Bright Copper Kettles

Well, I was almost asleep, but it turns out that I may have to stay up for an unknown amount of time. I might as well write lots and lots of sleepy blog posts. Aren't you lucky?

Anyway. the first item on my list is the increase in excise tax (wth is excise tax?) on spirits (the alcoholic kind, I don't think the government is cheeky enough to tax the other kind) reported by the NBR:

Currently $15 excise tax is collected on each standard 1litre bottle of spirits, meaning spirit drinkers pay almost twice as much tax as drinkers of other alcohol beverages --

Mr Chin said more than 70 per cent of the cost of an average bottle of spirits already goes into the government's coffers -- and that's twice as much tax as is collected on other forms of alcohol product.

I didn't know any of this. I assume that spirits are taxed more because they have more alcohol? I wonder what happens to my $15/bottle? I wonder how many bottles I have? Probably best not to think about it. And how much tax am I paying when I buy duty free? Do they use the money to pay for those stupid "drinking alcohol is evil" ads? And what if everyone listened to those stupid ads and stopped drinking alcohol altogether?

So many questions.

I think an alcoholic photo featuring my highly taxed spirits is in order. This is one of my favourites: