“Mr. Sensitive” strikes again and I get stopped by the police.
I saw this headline in Poland AM this morning and I thought, “Damn, they found me at last!”.
Famous journalist faces prison for insulting President
Prosecutors are investigating a morning radio show hosted by controversial journalists Kuba Wojewódzki and Michał Figurski, during which Figurski called President Lech Kaczyński a “small, retarded, stupid man”. The investigators will attempt to check whether Figurski broke the law by insulting the President. The law defending public officials from insults dates to the communist period. The authorities in Eska, the station which broadcasts the show, have suspended Wojewódzki and Figurski. The journalist faces up to three years in prison. Figurski tried to defend himself by saying that he was running a sketch where he was making fun of foreign journalists who know nothing of Polish reality, but who are commenting on events in Poland.
Ochy-Vista, they were not referring to myself but to someone seriously famous. Compare and contrast:
UK - A famous person (Jeremy Clarkson) calls Gordon Brown a “one-eyed Scottish idiot” and accuses him of lying to the public. Brown gives Clarkson a couple of stern looks, Clarkson apologises, end of drama. Clarkson goes back to Top Gear and books, Brown goes back to ruining the country.
Poland – A famous person (Figurski) calls Lech Kaczyński a “small, retarded, stupid man”. Investigators are put to work to establish if he broke the law with this insult, an offense that could lead to 3 years in the slammer. Famous people make lame excuses but are suspended from duties anyway. No apologies are possible because that would indicate guilt. The drama drags on.
Can we please speed up the process of re-writing the constitution and dealing with all these silly communist laws!
There was no reason for me to worry about the headline at all, it’s just that I have a bit of a persecution complex this morning because on the way to work I was stopped and questioned by the fuzz. First time for quite a while, certainly the first time since bribery and corruption have been frowned upon.
I had in all innocence slipped around an (apparently) illegal U-turn and then driven through a red light in full view of Starsky & Hutch. You really need to go look at the junction to see how easy and safe, sensible even, the whole thing was so you can curb your enthusiasm for coming over all ‘holier than thou’ with me about dangerous driving. Anyway, they pulled alongside and suggested I might like to stop at the next bus stop for a chat. I did. They explained how it was going to cost me 250 for the U-turn and 500 for the red light plus 6 points. We chatted for a while, I explained how I was very nice at the red light waiting for all the cars and people to go and only moved when it was clear. They said “Yeah, but it was still a red light when you moved!”. I was clearly, as we say, banged to rights!
They wrote some details in a little notebook and then Starsky whipped out his ‘Mandat’ pad. I detected a sort of sub-text along the lines of “Do you really want a mandat?” and was unsure how to react (given that the obvious answer is “No!”). I explained that my Polish was not really good enough for talking to the police, meaning I didn’t know the right code words for “Look, write down that I had forgotten to switch my lights on and I’ll slip you a stówka.”. I said I could pay something now but certainly not 750. In fairness to them they started shaking their heads and saying “It’s more than my job’s worth to take cash”, much better than arresting me for trying to bribe a police officer in pigeon Polish! I was still struggling to think what else I might have that would interest them that didn’t involve cash and all I could come up with was a collection of mints I’d bought in M&S or a half-full bottle of windscreen płyn.
Thankfully, by this time they had realised that I was a thoroughly nice chap who didn’t really deserve to be punished and saved me the embarrassment of begging with a handful of mint imperials by making that gesture that says “Away with you! And think yourself lucky you caught us on a good day!”. They didn’t even complain about my (perfectly legal) British driving license.
My wife was right all along, I need to be careful how many laws I break at that junction. As a minimum I need to check if anyone is watching me.
I see you’ve moved in and made yourself comfortable :)
Yeah. Pull up a chair and share this tobacco and beer with me, there’s bugger all else to do!
Guys I’m confused:) So where do we post now?:)
And why am I a remote?
I’ll send an email.
Tell me, please, that you weren’t even contemplating bribing a cop much less even vaguely, actually considering it.
