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Andrzej Czuma, the new minister for justice here, did not just leave angry creditors behind him in the US. He also tangled with the courts in a number of car accidents. Not to be outdone, the chief of one of the opposition parties, the League of Polish Families – remember them? – has also had a run-in with the law. Mirosław O. (for that is how he must be known) was caught driving while under the influence last week. He has a blog but I won’t give the address for fear that readers might be able to figure out what the “O” stands for and that I might therefore be held liable for breaching his right to privacy. This was the man, by the way, who thought the theory of evolution was a lie.

This frivolity might draw objections – there’s a crisis on, not a circus. Okay, okay, read the papers and marvell over the joke European parliament elections to see who gets to wield the rubber stamp. Will it be Jacek Saryusz-Wolski or Danuta Hübner or Cimosiewicz? And will Radek Sikorski get to be the boss of NATO? I don’t know why we should be so interested in any of these turncoats’ new jobs.

Sport is a subject I neglect somewhat so in an attempt to redress the balance and bring all readers up to speed on what’s going on in the wonderful world of noble sportsmanship, here’s a quote from yesterday’s Gazeta Wyborcza: “Former Polish Football Association observer and umpire ethics lecturer Wiesław K. has been arrested by Wrocław police.” The charges concern corruption in soccer. The plaintiff – a well-known and influential lecturer in ethics.

Not having Polish children, this was something I only noticed very lately. Schoolchildren are entitled to reduced fares on Polish trains - on condition that they have their school ID cards with them. Education is compulsory in Poland.

Flicking around the TV channels in a friend’s house last night I caught a bit of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. As is usual with Polish TV there was a voiceover (not to be confused with dubbing). As is less usual, he talked viewers through the songs…

The Lisbon Constitution was accepted by Poland’s parliament. This comes under the heading of absurd because of the storm in the teacup that preceded it: I’m hazy on the details but half-former primesident Kaczyński was for it when he was not former and agin it when he was. If you follow. It was good when PiS was in power (a triumph of diplomacy back then) but bad when PO was. (Gazeta Wyborcza (April 2) was rapturous about the Sejm’s acceptance. Ignoring their normally scrupulous separation of news and comment and their icy disdain for taking sides, the lead story began: “The three week conflict over the bill to ratify the Lisbon treaty [sic] ended happily yesterday.” Happily for whom?)

The Catholic University of Lublin of John Paul the Second [sic] is in hot water for handing out doctoral degrees when not entitled to do so. It’s a vexed and complex question of staffing and seniority but it can, fortunately, be summed up in one sentence: the boffins can’t count. The university did not have the required number of suitably qualified staff to award doctoral degrees in pedagogy and economics in the years 2005 – 2007. This could be bad news for deputy Joanna Mucha: she was awarded her PhD in economics in October 2007.

Andrzej Matejuk, the new police chief, announced plans to create a special unit to deal with football hooligans. His predecessor set one up six months ago.

Ad on the side of car the regularly parked blocking the fire access road to my block of flats: “Are you looking for Compensation and Damages? Call ….”

Jacek Kurski.

The television stations that still keep inviting Jacek Kurski on to their shows. Here’s what Kurski had to say for himself in April 4th’s Gazeta Wyborcza:

“I, Jacek Kurski, apologise to Donald Tusk … for making false allegations … that PZU, using taxpayers’ money, financed billboards of Donald Tusk with the caption ‘a man with principles’ …”

Kurski is a liar, in short. Not just in the way all politicians vaguely lie about what they will do if elected but a documented slanderer of a named individual.

Speaking of liars, today’s paper has an ad for a car which is rotten with lies. The ad announces a seven year guarantee. Check the small print and it turns out to be a five year guarantee (only the power transmission is guaranteed for seven years). The advertised price is 23,450 zloties. Again: out with the magnifying glass and you discover that this is only half the price of the car. There’s a financing deal on offer and, as required by law, the real annual percentage rate is dutifully given in the small print: 0% to 11.46%. Some help. Better still, the calculations used in arriving at the figures are based on a car which is not featured in the ad! It’s nearly as bad as the toothpaste that promises “3D” whiteness.

I say: here’s fun! In the Catholic University of Lublin of John Paul the Second on April 9th there’s a trade fair: “targi zakonne.” That’s right: fair’s fair and the trade is holy orders. Among the attractions of the day are a discussion entitled “Holy orders: Avant Garde or Antiquariat.” But it’s not all serious discussions about monks and nuns. Also on the cards is a “Pokaz ‘mody’ zakonnej” (Holy orders ‘fashion’ show).

