2017-01-30 Mon

Clear Thinking

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A few related thoughts about Small Claims Courts:-

(1) Small Claims Court is supposed to be about amounts less than, say, $20,000. That is, Small Claims Court is based on an arithmetic quantity.

(2) Shouldn’t arithmetic be a pre-requisite skill for judges in Small Claims Court?

(3) Aren’t lawyers on both sides of the argument supposed to look after their client’s interests?

(4) So shouldn’t the lawyer for the poor defaulter have a channel of communication that alerts the judges to errors in arithmetic?

(5) And shouldn’t the judges be communicating with each other? (“Hey Harry! Jonas! Listen to this. Here’s what I learned yesterday .....”)

(6) Especially if “the effective annual interest rate was in some cases far above the legal limit”? Far above, not just above. And above the legal limit means, to my mind, illegal. That is, against the law.

(7) And now the judges will have to attend math classes that they didn’t absorb in their elementary school days (I’m assuming rates of interest are still taught in elementary school).

(8) So if the judges didn’t “get” interest calculations when they were twelve, why bother sending them off to lectures? Why not just provide them with a cardboard ready-reckoner, like underpaid shop-clerks use. The same underpaid people who end up being cheated by loan sharks.

(9) Finally, this guy Harosh who was filing a suit about once every three business days. Isn’t it time some sort of database report on court filings threw up a signal? Or else someone take Harosh to one side and tell him how to better evaluate clients.

(I know, I know, loan sharks prefer poorly-educated clients ....)

Toronto – the City that Kills Trees

Remember back in August 2016, before I left for holidays, the street was being dug up again? Well, here we are in January 2017 and the city is putting in some Trees. This will allow it to justify its boast “We planted 60,000 new trees last year” (I’m guessing at the figure) without pointing out that 55,000 of those 60,000 trees were replacements for trees that had Died or been cleared away for yet more Road Works.

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Above you can see a tree that has a good chance of growing to a seven-story beauty, like the trees on the side-streets in Paris.

Do you see the Spare Paving-Brick in the foreground?

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Now look what is in store for the poor trees.

They will be hemmed in with paving stones, gravel and other indignities that isolate the Essential Subterranean Wild Life that tries to work in harmony with the tree.

In the small area of soil that remains will be tossed Road-Salt (look how close to the kerb is the tree), Cigarette Butts (with toxic nicotine to wash out of the filter) and gallons of Dog Urine and Faeces.

Then the tree will die, and then the city will plant a new tree, and then that new tree will die, ...