4 -~ Wednesday, September 17, 1986 - North Shore News Bob Hunter @ strictly personal ® IT HAS been a long time since I stood in awe before the law. When IT was a kid, of course, | was aware of cops and courts and jail. They were the earthly ver- ston of priests and churches and hell, right? Next to the laws of Mom, there were the laws of God and some- thing called society. You broke them at your risk. There was an obvious connec- tion between churches and banks and courts and legislatures. The architecture underlined it, all those pillars and statues and grillwork. In each place, you were sup- posed to whisper. There comes a point in your life, of course, when you decide that instead of whispering, you'll shout and see what happens. When it comes to the law, you have to be very careful whaf you shout. It is, when all is said and done, the most important ele- ment. Everything else rests upon what we determine is ‘‘law’’. There are some countries where it is illegal to open either a church or a bank, let alone vote, but the ubiquitous cop is always there, enforcing the “lave. We are programmed, whether we live in Canada or Chile, to respect the Jaw, no matter what. Judges are demi-gods or at least mini-popes, and their minions, the boys in blue and the SWAT squads alike, cannot be ignored. Law is muscle. Law is a certain swagger. The real outlaws, of course, are the politicians in power. They're the ones who actually get to pour the ink remover over the ages of statute books or scribble down just about any bizarre entry they can get away with, like John Crosbie wanting to define sex as a crime. The first time I ever stepped into a courtroom, | was filled with a sense of mystery and rev- erence, exactly what a schmuck like me was supposed to feel. Later, working as a police reporter, | quickly learned that the law was not only fallible, not only an ass, it was thoroughly rotten in many respects. You want examples of hypoc- risy and inconsistency? Go to the statute books, my son. Never mind trying another country’s. Ours will do just fine. We send teenagers to prison for smoking pot, vet excentives of tobacco conglomerates who hill tens of chousands of peaple every year commit no crime, Ir is legal to Kil a mindless fetus, bur not legal to put a mind-dead oldster or accident victim out of misery. You can commit murder and walk away free within a matter of years. Not only that, but you can slaughter dozens of children and spend the rest of your life wat- ching television in a room sub- sidized by the taxpayer, a kind of ultimate welfare reward! You can pollute an entire estuary with no fear of jail, yet refuse to answer questions from a government snoop and they can lock you away for years. Also, however rude it may be to mention, the fact remains that we sull have a form of class justice in this country. Sure, in theory, we all have an equal break when we come before the judge. In reality, it depends on how much of a legal defence you can afford. Can you hire the best? Can you hire ANYONE? Oh hum, you say. Do I expect a perfect legal system in an im- perfect society? No, but I do tend tay deol. to gay when TF listen to people babbling about “the Jaw’ being fair or carved in stone. A given Jaw is nothing more than a deal worked out among the powers (hat be at any eiven moment in political history, There is) nothing inherently wonderful about law. A few laws — damned few — define a right that you and | have, thanks to somebody's considerable efforts against all odds in the past. But mostly laws say. ‘*Thou shalt not..." They are the Ten Commandments that became, in modern society, a Zillion Com- mandments. My two most disillusioning moments, in terms of understan- ding how law worked in Canada, came when the War Measures Act was declared by Trudeau, making a complete mockery of all our so-called democratic freedoms, and, much later, when I saw a p.r. man working for the fisheries department, pick up a phone one morning in New- foundland, call Ottawa, and have a new law brought into being by secret Order-in- Council virtually by mid-afternoon. Oh well, it beats the jungle. I guess. Dom miss it! Now's the time to get your film into Japan Camera Centre! Each store will have 5 winners in the Photofinishing for Life contest. You could be a winner! (See our instore display for full contest rules and regulations.) Hurry, contest ends November 1, 1986. RICOH AF-35 Postal delays cause late WV taxes SOME PAN and unity payments delayed bs the postal system will be exempt from penalization by the District of West Vancouver, — AC its Monday meeting, council considered a new policy to make allowance for taxes delayed in the mail. Fhe payments must have been mailed in) Canada within seven days of the due date. Payments mailed within the United States are allowed 10 days, and those from other countries are permitted 14 days. The mailing date of the taxes must be verifiable by a post office cancellation impression, not that of aa private postal machine. Municipal manager Terry Lester recommended the new policy to remove any question of “capricious and arbitrary deci- sions,’’ regarding the lateness of taxes. ‘Postal delays now appear to be an acknowledged and regular oc- curring fact of life,’? 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