Where's the Eggs?
Let's Get Cracking!

note from kootcoot:

I intended to post this yesterday, and though little in British Columbia is of more importance than the trial involving a railroad I dare not name (according to StoneWally), things came up that WERE important to my more immediate day to day life in God's country, otherwise known as the Kootenays. But since I had written and thought through most of it already, I am going to publish it today anyway, even though much has happened since yesterday morning. I will even pre-date it, to when it should have been posted - I'm the "deciderator" here. So if you have any problems with this little "dishonesty," get over it!

After a week or ten days break, Justice Bennett, the gang representing the two Basi boys and one Virk and Special Prosecutor (so special nobody can even see him) Bill Berardino (maybe) or his representatives gather again today to consider pre-trial motions in the BC Rail Trial. I guess there is no need to rush a matter in which it took about a year to file charges, two years to release just 80% of the information in the original warrants and apparently forever to actually achieve disclosure.

Those few of us who seem to be paying attention are on tenterhooks, hoping this isn't the day that Justice Bennett says, "enough ----ing around, case dismissed. These poor snivel servants have long ago lost any chance to have a speedy and fair resolution to these charges." My own view is that the right of the rest of the people in British Columbia to know what has been/is going on far outweighs the right of three cutout fall guys to a speedy trial. I'm confident BV and B could speed things up anytime they chose, by simply sharing what they know with the court and the public.

I also like to think that a certain "ferret" and his cronies are experiencing a bit of anxiety as well, wondering what revelation will tumble forth from Courtroom 54 next. Other than being glad this particular ferret isn't in my pants (tho he has been in my pocket), I have a total lack of sympathetic concern regarding said ferret.

The "Appearance" of

Access to Information

As one who spent part of his childhood meeting cows in the dark of early morning to extract their milk and a large part of his adulthood rattling around in a crummy in the dark enroute to the next patch of forest slated for devastation, sometimes I get up pretty early without even realizing it. Thus, this morning when I poured a cuppa joe and accessed the Court Services Website to verify that indeed the BVB Follies were on the docket, I was greeted by this announcement:

No sittings for this location

Then I realized that it was only 5:30AM and if you refer to the banner above, that this site had last been updated on 3-June-2007 at 20:00 PDT - or 8:00PM Sunday evening to normal people. But then I started wondering, a curious mind is a blessing AND a curse, why would they update the court schedule on Sunday evening? It seems to me that there would be no information available then that hadn't been available on say, Friday.

Then I had an idea, maybe they need to make sure no information is lying around left over from the previous week. The public had it's chance to access that information last week and I totally support paying some web guy to come in on Sunday, to make certain that I don't have access to any information longer than absolutely necessary. We all know that information is a dangerous thing.

Since BC Mary and I have brought the very existence of this website/resource to the attention of our readers there have gradually been subtle changes in the way it is administered. I've complained previously about the uselessness of waiting until 6:30 in the morning to find out if there really is any reason to go to Robson and Smythe if you live say, in Abbotsford or beyond. But it is even more insidious than that, or at least it appears that way to me.

When Mary and I first started referring to Wally's Website the only Court Houses on that day's schedule, with the exception of the odd error, were ones in session THAT day. Now every day, every one of 108 court houses are listed everyday, and that doesn't include the inexplicable courthouses called things like "Z008_-_Not_Valid-" or "2007 - Error." Those never seem to have "sittings at that location," I've checked. Thus to practice "due diligence" one must open every location, just to see if it is busy that day. Of course Basi, Basi and Virk events have on occasion been filed under the wrong courthouse, though in the schedule it gives the right location. However it takes patience and/or luck to discover what is happening in the Vancouver Law Courts on Robson when it is listed under Williams Lake or Nanaimo.

Is it in the public interest to appear to make information freely available to the public who pays for it and is affected by it, but in reality try to make it difficult to find and available so late and for such a short time? Don't tell me about server space. Storage space is cheap, cheap, cheap. This is the government that can build RAV and Sea to Sky. Yahoo is completely ending all storage limits with their "free" email accounts, so I could back up my hard drive there if I could bear with the upload time. Though maybe they would draw the line at 50GB or so. I haven't been able to use my 1GB in ages, and I store pics there so I can show them to people when I'm at their house.

In spite of all the platitudes the Soup Nazi mouthed about open government when he was in opposition, I get the impression that the business of our government is none of our business!



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