I know you didn’t want people to get all holier than thou on you, but… oh god here it comes:
If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime. Cause it’s arrogant, self-centered Poles (not that you are one, mind) who think that “democracy” means “whatever the hell I feel like and everyone else can fuck right off” which translates into a death-by-auto rate at five TIMES that of Germany (3 times that of the US). When people miraculously get caught, they so often have the unmitigated gall to attempt a bribe! The logic seems to be that if they didn’t hurt anyone *that* time then why should they part with their hard-earned cash on an actual ticket?
I won’t even get into how all the bribing means that cops don’t make any money from tickets (look at the UK – speed camera fines pay for *everything!*) and insurance rates are sky-high because you’re far more likely to get hit by some jackass that has bribed his/her way out of a bunch of tickets and thus was never taught that driving badly has actual, real consequences! Oh and it also helps maintain the “poor” state of roads here which allows Poles to excuse their accident rates and poor driving on the bad roads. It obviously never occurs to anyone that if the roads are that poor that drivers should slow down and be more cautious …which would go against the nature of being an egocentric, self-centered ass. Extra points!… it also means that there are more accident “victims” in the hospitals, draining money away from people with real illnesses and injuries because they were too lazy to wear their seatbelt or to stop at a red light or to drive 70 kph (or LESS!) in a 70 kph zone rather than the more 100-110 I tend to see. Which means that MY paycheck is smaller because more of it has to go to pay for their reconstructive surgery when they face-plant 20 meters from their car after hitting someone/something else. And I still haven’t touched on drunk drivers and how all the crappy driving makes insurance companies suspicious of everyone.
Ahem.
The last time I got pulled over and the cops were serious about giving me a ticket, I told them to go right ahead. Since I am a dirty American foreigner, I would have had to pay on the spot. I wasn’t fussed about the points ’cause that’s now how my state-issued license works and the fine was going to be around 300 PLN or so. Instead, they asked for “something” towards a nice brandy. When my wife and I insisted on getting a ticket and paying the fine, they told me to just drive safer. However, I was ready to pay that fine because I was quite thoroughly aware of the illegality of what I was doing and did it anyway because “it’s Poland!” It was also midnight and there wasn’t another car around, though that is not really a very good excuse; I was just being a lazy bastard.
Having thought about that incident quite a lot I now try to obey all the laws, even when in a 500 meter space the speed limit drops from 110 to 70 to 50 and back again which makes me want to scream. But I drive according to the law so I can be a self-righteous, sanctimonious dick about it to everyone else. :)
I realize this rant probably doesn’t help anything but I certainly feel better about for it. That and the fact that I bought a Citroen C4 which has a 5-star rating and enough airbags to have kept the Titanic afloat means that I don’t lose too much sleep over who might run me down tomorrow. Any inner peace I feel though certainly isn’t due to the cops, the hospitals or the other drivers.
PS: Good deal on the new site… and safe journey, wherever and however you go.
Whoa…
Poles are asses because of driving fast, and you are driving bad ‘because it’s Poland’… Can you get any more derogatory in speech and deed???
Brad, not so much bribing them as stating a fact that I didn’t have 750 on me but could pay a smaller amount. ;)
Brad, you really should stop driving in Poland. I mean, well, look what it’s doing to you!
I admit I bribe police whenever I can. Not so much because of the money as because of the points. Some years ago we wouldn’t even deign to pay the fees (and they didn’t chase you if you didn’t), but the points would stay. One can’t afford them, really. And if one is driving a lot one can’t avoid them either.
Driving according to rules? Try the road Warsaw-Wrocław for example. Unless much has changed it’d take one about 8 hrs per 350 km. I think I’m much more likely to cause an accident when I’m dead tired than when I drive fast.
The policeman may not have been sniffing for a bribe. When he said “pay now?” he might have meant “pay an above-board, on-the spot fine to me now or take it to court where the fines are larger but you may be found innocent.” (I’m not a driver but as far as I know that’s how it works.
That “the law defending public officials from insults dates to the communist period” may well be true but Poles really should take responsibility for their rotten laws and not try to suggest they are the communists’ fault. It’s been nearly twenty years…
As for motorists whinging about how long it takes to get from A to B… Did you ever think of leaving earlier?
So has Figurski apologized?
And who is he anyway?
and why is only Kaczynski supposed to just take it? What about Michnik?