Too make a long story short, a bunch of Polish spies (or Military Counter Intelligence agents) on duty in Afghanistan put photographs of themselves with their full names on a popular website here called “nasza-klasa” (our class). It’s a school reunion site where old boys, schoolmates, Taliban fighters and so on meet up to see how their old buddies have aged, got fat, got married, tried to occupy one’s country and so forth.

Prompted by this, I decided to devote this one to absurdities of Polish life. Like for instance, the requirement that in order to sit a driving test you must have done a course in a driving school. If you fail you have to do a supplemental course in a driving school. Guess where the examiners are recruited from? Well from the driving schools, of course. What matters is not that you can drive but that your driving school papers are in order.

Here’s a direct quote from Jarosław Kaczyński of PiS: “I am against a referendum because it would certainly produce unambiguous [jednoznaczne] results… I think that referendums should be held in those countries where public opinion is against [the Lisbon Constitution]. The people should not be cheated. The decent thing would be to have referendums in England [sic], France and Holland.” (Nasz Dziennik, March 12th, reprinted in Nie). On second thoughts, I’m not sure that is so absurd. He’s only saying what all the Eurocrats think: no referendums because people might vote for the “wrong” thing. When Ireland rejected the Nice referendum, the exercise was simply repeated until the people voted yes.

Nie also tells of the following happy situation in the administration of public health service in Poland: the NFZ (roughly equivalent to the UK’s NHS) draws up reports on abuses in the health services (overcharging the state in various ways) but the organ that is empowered to do anything about the abuses doesn’t get the reports because the NFZ is not obliged to hand them over, which it doesn’t want to do because if it did it (i.e. the NFZ) would get less money from the state to provide health services. Clear? Of course not.

I commented before on Konrad Niklewicz’s bizarre ideas about who should sponsor the debate on GMOs – i.e. the companies that stand to earn most from their introduction, not scientists, the state or, God help us all, opponents. And here a week or two later is the same Niklewicz writing about how lobbyists rule in Brussels. One example is the “Competitivness [sic] in Biotechnology Advisory Group,” of which the dismayed Niklewicz writes: “It does not have a single non-governmental organization representative; it has six scientists and twenty business representatives” (Gazeta Wyborcza March 28th). This article is shoved back to page 30, the business section, unlike the same author’s clarion call for business to lead the debate on GMO, which was on page 2.

Another curiosity of Polish law: it is possible to libel the dead. Roman Giertych has to publish an apology to the family of Jacek Kuroń for remarks he made in 2006. (Kuroń died in 2004.) I’d take Kuroń’s side against Giertych any time, living or dead, but in my innocence I really did think that dead people had no say in the matter.

When Minister for Justice Ziobro left office he had to return some of the gimcracks our rulers are given to help them oppress us. Specifically, something like three mobile phones and a laptop computer. Ziobro, a man of impeccable morals, obviously had nothing to hide and the damage evident in the returned laptop was purely from wear and tear. He was a hard man, Ziobro. The laptop is on the road to recovery of data now, though. The unencrypted data shows that he was writing the scripts for the State TV news service. On second thoughts, I’ll put that in the passive voice: scripts for the State TV news service were written on his laptop. The encrypted stuff will be denuded and demasked in the next week or two.

It’s no wonder the present government is doing nothing.

I am proud and happy to report that I fell for all five April Fool’s jokes in the last Nie bar one.
That Jarosław Kaczynski paid a state visit to the US instead of his (identical twin) brother and president of Poland, Lech? Sure, why not?
That Minister Wasserman wanted to drain a lake in memory of Pope John Paul II?
That you can buy a paint that, applied to your car, eludes detection by police radars? Yes, I fell for that too, though in my defence, I assumed the paint didn’t work - only that people believed it did and were buying it.
That no ducks had died of H5N1 in Poland yet? Well, why wouldn’t you believe it? (There’s a complicated pun here on the word for duck and the names Kaczyński and Donald Tusk of the PO.)
That Andrzej Lepper, populist peasant leader, actually comes from an aristocratic background? Real life loves irony no less than writers.

Nothing is too absurd for Polish politics and life not to be true.

