, and outside the station I’m more wary of the police than of the “element”.
I’ve had a couple of situations that could have got heavy. Leaving aside the one where my fellow Pole went for me, the threat came from German chavs.
Nothing came of it, but once for example it looked like they were getting ready to do me. Getting the shit kicked out of you plus a robbery, pretty much the international standard, only they were calling in their mates first, because two of them alone wouldn’t risk it.
I preferred not to wait around to find out whether I’d read it right, and I fucked off out of there.
Pro tip: that’s usually the best option, not necessarily a desperate sprint, just getting yourself away. Because even if you reckon you can handle it, you never really know who you’re dealing with or whether they’re carrying. And the most important rule of street safety is: play the hard man and you’ll run into a harder man than you.
Especially in a city where, like in Hamburg, there’s a gang war on.
In January 2025 a kid sent by the Mocro Mafia (which controls cocaine imports into Europe, and Hamburg is the most important port for that corporation) opened fire in St. Georg, in Grand Baklava, the cake shop with the best baklava in Hamburg, on a member of the Turkish mafia that runs St. Georg. One thing you have to hand the Turkish gangsters: they know their baklava
St. Georg, which the Central Station is also part of, is among the most dangerous places in Hamburg. Top 2 together with St. Pauli. And that’s mainly down to these being party districts, full of visitors and tourists.
And that always means alcohol and other drugs, prostitution, violence, crime. A bit like Praga Północ in Warsaw a dozen-odd years ago. When gentrification had already arrived and the “tourists from across the Vistula” were coming over, the locals held their ground and there were places where, if tourists walked in, they were soon fucking off out of them.
St. Georg has for some time now been crack-dealing and crack-smoking territory. Though the dealers, at least in my experience, are rather polite people and offer their services without pushing it, young businessmen like, mostly Black migrants
Though I’ve met a Polish dealer too. There are plenty of Poles (right after the Turks) in the German drug business, but as a rule higher up the structure. The street dealer is the arse end of the digestive tract, destined to be devoured. Not so different from a grafter in a factory or a lemming in corpo.
Crack users, on the other hand, can be dangerous and aggressive. The Pole who attacked me in St. Pauli was probably addicted to crack.
But generally these are decent places and given the number of people churning through, the number of tourists, especially at weekends, it’s not like you’ll get robbed, raped and eaten (not necessarily in that order) if you go there.
But be careful, not scared. Out-of-towners, tourists are an easy target for muggings, theft and beatings
The obvious and natural ground for that is precisely the stations. Especially ones as huge as Hamburg’s
The biggest station in Europe, in Paris, handles 700 thousand passengers a day and has over 40 tracks. Hamburg’s handles 500 thousand and has 14, so the crush is monstrous. And it’s dead easy to rob someone there.
Only then again, back when Hamburg’s station was the most dangerous place in Germany, I happened to sleep on its floor one night. The only one who woke me was the cleaning man with his big machine, nobody else bothered me or tried to rob or rape me. Though maybe the latter’s because I’m too old now.
By the way, Hamburg’s Hauptbahnhof at night really is a peculiar world. “All the animals come out at night. Queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick venal.” People just like you and me, with the same right to privacy
And that’s the first of the rules
1. Don’t photograph the homeless or the junkies in St. Georg, or at the station, or anywhere else. Because that’s the first rule, the one I got smacked in the gob over myself. They’re not monkeys in a zoo or a tourist attraction, they’re people just like you and me, and they have the same right to respect and privacy as you or me.
If you do it, don’t be surprised when you’re met with aggression. You might even lose your phone. And rightly so
All the more so because in Germany people are very touchy about their privacy and about having their photo taken without consent.
I had a situation where an elderly gent (fck! he was nearly my age, I just don’t know if older or younger) came up to me in the street and politely asked me to delete a photo I’d taken of him
And I’d been photographing the ornaments on a building he was walking past.
I could have argued the toss over whether he had a point, whether you could recognise him zoomed in. If I were a dickhead, that’s what I’d have done, but since I’m not a dickhead, I politely deleted it.
In Germany, worth remembering too, such demands have a legal basis
Recently some sad fucker put a video up on YouTube about how terrible Hamburg is and was very surprised when the police turned up, because he’d been filming some immigrant, and it was the immigrant who’d called them, not wishing to be filmed. If you square up to the police in a situation like that, you might even lose your phone.
From over five years I’ve got barely a handful of photos like that, taken from a good distance, where the figures are indistinct, obscured, blurred, unrecognisable, or it’s just the bedding spots.
Hamburg, by the way, is the German city with the highest number of homeless people relative to its population. And among them there’s a sizeable group of Poles, as in every big German city I know. And it’s Poles who are largely responsible for the fact that the areas around big-city stations in Germany are dangerous these days.
2. I know body language, dress style, etc. isn’t something you can change easily overnight, but it’s also an important part of staying safe in the city.
All the more so if you’re a tourist. The tourist is the obvious and natural victim.
