Just Fix It

Every now and then, you hear something that is just so obviously wrong, it is simply baffling as to why it hasn't ever been fixed. 

This morning I heard that Austalia has 120 taxes.  Now that would seem to me to be a large number, but what's really astonishing is that 110 of them combined raise only 10% of the total revenue collected.  You just know that when you see something like this, you are looking at some makeshift, patchwork approach to taxation.  It begs the question - why not just get rid of those 110 taxes and adjust the other 10 to raise the required revenue?

Not only would there be no shortfall in tax collected but money would also be being saved, both for the government and the taxpayer, through simplifying the process.  Any criticism over the increases to the other taxes could easily be countered by pointing out that 110 taxes have vanished (and which politician wouldn't like to be able to take the credit for having made that happen).  The only people who would be unhappy would be accountants and lawyers, so it must be a good idea.

Tough Critic

As well as obviously being a useful site from which to buy things, Amazon is also a great source for checking out user opinions and reviews.

Unfortunately, the usefulness of these reviews though is badly affected by how people approach the review process.  I have always thought that Amazon should have separate reviews, one for the product and one for the service, because people constantly confound the two.  It's not a bad album just because the jewel case was broken or you couldn't download the mp3 and, likewise, the book isn't bad just because it arrived later than you expected.  As for items never received, technically you can't comment on them!

The toughest review I've ever seen though, has to be the one for the book, "Football: It's a Funny Old Game".  Somebody gave it 1 star simply on the basis that Holly, the computer in Red Dwarf, nominated it as the worst book ever written.  And that's the only review of it, so there it sits with its average rating of 1 out of 5.  And all because of Red Dwarf!  Now that's harsh.

Sport of Kings? Hardly!

All the kerfuffle last weekend over what was said between the trainer and owner of More Joyous has resulted in even more comment and editorialising than usual over the relationship between gambling and sport. 

Now, don't get me wrong, that's a debate worth having, but it's certainly not worth having over horse-racing.  Does anybody really regard horse-racing as a sport?  It's surely only ever been a vehicle (non-pun intended) for gambling.  Who keeps up with who's winning the jockey's championship or which is the leading stable and I'm only assuming that records of these things actually exist.  They sure aren't reported on.  Ironically, if they do exist, the only people outside the industry who could tell you about them would be the gamblers. 

Whenever horse-racing is reported on in the sports news, it's not accompanied by any league ladder or speed/time results - they just tell you how much money you'd have won had you backed the winner or the top 3.  Imagine the football results being given by only showing you the the pick-the-score and pick-the-margins dividends.  

If horse racing is a sport, let's start seeing it in the news without the gambling information.  After all, they don't announce the lottery results in the sports segment, do they?

A Pinch & A Punch

Do kids still give each other a pinch and a punch for the first day of the month and then get a kick for "being so quick" in response? 

Or do they just do it with a calendar app via Facebook now?