Prawo Jazdy - You Shady Criminal

This is so funny but comes with a lengthy introduction.

I have fond memories of living in Ireland. During my five years on the Emerald isle things you would hear about stories in the news that would make you go "huh?". More often than not they would include horrible accidents, bad traffic or events involving the police or Garda (Garda Síochána na hÉireann - Guardians of the peace of Ireland) as they're called in Ireland.

During the Celtic Tiger, the country's boom years, a lot of people figured you could make a great living and the booming economy drew people from across Europe to Ireland.

Soon you'd walk down a street in Dublin and all you would hear was foreign accents. A lot of Polish people moved to Ireland after Poland had joined the EU in 2004 and they made up the biggest part of immigrants. Out of a population of roughly 4 million people, 200 000 were Polish immigrants.

It had positive and negative effects which I will not go into here but you'd think with Polish newspapers, shops and television channels popping up all over Ireland , the Garda would have copped on sooner.

Anyway, sooner or later Polish were stopped by Gardai for speeding. Drivers licenses were handed over, names and addresses were written down, speeding tickets were sent but they could never arrest the person charged. Not long after that the Polish citizen Prawo Jazdy had amassed more than fifty tickets.

That sneaky Pole. Coming into the country, taking Irish jobs, seducing their women, speeding and getting away with it? That was too much.

That is where the story takes an embarrasing turn for the Gardai after a thinking member of the Garda Traffic Corps did some research and send a confidential memo to his colleagues that leaked to the public. It had come to his attention that officers inspecting Polish driving licences were recording Prawo Jazdy as the licence holder’s name.

“Prawo Jazdy is actually Polish for 'driving licence' and not the first and
surname on the licence,” he wrote. Having noticed this I decided to check on Pulse (the criminal data base) and see how many members have made this mistake. It is quite embarrassing to see that the system has created Prawo Jazdy as a person with over 50 identities. He can also be found on the Fixed Charge Processing System as well. This mistake needs to be rectified immediately and a memo sent to the members concerned. I also think that Garda Information Service Centre [in] Castlebar should be notified and some kind of alert put on these two words.”

Heck upon reading this I almost wet myself.

Here you go Mrs. License. You can have your Kat and registration back.

You can also read about it here and here. And Ireland? I still love ou!