British public life is more staid, or perhaps its journalists less inventive, because all the Guardian could manage was a story that Chris Martin from Coldplay had gone Tory. Naturally I fell for that too. I’d have been a fool not to.

Some random absurdities, all from just one issue of Gazeta Wyborcza.

The Belarussian KGB has branded the Lukaszenko opposition terrorists. The newspaper is up in arms. Only GW Bush (if you’re not with us you’re against us) is allowed brand the opposition “terrorist”.

Marek Zuber, adviser to Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, has admitted in the Financial Times that he does not understand what Marcinkiewicz’s party is doing.

In the run-up to a day of anti-war protests, Viceminister for Education Jarosław Zielinski wrote a letter to school superintendants warning them to be on their guard against ecologists and pacifists, who might have a bad influence on school children. Green and anti-war organisations might be being manipulated by sinister forces. What sinsister forces - alas - he cannot say, as it is confidential. “Please treat me and my letter seriously”, he adds pathetically. This interference tactic is well-known in internet circles, where it is widely believed that the helpful anonymous poster who says that certain elements have hi-jacked the forthcoming anti-racism/anti-war/anti-bin tax demonstration is usually a policeman trying to scare off popular support.

Here’s an interesting one: no less than 7 state organs are permitted to tap telephones in Poland. An eighth one is in the pipeline.

Incredibly, a white-collar criminal has been sentenced to fourteen years in jail. Among his victims was a Brazilian footballer called Romario. It is not known if the judge was a soccer fan.

A television station has been fined by the National Commission for Being a Good Little Boy because a guest on a programme imitated the voice of a young woman who broadcasts on a radio station. The young woman, you see, is physically handicapped. Also - and entirely unconnected to the matter - she broadcasts on the ultra-conservative, Catholic and pro-government Radio Maryja.

Moving on, there is a full-page ad (one of many in your eco-friendly GW) for a car. At the top of the page the price is proudly trumpeted: “from 17,345 zloties”. There is an asterix beside the price. Probably the ex-works price, you think, before checking the small print at the bottom of the page to be sure. Alas, no. The small print reads: “the figure given is 50% of the promotional price…” I am not making this up.

On the bottom of page 13 is a short paragraph describing what is claimed to be the largest American air operation since the start of the “armed intervention” (or “invasion”) in Iraq. Lest the prominence given to this event lead you astray let me remind you: Poland is one of the occupying powers in Iraq.

More advertising: a joke that got old fast. An airline is selling flights from Krakow to Oslo for from 145 zloties (one-way, excluding taxes and fees). I went to their website and checked prices. You will have to wait until mid-July before you can avail of the 145 zloty fare and the final price is 185 zloties.

This post is a straightforward lift from the current issue of Nie (the by-line is “MB”), but it is irresistible so here goes: in the district of Jarocin the balance of power on the 19-strong district council is held by a dead man. Until the sudden death four months ago of a councillor Mieloszyk the lefties had 10 votes to 9. For a member�s mandate to lapse � even after death � the relevant motion must be passed by the council. If you know modern Poland or Nikolai Gogol you can guess the rest: the right wing councillors have for months voted against depriving the dead councillor of his place on the council, apparently preferring this paralysis to the possibility that the left wing might regain their majority of one.

The view from Gdańsk is not pretty. As Pinter accepts his Nobel prize, Poland slips further into the absurd and the vulgar. Here is a random selection, from memory, so apologies for any small inaccuracies:

Charges of defamation against a journalist were, after lengthy consideration and great tax-payer funded expense, finally dropped. The charges were brought by a prosecutor who felt that the journalist in question had traduced his good name by writing in a court report that the prosecutor had slammed the door upon leaving a courtroom.

Charges of defamation against another journalist have so far not been dropped by yet another prosecutor. This time the injured party felt he had been traduced by a play of words and the typographical layout of a magazine headline which suggested that he was an asshole. That the body of the article presented persuasive evidence that the prosecutor in question is incompetent was not considered worthy of a suit since, presumably, it is true.

Gazeta Wyborcza, the heavy hitting national newspaper, published a special supplement welcoming one and all to Pozna? the day after a march organised by gay and lesbian groups and celebrating equality was beaten off the streets of that same town by the police while fascists chanted pro-Hitler slogans.

And for good measure, in this country famous for overthrowing totalitarianism with a trade union, a court recently found that it was illegal to strike. Why? Because it might cost employers money.

Before you ask, Poland does have a constitution