Flit

With the possible exceptions of fort pictures and candy bar reviews

Just a note that for work reasons I'll again be significantly slowing down the output in this space, effective today. For the record, I do believe this is a great medium for personal diarizing, and also for developing one's own skills as an information analyst by writing one's assessments in a place where you can refer back to them and check your work. Over the past four years, this site's reputation has gotten me enough work on the civilian side to easily pay off all incurred costs, and it's also allowed me to test out a number of IT designs and techniques that I have successfully applied to solve clients' problems as an information management professional. My "expertise" with the medium has become a key part of the toolset I've brought to my civilian employment, and I'm glad for that. But for business and personal reasons, I'm going to have to reserve any future deep thoughts I might have on current affairs issues for some less public medium for a while. Happy holidays to my last two or three remaining readers, and I'll see you again on the flipside. :)

In defence of keepable promises

Reader Mark C. writes:

"I saw your post on the Liberal gun proposal. I am not 100% sure you are right about the GST. Yes, we all agree that cutting income tax is better than cutting consumption tax. However, it is possible that the Liberals' claims of tax cuts ($100B, $30B, etc.) have destroyed the government's credibility on this issue. By cutting GST 1% (which is all that will happen in a minority government), the Conservatives establish credibility at low cost in terms of lost revenue. Since a lot of the benefits of an income tax cut only happen if people believe in the cut, it might well be worth doing this. And, cutting GST will really save taxpayers money, which is good in itself. So, I think banning handguns is of a different order of cynicism from cutting GST.

"Establishing a series of simple, easily verifiable promises, and then keeping them, could really be beneficial for the country, not just the Conservative party."