Governor, Wife Play (Taxpayers Pay)

Drinking and dancing on the taxpayers’ dime? Yes we can!

Ternopil Governor Valentyn Khoptyan: Look, we’re not celebrating Women’s Day, we...we were invited to [this place] where they have young talent, including those from the land of Ternopil, and I wanted to see...because the head of the oblast administration, he has to deal not just with industry, agriculture and the budget, but he also has to deal with life issues, ones pertaining to our region, including, including culture, health care, education, I mean, all those reforms that should be in progress today — there are 21 — ones that the president of our country has set forth. So this...that was, that was not a festive event and not recreation, that was a field trip, a learning experience, as it’s...the kind of work that’s done in Husyatyn Rayon (County), and, as you know, my wife is the chair of the rayon council there.

Reporter: Yes, I do know. So you bel[ieve]...in the report, they didn’t say it was a field trip of yours.
Governor: I’m telling you, I’m telling you: It was...

Reporter: In the report, they said it was the governor...
Governor: They were wrong. I’m...it was a field trip. And every time wherever I go, likewise, likewise, I always want to see our talent, and the land of Ternopil is rich in talent, both young and mature.

Reporter: Let me get this straight one more time. So making this report with state funding and showing it on state television, you believe, is absolutely acceptable?
Governor: It was a field trip of mine...and I...and we should be organizing this kind of work — the recreation of our people — in every rayon, city and village of our region.

What about all those people now making a living in Italy, Spain and Portugal?

How much more “recreation” do we need before this country runs out of people?




Sources:
http://censor.net.ua/ru/video_news/view/163216/glava_ternopolskoyi_oga_prazdnovanie_v_restorane_8_marta__eto_rabochiyi_vizit_video
http://pravda.com.ua
http://durdom.in.ua/uk/main/photo/photo_id/23526/person_id/1.phtml
http://durdom.in.ua/uk/main/photo/photo_id/23537/person_id/1.phtml

Tymoshenko Visits Mom, Changes Hairstyle

Girl falls in love with boy. Boy dumps girl. Girl loses to boy. Boy grounds girl.

On International Women’s Day, boy yields to girl. Girl roams free, heads back to her native Dnipropetrovsk for a family reunion.

Foreign travel? No way. You can take the hair out of the girl, but you can’t take the girl out of his hair.

Tymoshenko: I had to go through a whole variety of Nechvoglods (that’s the investigator’s name, Nichvoglod). So I had to go through a lot of Nichvoglods to get that special slip that allows me to visit mom.

Oh boy...banning *the* opposition leader from foreign and domestic travel? What a mood killer! Even for John McCain, whose associates have lobbied on your behalf?

You can take the girl out of the West, but you can’t take the West out of the girl.

It’s just that some girls wanna have so much fun that others have no business left in this country.

Meet the other Yulia. Yulia Smaga.




Ukraine's got talent! In Spain.

Sources:
http://censor.net.ua/ru/video_news/view/159367/timoshenko_pozdravila_mamu_v_dnepropetrovske_i_sdelala_novuyu_prichesku_video http://tsn.ua
http://life.pravda.com.ua/person/2011/03/9/74533/

Kuzhel on Death & Pensions for Zarobitchany

She confuses discounts with bribes. She wears a $40K watch. She’s such a fair lady.

Oleksandra Kuzhel: We’ll give them [migrant workers] their own right to legalize the money they earned so that they can safely repatriate, and, by the same token, they’ll have their years of work [abroad] count toward their pensions, which is...I believe, a fair policy. Besides, they’ll also have the opportunity to be insured. Now what does that mean? If a person comes to Ukraine and becomes ill, they have the right to a sick leave, they have the right to maternity benefits, and they have the right to have money for their burial.

How about they have the right to throw out the corrupt officials out of the country? How about they exercise that right before those officials depopulate and bury this country?

Kuzhel wants to lure back a few million Ukrainian zarobitchany (migrant workers) with a very interesting concept of fairness: Rob Peter to pay Paul. (So that Viktor can stage another Paul McCartney concert or show us some more of those lovely dead animals?)

I digress. Suppose I spent 10 years working hard and paying taxes as a live-in maid in Italy because I couldn't find a decent job in my corrupt country.

So if and when I go back to Ukraine, the poor folks there who don’t wear $40K watches should pay me for those 10 years when I retire? Is that fair?