‘Jak donosi “Gazeta Polska”, od 2005 roku Adam Michnik oskarżył o zniesławienie różne wybitne postacie – ‘
http://budyn78.blogspot.com/2008/02/remuszko-broni-michnika.html
http://wiadomosci.wp.pl/kat,1342,title,Michnik-totalitarysta,wid,9629668,wiadomosc_prasa.html?ticaid=17c75
And aren’t you from the UK, where you have all those libel cases?
Sylwia: Sorry. Fly to Wroclaw, take the train, drink some Red Bull (but drive the limit), move to Wroclaw permanently or work something else out. It’s your problem …but you make it everyone else’s.
The alternative is to drive over the speed limit, bribe the cops, never get your insurance rates jacked up because you’re a selfish, incautious driver and eventually slam into someone because you’ve grown so accustomed to the whole ritual that you stopped paying attention (the whole point of your speeding in the first place).
I guess the best I can hope for is that you run into an honest cop (there are a few out there) who arrests you for attempted bribery + whatever illegal thing you were doing that got you pulled over in the first place. Most likely then your Warsaw-Wroclaw problem will be solved because you won’t be able to drive for awhile (no license …or cash).
To “?”… Yes, I am a hypocrite. A “lazy bastard”. I will say *now* that I make a point to follow the rules that I’m aware of and generally follow the speed limits within reason. When going to Lodz from Krakow there are a number of backwater villages that have crosswalks over the four-lane highway so you have to slow from 90 to 70 to 50. Normally I slow down to about 55-60. I worry that if I actually slowed all the way down, someone like Sylwia would rear-end me going 110. Usually when I come up on those kinds of things where I’m the only one following the law I keep one eye on the road and the other on the idiots around me. But that’s not always possible.
Ultimately though, yes – I’m a hypocrite. But I’m still right.
Who is selfish here, Brad? You want all Poles to drive like you for your own convenience. It’s as if I went to the UK and expected everyone to drive the right side of the road because that’s what I think is the only proper way. If you can’t learn driving like others then stop driving and whining. As simple as that.
BTW In any village that’s marked as such you’re obliged to slow down to 60km/h – a crosswalk or not. Many people do that, myself included.
I guess the best I can hope for is that you run into an honest cop (there are a few out there) who arrests you for attempted bribery
Why don’t you learn Polish laws before getting so very arrogant? One can’t get arrested for attempted bribery here.
Sylwia, by your own admission you break the laws of the land. You really haven’t a leg to stand on.
[...] clearly needs introducing to Brad Zimmerman, Polandian’s own Law & Justice party, who will put him straight about how to handle the [...]
In every country there are written and unwritten laws, and the unwritten ones often tend to be more important, especially in Poland where official rules are held in contempt.
Unwritten laws. What tripe!
Not all Poles hold the law in contempt.
Maybe this attitude stems from a sense of class superiority,
Maybe this attitude stems from a sense of class superiority
You think so? How about a law that tells you to denunciate every person of a certain race/religion/political opinion under the threat of death?
One thing Poles are grateful for is that they’re not such a law obedient nation as Germans. Poles do respect laws when they get convinced to them, either written or unwritten, but for the last 200 years the unwritten ones were far better, and thankfully the written ones were not generally respected, no matter how high the punishment.
[...] the head of state is a crime in Poland. A crime for which one could be sentenced to up to three years of imprisonment. However, [...]
Pawel, why are you accusing me of things you have no proof I ever did? Don’t you think it’s unfair and offensive?
But thank you for bringing the zebra example. Actually I stop very often to let people pass, even if it doesn’t rain, but I break the law when I do, because according to it I shouldn’t do that unless they already are on the zebra. So please, advise me now. Should I cease doing that in order to be a good law respecting citizen?
I don’t think that civilization depends on written laws. Such an attitude to a nation’s culture is arrogant.
Sylwia wrote “…the unwritten ones often tend to be more important, especially in Poland where official rules are held in contempt.”
Self-serving nonsense.
ResetPC: As much as I agree it’s more complex- an anticountry mentality created by modern polish history – law is given by Russian, German or communist regime so I’m not moraly oblied to obey. Now since society must function there are “our” unwritten rules that are more respected. Problem it that now “our” is the country as well, but law is still obeyed mostly only from fear of consequences (and so if there are no consequences it is not obeyed).