Put brain in gear before opening mouth

Directly outside my office, out there in the Village mall in St. John's, there are two coin-operated rides: one is a huge fibreglass apple with a giant worm in it and a steering wheel, and the other is a musical horse.

They are the sort of rides that crop up in malls and stores of all sizes in this province.

The musical rides operate purely on the guilt principle: as parents and children walk by, the hope is that kids will put up enough of a fuss that their parents will be forced to put some money in.

Parents who think ahead take their kids down the other side of the hallway, away from the enticement; parents who aren't thinking go right by the darned things and either have to plug money into them for 20 seconds or so of music and a short ride, or else have to drag a screaming, disappointed child out to the car.

The incidents of screaming far outnumber the musical rides, proving that it's harder for plenty of people to plan ahead than it might seem, and when they don't plan ahead, they have to go through a kind of public hell.

And therein lies a simple lesson for our provincial government.

Start thinking ahead, would you?

Enter the clowns.

Justice Minister Jerome Kennedy chastises lawyers at the Cameron inquiry for charging too much money for their work - apparently forgetting that he and his own law firm charged the province something close to $370,000 during the Lamer inquiry not that many years ago.

Accused of interfering with the Cameron inquiry, the same Minister Kennedy digs through piles of dusty record-boxes to find scraps of paper from the Hughes inquiry that show - no, "prove" - that the Wells government contacted that inquiry.

What Kennedy fails to disclose is that officials from the Wells government actually met with Mr. Justice Samuel Hughes and the inquiry counsel at Hughes' own request, while Kennedy's smackdown of the Cameron inquiry was completely at the government's instigation.

A small but significant difference, but one Kennedy never bothers to explain.

Premier Danny Williams - scheduled to be a witness in front of the Cameron inquiry - takes it upon himself to publicly spank first the commission counsel, and then commissioner Margaret Cameron herself, with Williams claiming the questions being asked of witnesses are too inquisitorial.

Public inquiries inquire - that's what they do. Can't stand the heat? Get out of the government.

Then-fisheries minister Tom Rideout climbs up on the back of a pickup to announce that Fishery Products International "will be charged" with shipping yellowtail flounder out of the province, and talks about the huge fines the company is facing - even though the investigation into the potential charges hasn't even been completed. Fifty charges are finally laid - and then the Department of Justice turns around and drops them all. Show trial becomes no-show trial.

The provincial government as a whole touts itself as "open, accountable and transparent," even though a host of government departments take it into their heads to deny the release of information even after the province's own Freedom of Information commissioner has already said it should be released.

And most lately, Education Minister Joan Burke takes it upon herself to interview, and then dismiss, shortlisted candidates for the job of president of Memorial University, despite the fact she had no legislative authority to do so. Forget the rules, we'll pick the candidate we want.

Facts, of course, aren't always in the Burke lexicon. This is, after all, the same minister who suggested that an unpalatable consultant's report be shredded without ever being considered by the school board that had purchased it.

And Burke may just be channelling her boss - Williams didn't have a legislative leg to stand on back when he was trying to stuff Andy Wells into the job of head of the Canada-Newfoundland and Labra-dor Offshore Petroleum Board, but that didn't stop Williams from trying, at considerable taxpayers' expense.

Stymied at the CNLOPB, Wells miraculously became the best choice for head of the PUB - oh, wait. He was the only choice considered. Unlike at MUN, the Public Utilities Board job didn't bother with the niceties of anything like a messy old search for the best candidates.

And on, and on. Premier Williams and Health Minister Ross Wiseman give one set of doctors special cash top-ups - and then wonder why other doctors, also at the bottom of Canadian medical pay-rates, might be upset.

To sum up, this would be a more-than-reasonable government, if its members didn't keep turning around and acting like self-centred, egotistical dopes.

Generally, governments don't interfere with legally constituted inquiries, or pronounce that companies will be charged with offences before the investigations into those offences are even completed, or interfere with hirings where provincial legislation doesn't actually give them that role.