But it’s simply worth knowing where you’re going and not looking around helplessly, spinning like a turd the water didn’t take away.
I know sometimes there’s no helping it, I still spin about like that in Hamburg myself to this day.
But clothes are worth thinking about. Expensive clobber is an invitation to get turned over, same with jewellery or ultra-pricey gadgets.
In places like St. Georg they’re also a trigger for many people, an eyesore to the poor living there. Locals can read it as a way of showing you’re better than them. And when a tourist shows he’s better, a ******** is what he’s owed.
Remember the simple rules too, like not keeping your wallet or phone in your back trouser pocket. Astonishing how many people carry them there. Jackets with inside zip-up pockets are brilliant. Why make the pickpockets’ job easier.
And I don’t recommend looking like you’re out to *********** someone, because there’ll always be somebody wanting to test that. Because playing the hard man isn’t worth it. Start playing the hard man and you’ll always run into a harder one.
3. And that’s the next safety rule I’d recommend.
Don’t be a hard man or any other kind of arsehole.
Especially a racist arsehole.
I get that the shambles (the drug markets) outside a railway station can horrify someone. But when all they see there is Black people, of whom, by the way, there are very few among the junkies and alkies, that already means they’re ******** arseholes. Who shit themselves that there are lots of Black people and Arabs in central Hamburg. And when they walk into an immigrant district or the park in Sternschanze, where there are loads of immigrants, they shit themselves even harder while hating and despising those people all at once.
So they shouldn’t be surprised when they get smacked in the gob. In the same places where I’m bumping fists or having a pleasant natter with two young immigrants from Ghana.
That hostility shows in your body language and can be felt. And when you’re an immigrant, especially the lowest-status kind (me, for instance, I’m a second-class immigrant, they’re fourth at best), you become a master at sensing these things.
But also, to be clear, the point isn’t for you to force yourselves to fraternise with dodgy characters.
Just don’t be arseholes and work on your attitude towards strangers.
And I do wonder: why the fuck does an arsehole who shits himself at the sight of strangers crawl out of his basement at all, where it’s all his own kind and it’s safe?
4. Mindfulness!
As it turns out, Buddhist traditions come in handy for not getting robbed too. That’s mindfulness of your surroundings and above all the basic rule: HEADPHONES OUT!
I love listening to music myself, wandering somewhere, travelling. But in the city I practically never use them. Even headphones with no sound on are dangerous, because they muffle the sounds around you
Wearing headphones, you’re sending a clear signal: I don’t know what’s going on around me, you can rob me, give me a ********, rape me, eat me, and I’ll only catch on when I’m the second course.
The fifth point is the worst, the most terrifying, and, what’s worse, beer too.
5. Dangerous places like Sankt Pauli, especially around the Reeperbahn, or St. Georg – Germans and tourists from other countries don’t go there to soak up the vibe, feel the place, touch the street, as I call it, but to have a good time.
Come on, fck it, who are we kidding. To get absolutely fucking hammered. Ghettos for debasing yourself like that are typical of Germany.
And that, by the way, is why these areas are so dangerous. Where alcohol shows up, other substances show up, crime always shows up, pickpockets, muggers, prostitution, the gangs controlling the prostitutes show up. And people drunk or on other substances are an easy victim.
And that most important and hardest rule is to stay sober.
Under the influence, especially in a strange city, it’s easy to get lost and, say, fall (in Hamburg) into one of the canals.
I’m not pushing abstinence, that won’t get us anywhere; I’m pushing awareness that what we do means consequences.
I’m certain that if I’d been under the influence when I was attacked, I’d have started scrapping, and considering that though the aggressor was fairly weak, he had 10 mates behind him, it could have ended in a proper booting for me.
And curiosity may be eating you up about what happened.
The situation was actually pretty funny.
I was walking through St. Pauli, as I do, and turned wherever my eyes took me. And I walked on until I saw a wall in a side street covered in posters and graffiti. And as is my habit, I started taking photos. And a bit further on some crew was sitting there, punks maybe? They weren’t punks.
One of the crew jumped up and started running my way. He tried to snatch my phone and started laying into me, calling me names in Polish at the same time.
Which was already a big plus for me, because German would’ve been a struggle, and the fact that I was speaking to him in Polish may also have calmed him down a bit.
The junkies thought I was photographing or filming them.
And again. I didn’t scrap with him, didn’t stand my ground over something meaningless, just kept one hand on the attacker the whole time, controlling him, holding him off, while with the other I deleted the photos
In many situations, obviously not all, you can manage precisely by not squaring up, by walking away or deleting photos when somebody… asks politely. And if he’s got a blade or mates to back up his arguments, don’t even think about any other solution.
The funniest thing in my case was that the bloke kept calling me a poof the whole time. Fuck knows why…
And only some time later, when I was back in the same area, did it dawn on me that from his point of view I’d come from the direction of the street where the gay clubs stood one right next to the other,