Polish Driver or Polish licence?

[matriarch]

You're in big trouble now, Mr. License!
Thu Feb 19, 2009 10:23am EST


DUBLIN (Reuters) - Irish police have solved the mystery of a Polish recidivist who clocked up 50 traffic offenses on different addresses and who was never caught, after one officer noticed his name meant driving license in Polish.

An internal police memo cited by Irish papers Thursday said officers taking details of Polish traffic offenders had been mistakenly using "Prawo Jazdy," printed in the top right corner of the driving license, as the holder's name.

"Prawo Jazdy is actually the Polish for driving license and not the first and surname on the license," the police memo dated June 2007 said. "It is quite embarrassing to see the system has created Prawo Jazdy as a person with over 50 identities."

A police spokesman declined to comment on the reports.

About 200,000 Polish people flocked to Ireland during the boom years of its "Celtic Tiger" economy but a poll in November indicated a third of them planned to leave due to recession.


Full story here.

 

[matriarch]

Wow!
I must be losing my connection with this site, 25 people opened and read this post, but not one of you thought it even remotely amusing enough to comment.

*must do better*.

 

[rgraham666]

Snerk. Good one, Mat.

 

[sadangel]

Wow!
I must be losing my connection with this site, 25 people opened and read this post, but not one of you thought it even remotely amusing enough to comment.

*must do better*.

Sorry mat. Just read it. It's kinda cute!!

 

[oggbashan]

Mat's post has a serious point. How can police and border guards tell if documentation is genuine or forged if they cannot understand the language or script?

Years ago I had trouble entering what was then Yugoslavia.

My passport, which described me as a UK resident, had been issued by the Governor of Gibraltar, not the Foreign Secretary.

The border guard, who couldn't read English, considered that my passport couldn't be British because the number and the name were in reverse order on the front.

His officer, who could read English very well, was summoned. He accepted that it was a British passport but took exception to the Governor of Gibraltar's wording on the inside of the cover. Where the Foreign Secretary asked politely for foreign countries to allow the British Passport holder to enter their country, the implication of the Governor of Gibraltar's wording was "or else!".

The officer didn't know where Gibraltar was. With the aid of the atlas in my Letts Diary I showed Gibraltar, boldly underlined in red, at the mouth of the Mediterranean.

The officer accepted that my passport was a valid document but asked what the Governor of Gibraltar could do to back up his statement. I explained that the Governor was a military appointment and as a soldier and a General possibly less diplomatic than he should be - but that the guns of Gibraltar could prevent shipping from entering or leaving the Mediterranean.

The officer asked how large the guns were. I was worried that I might be revealing military secrets to a Communist country so I just said "Big".

He replied, "My guards have guns."

I pointed at one. "Those are 9mm. Gibraltar's guns are at least 300mm."

He got the point. Actually Gibraltar's operational guns at the time included a massive 36" bore muzzle-loading monster but I don't think he would have believed me.


Og

 

[sadangel]

Mat's post has a serious point. How can police and border guards tell if documentation is genuine or forged if they cannot understand the language or script?Mat's post has a serious point. How can police and border guards tell if documentation is genuine or forged if they cannot understand the language or script?

Very good point and your post also illustrates it.

I myself don't have a passport so I have no idea what they look like or what they say. Perhaps there needs to be a more uniform way for passports to be issued and governed so that each country knows how to tell a genuine one from a fake. (Just a thought from someone that doesn't know how they do it already)

 

[DesertPirate]

The perils of language

That is one of the better ones yet!

 

[LLs Man]

It just had to be the Irish, didn't it?

 

[AvoidingRealWork]

Payback for fifteen million Polish jokes over the years.

 

[TE999]

Good one, Auntie.

Now if we all spoke Esperanto...

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Good one, Auntie.

Now if we all spoke Esperanto...

Or Latin?

Not to worry, at the rate English spreads throughout the world, it will replace everything within a hundred years or so.

 

[AvoidingRealWork]

Or Latin?

Not to worry, at the rate English spreads throughout the world, it will replace everything within a hundred years or so.

And subsequently splinter into a myriad dialects of "vulgar English," possibly influenced by the earlier, displaced languages.

The linguists of 5,000 years in the future are going to have a fun time reconstructing our language, assuming all written record of it ends up disappearing when civilization collapses.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Interesting point. The most durable way to retain a written record remains acid-free paper kept in archival conditions and that is only good for an estimated 1500 years. Anyone who thinks that keeping words on electronic media will give them immortality is barking up a very short-lived tree.

 

[AvoidingRealWork]

Interesting point. The most durable way to retain a written record remains acid-free paper kept in archival conditions and that is only good for an estimated 1500 years. Anyone who thinks that keeping words on electronic media will give them immortality is barking up a very short-lived tree.

Things will have to get pretty bad for us to forsake maintaining the works of Shakespeare, Milton, Dickens, and Rice.

(j/k about Rice)

 

[slyc_willie]

Interesting point. The most durable way to retain a written record remains acid-free paper kept in archival conditions and that is only good for an estimated 1500 years. Anyone who thinks that keeping words on electronic media will give them immortality is barking up a very short-lived tree.

Back to stone tablets, then.

Assuming they don't get broken and dumped in some box, of course . . . .

 

[TE999]

Interesting point. The most durable way to retain a written record remains acid-free paper kept in archival conditions and that is only good for an estimated 1500 years. Anyone who thinks that keeping words on electronic media will give them immortality is barking up a very short-lived tree.

Illuminated manuscripts on parchment made it through the Dark Ages in good shape...until people decided to cut them up for the pretty pictures.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Illuminated manuscripts on parchment made it through the Dark Ages in good shape...until people decided to cut them up for the pretty pictures.

Parchment is animal skin. You knew that, and also that they had to be protected from dermestid beetles. Buggers will eat the Hell out of anything from a dead animal, hair, skin . . . anything but bone.