Remember set date court in the before times? Accused persons would come to set date court and ask to adjourn matters for 2-3 months to hire a lawyer (for example). The Court would say 'no' and insist on 3 weeks (maybe 4). The accused would protest and say they have work.. 1/7

They would try to explain that they can't afford to miss more work OR that they couldn't afford a babysitter OR any other number of reasonable excuses for requesting that the matter come back after a few months. But the Court? Nope nope. The would say that this was not OK. 2/7

Set date courts regularly imposed short remands because the administration of justice could not allow them to come back in 2 months without giving an update. Everything would crumble they thought.

Oh how things have changed. 3/7

Now there's a huge backlog. Courts are scrambling to catch up but they can't. Now... I ask that matters come back in 3-4 weeks and I'm told 'NO'. The courts are too busy.... matters HAVE to be adjourned 2 months or more in set date court. 4/7

Oh really? Because in the before times the administration of justice would fall apart if an accused was asking for 2 months to hire a lawyer. But now that this practice is inconvenient for the court, all of a sudden the system moves along fine with 2 month adjournments. 5/7

I wonder how many people lost jobs because of court, spent money on babysitting because of court, missed appointments because of court. All because the courts INSISTED on short remands. 6/7

It goes to show you that it was never necessary. Really it was all about getting regular accused people to bend to the will of the court. Obedience for the sake of obedience and without principled reason.
Someday regular operations will return and I wonder if we'll learn. 7/7