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Another year, another disaster. I mentioned before how the answers to some mock school exams leaked last year, thus giving pupils ideal preparation for the vicissitudes of life. April 2009 rolls around and – yes – exam answers leaked. I don’t know which subject(s), which paper(s), which precise exams (“gymnazjalne”, I think) and also, in a desperate attempt to limit/extend (I can’t tell which) the damage, all sorts of rumours and counter-rumours are swirling around but the details don’t really matter. The pupils have learned the most important lesson of all: don’t trust adults, particularly not those involved in educating you.

It’s a lesson their teachers should take to heart as well. The following is based on hearsay, so treat with caution: a school teacher friend of mine did a special course in marking the new “gimnazjalne” exams but sometime after he took the course (but before the exams were set) the higher-ups decided to put back the introduction of the new exams two years. For the time being they will take the form of multiple-choice questions, which a computer, or even a department of education specialist can do. It’s not a story I would be interested in following but if I were I would bet that in two years my teacher friend will be required to re-do the special training course.

There is no crisis in Poland and even if there is it’s gone now and wasn’t any big deal anyway while it lasted. So if Gazeta Wyborcza has raised its cover price by a piffling 10 or 11% it’s because Poles are so wealthy.

A couple of weeks ago Jacek Dehnel had an article in Polityka in which he described his visit to Vienna. This week it’s Michał Witkowski’s turn: he was in Jerusalem and writes an interesting piece on it, on Polish-Jewish relations and on stereotypes. Here are the last lines: “What is the truth? What is a stereotype? I don’t know. I’m no expert. I’m just an ordinary tourist who wants to take a photograph but can’t because it’s the sabbath.” This is why I prefer Witkowski to Dehnel.

The following comes in its entirety from Roman Daszczyński’s article in Tuesday’s Gazeta Wyborcza (April 7^th). The penalties for drunk-cycling in Poland are extremely harsh. You lose your driving license for one (yes – your car driving licence). There are currently 1,931 cyclists in Polish prisons for drunk-cycling. The maximum prison sentence is twelve months in jail. The average sentence is 11 and a half months. (The average sentence for theft is two years, out of a maximum of ten.) The other surprise – surely even for the hardiest of euro-cynics – is that the anti-cycling campaign is not just the result of a car-obsessed society but because (it is suspected) in order to be accepted into the EU Poland had to show a higher rate of crime detection. The other surprise is that the person who is questioning this absurd law in the Constitutional Tribunal is a judge! Not a critical mass radical, a single mother, or a Dutch exchange student but a judge. A judge doing something useful?

I’ve solved the economic crisis. After months of study and intensive thought I’ve finally cracked it. To be fair, I arrived at my earth-righting conclusion by standing on the shoulders of giants. I’ve been reading the newspapers, turning over in my mind the pronouncements of the experts, sifting through the policy initiatives of the finest political minds on the planet and tallying the melodious discourses of our leaders. The solution is this: we must all buy more cars. That will keep car manufacturers in business, which will keep people in jobs, which will mean they can afford to buy cars. Or wash each other’s linen – whatever.

They say all news is local so here’s a taste of Poland from the pages of a typical urban local paper, a weekly freshet. There are three headlines on the front page and each of them is an order: “Close this alley,” “Talk to the president” and “Fight the Horse Chestnut Leaf Miner.” Poles are very attached to the horse chestnut tree, which is associated with young love, and is under attack from a kind of moth as well as the motorist lobby which wants all trees on the sides of roads chopped down so that people who drive too fast, too drunkenly, too carelessly etc. will have a better chance of survival if and when their cars leave the road. The talking to the president is the media’s idea of participatory democracy. The president in question is the mayor, not the president of Poland. The alley our local hacks want closed attracts boozers and undesirables and it seems cannot be lit.

Elsewhere we learn that John Paul II still lives in our hearts and minds, a bus driver was caught smoking in his bus, it’s time to change your tyres, schools will not in future be allowed to turn away asthmatics and other sickly nuisances, there’s a jazz festival coming up, there’s a lot of property for sale, having to change buses in the centre of town when travelling from one end to the other is a pain and someone found cat.

Three orders…

Alain Bihr’s contempt for the term “human capital” is almost tangible: “As if capital, that cold monster, that accumulation of dead work, which lives only because it constantly preys on living work and exploits the labour of billions of people whose lives mean nothing to it, condemning more billions to poverty, insecurity, unemployment and socio-economic exclusion - as if there was anything human about capital.” He launches then into an explanation of how it’s all just exploitation anyway.

But the term always seemed a little fishy to me too. It smacks of blaming the victim: if you can’t get a job it’s your fault for not investing in yourself, not the fault of a failing economy. It’s plainly selfish too. After investing in yourself you might get that desirable job but only at the expense of someone who could not afford the “investment.”

Inevitably the EU is promoting some human capital type invest in yourself hokum in Poland these days. But for those who think that education and bettering oneself is the key there’s a – surely accidental – warning note in this week’s Polityka. In a feature on the used car import business they talk to an importer called Maciek, who now has over one hundred competitors in his town, including two who used to work for him – even though, as he says, he always tried to employ morons to avoid competition.

So when you walk, fresh out of your “prestigious” university, straight into a nice job as, say, a financial adviser (subject of scathing criticism in another article in the same issue of Polityka) don’t be so sure it’s all thanks to (your parents) investing in you.

Poland took delivery of its first Hercules transport plane last week. The aeroplane is nearly 40 years old and attracted much derision from the ever-independent Polish media. For instance, TVN, the fearless private sector news broadcaster, detailed the history of the aeroplane in a lengthy news piece. As long ago as 1983, they said, it took part in a “strategiczna misja” in Grenada. The strategic mission they referred to was in fact the United States invasion of Grenada. That’s Polish journalism.