How does that square with our defined benefit pension system?

Video uploaded from: http://censor.net.ua/go/offer/ResourceID/119392.html
Original source: http://inter.ua

Freudian Slip of the Year

I call them Tymoshenko Regionalists.

The video you’re about to see features Oleksandra Kuzhel (PRU), a former MP who currently serves as Chairwoman of the State Committee on Regulatory Policy and Entrepreneurship.

Oleksandra Kuzhel: I was invited to this store. They were having a dis...a blowout footwear sale. I had never seen such a large number of people in that store when I arrived. So I took a pair of shoes at a price that I know they sell in Milan. That is, uh, the discount price equaled the real [Milan] price. And that’s the price that had already reflected a bribe...[spins her eyeballs in reverse mode]...a discount...of more than 80 percent.

Just watch her rapid eye movement! Why do our well-traveled/well-clad officials have such a geographically displaced sense of bribery?

It’s about time the Ukrainian diaspora in Italy followed up on Kuchma’s Ukraine Is Not Russia with an Italy Is Not Ukraine.

After all, it’s Ukrainians — an estimated 600,000-1,000,000 people — who have fled to Italy, not the other way around..

Video uploaded from: http://censor.net.ua/go/offer/ResourceID/114474.html
Original source: http://inter.ua

The Dumb, the Dumberer and the Dumbest: Another Social Ad

Ukraine’s huge outflow of skilled blue-collar workers has created a significant shortage in the local labor market. In Kyiv’s crisis-free construction industry, for example, workers earn more than college professors and doctors.

While the trend has driven up wages, to argue that a blue-collar job can provide a decent living standard would be a hard sell. Especially when you sell like this:

Recruiter: I’ve been waiting for you for so long. I’ve been looking for you. I’ve almost lost hope. What a delight it is to have found you!
Job applicant: And how much will you pay me?

Recruiter: For these golden hands of yours [camera zooms in on man’s wedding ring], I would…
Job applicant: So?

Job applicant: That’s good!

Recruiter: It’s just base pay. Then you have bonuses, a full benefits package. You a turner of the fifth degree! A worker’s hands cost a bundle!
Job applicant: That’s what I’ve been telling my son. He’s just like me: He’s going to be a turner!

Voiceover: A blue-collar occupation means:

Stabilnist today,
Confidence tomorrow,
Success forever!

Ministry of Labor, State Employment Service.

Welcome to Ukraine’s dumbest social ads! Instead of disclosing some financials — to compare them against costs of living — we have a commercial that plays on sexually suggestive and ethically questionable fantasies.

When you have stabilnist (stability) today, which escalates into confidence tomorrow and success forever, you have a credibility gap right there. In the mind of a critical thinker, these chronologically redundant and exalted rungs will send Maslow’s hierarchy of needs tumbling down like a house of cards.

Well, perhaps the Ministry of Labor's idea of the target audience did not include critically thinking turners. Taxpayers' money does not cost a bundle, right?

Another Social Ad That Sucks

Social ads in Ukraine rarely carry strong selling points.

Still convinced that you’ll be better-off in a foreign country? Illegal labor migration, illegal employment abroad means children left without parental guidance, inhuman living conditions, forced and unpaid labor, human trafficking for labor and sexual exploitation. Don’t look at employment abroad through rose-colored glasses. Work in Ukraine. Keep up the good old human values: the parents, the kids, and the Fatherland. You deserve a decent job and a decent pay in Ukraine.

Decent pay…hmmm. You mean, like, $200-300 a month? Is that enough to support the parents, the kids, and the Fatherland?

Forget it, say millions of skilled blue-collar and thousands of white-collar Ukrainians who work abroad. Known as zarobitchany, they sent an estimated $8.4 billion worth of remittances to Ukraine in 2006, a figure twice as high as the country’s FDI for that year.

Video uploaded from: http://censor.net.ua/go/offer/ResourceID/82556.html

Migrants’ Remittances Twice as High as FDI

The credit for keeping the economy afloat in Ukraine’s unemployment-stricken regions goes to zarobitchany, migrant workers employed throughout Europe and Russia. (UP quotes another report in Delo.)

Last year, Ukraine netted $8.4 billion worth of electronic remittances — or 8 percent of its GDP — and almost the double of its meager FDI of $4.8 billion.

According to Delo, estimates for alternative delivery services could raise that figure significantly.