GST = Got Screwed Today! Ah yes, the mail-order GST. Colby got bitten by it today. If you receive a product by mail from overseas, Canada Post collects the GST for you -- which is to say, from you. Plus a $5.00 handling fee. The worst story I've heard is about someone who ordered a 15-cent lightbulb for his car, which was only available from by mail-order from the U.S. GST on that comes to one cent. So that's a total tax of 3300% if you count the handling "fee" as part of the tax....
I have often fantasized about starting a business which offers Canadians a postbox in the States where their US deliveries can be sent. I would then truck the goods across the border, paying the GST, and mail them in Canada. For this I would charge less than $5.00, undercutting Canada Post.
Sadly, this business would probably still lose money, since Canada Post is taxpayer-funded. And it would probably infringe on CP's postal monopoly. And I don't live close to the US-Canadian border, either. But I can dream.
Incidentally, Colby should make the bullet points in this entry a teensy bit bigger. I can see them now, but when I first read this part:
Perhaps I'm helping to spoil a useful male pressure tactic, but I can only think this guy got what he deserved.it looked like a continuation of the previous item, about Christ. (If you follow the link, it's obviously not.)
Now it certainly could be claimed that Christ was getting "what he deserved" for fomenting rebellion (though the central tenet of Christianity is that He got what we all deserve), it's unusual for Cosh to just toss off a phrase like that -- usually when he's attacking Christianity, he has a point. I looked a little harder and found the bullets separating the items. (Dude: use <li>)
UPDATE: It is accomplished!