Germany: We might have the most interesting tax system there is. Sales taxes are seperated into two classes: Normal (19%) and reduced (7%) Reduced taxes are for certain types of goods. The system became more and more complicated, the original idea was to make certain goods everyone needs, like food, cheaper. At the very beginning, the only definition was "reduced taxation on basic foods". The result nowadays is total confusion:
-Taxes on horses are reduced, but not on mules. Mule-drawns are reduced. -Living snails have reduced taxes, dead ones not. -G-rated movies and literature are reduced, adult-only not. -Reduced taxes on food to go, but full on food in a restaurant. Prime example made by a cabbaret artist: If I buy popcorn for a movie, I only pay 7%. In the bistro of the same cinema, I pay 19% taxes. So, what if I leave the movie and eat the rest at the bistro? Is it tax fraud then? -7% on spiny lobsters, 19% on truffles -7% on domestic pigs, 19% on wild boars -7% on milk mix drinks with more than 75% milk - if it's less, the taxes are 19% -7% on ethanoic acid, 19% on mineral water -reduced taxes on cut flowers, ornamental plants, cows, goats and fish, but full taxes on dogs, cats, canary birds, goldfish - the food for these animals has reduced taxes again. -for an audio compact disc, the taxes are 7% if it's only an addendum to a book. If the cd content dominates, taxes are 19% -For no obvious reason, overnight stays in hotels have been reduced to 7% taxes this year, giving up 1 billion € a year. The actual reason, most germans agree on this, is that the FDP ("free democratic party") which is part of the new gouvernment simply is a clientele-only-party so they like giving useless advantages to hotels and pharmacies. It didn't take long for first brothels to use the overnight stay reduction as well, until the law was changed to prohibit that
Personally I do not hate Canada nor Quebec, but I don't feel french is respected (and I hate Harper). So the only way to protect our language correctly would be independance (since federal are too g* to give us anything).
Protect your language ? What has it brought you so far, apart from isolation and making games/movies sales much more complicated ? I don't get why Quebec tries so hard. Speaking french in Canada brings you nothing but problems, and that would be true for most local languages (except spanish ones I guess).
It's kinda funny how someone from France is questioning why someone from Quebec would try so hard to protect the French language. imo, Quebec preserved French too much to the point where their language is completely outdated and imo a little useless, especially when anything that actually matters in the US and Canada is conducted in English.
I guess this kinda brings me back to the topic of bashing my own country: Quebec feeling that the rest of Canada should be responsible for maintaining its culture and language.
Sorry to say this but here in Canada we are supposed to be bilingual when most non-French people outside of Quebec wouldn't be able to write a complete sentence in French even if their lives depended on it. The worst part is that even though having no knowledge in French has no impact whatsoever on anyone's life outside of Quebec, we still have it stuffed down our throats from a young age in school (wasted tax money anyone? All I learned was to conjugate etre and avoir for 9 fucking years) and in various other settings.
Take the Vancouver Olympics, for example. iirc, the Quebec premiere was disappointed that there wasn't enough French in the ceremonies. Why?!? The Olympics were held in British Columbia, not Quebec, and I fail to see why just as much French should be spoken as English when only 1/3 of the population speaks French. The ceremonies and any other world event held in Canada should have an equivalent amount of French used in it in relation to the proportion of their speakers. This half English, half French bs needs to stop.
Edit: Don't get me wrong. I like Quebec (very nice cities and great atmospheres) and think that they are an integral part to Canada. but I feel like this attitude of "what can Canada do for us" is starting to get out of hand.
United States. I'm currently disgusted that the bill to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell failed in the Senate today. Seems like no matter what the majority want, a bunch of homophobic ancients will control every decision.
- We have lost much control over the taxpayers money and budget overall, which needs to be refitted (we pay extremely high taxes in Denmark, but we got alot of stuff too)
- Our integration and foreign policy is a fucking JOKE, integration has totally failed in this country. There are ghettoes and there are an EXTREMELY high % of voters for what is similar to the swedish SD here in Denmark. Anti-muslim attitude and generally sceptism towards eastern countries.
- People still care too much about what others think about their life, about what they wear, and about getting happiness before everybody else. Everybody is in such a fucking rush all the time, we got high standards, but we got arrogants attitudes and elistism to follow up on that sometimes.
- The monarchy. Sure, we got the oldest living monarchy in the world... yeah that's fucking great, so WHO GIVES A SHIT? It's a fucking monarchy, it was popular in the dark ages in the middleage... wtf do we need some pretenious, predestined shit order of rank, making trillions every year for? Why can't we have true democracy? Why do we still cling to old orders of government, like monarchy? So just because you're born into royalty, you suddenly become better than everybody else? BULLSHIT... I'll be the first guy to drive a fucking bulldozer through our Royal Palace any day of the fucking week, twice on sunday
- Our infatuation with popular culture and fashion. We suck up to americans in a BIG BIG way, and we watch reality shows and we LOVE to slander eachother any chance we got. We get worked up about little things too much, and too often do we fail to just mind our own fucking business
- Danes are very private and anti-social, WHENEVER, there is no alcohol involved. On the streets and busses, we are very reserved, we don't normally greet people, and if you say hey to a stranger, the person just looks at you like.. "O_o WTF?".. like you need a fucking permit to say HI and smile now !
-We drink, fuck and utterly do too much drugs in this country. Young people especially has overflown into the nightlife with masses of uncontrollable substances. We are like the 2nd og 3rd rated country of young people who drink the most in Europe.. if not no. 1... scary ... and Of course, I'm no exeption.. i'm guilty like the rest..... we have a very liberal drinking culture to say the least.
- We have insanely high internet prices and slow speed compared to like sweden and the states, and our E-business and IT strategies are a joke. Our prime minister wants Denmark to be the top leading IT nation in Europe.... yea.... that will happen soon... or ? :D
- We have a lax military army standards. We spend too much tax money on a military that we never fully use, instead of just having our professional army of SEALS that actually do very good.
There's more, but generally I wouldn't wanna live anywhere else in the world. Denmarks great, but...
It's a little bizarre for me to see this English/French problem the Canadians seem to have :p. Some other 2 language Countries seem to have similar problems while in Switzerland it's really not an issue.
Seems like its easyer if you have 3(4) languages, everyone is more defensive when it's free for all ^^.
Gah.. I have so much to say about our country, but I think this one definitely takes the cake.
South Korea
While this is highly subjective from person to person, in my humble opinion, it is much true in Korea as a societal structure.
Confucianism, while great in ideology, has manifested in a very twisted manner in Korean society. Added with the influence of Japanese occupation during the World War 2 era, it has only become worse, plaguing the nation to a point of no return.
Throughout history, the theme of "respecting one's elders" has always been a very powerful idea in Korean society. However, this concept has gotten very twisted and wicked as of late, and it has gotten much worse in the last decade. "Seniorship" has become so powerful that two persons who's difference in age is only a year (or less) cannot possibly become friends due to the "age difference" which is completely ludicrous in Western standards.
Often times, a younger person's opinion is not respected amongst the older crowd of people. Better yet, speaking one's opinion out loud can often be considered rude and disrespectful, regardless of how valid or constructive it was. In many cases, the younger person will be ridiculed, and some severe cases, roughened up (this has gotten worse in the last ten years). Korean kids at a very young age will learn to be careful of what they say in front of seniors, keeping their opinion to themselves.
The "age wall" that restricts the communication between various ages become progressively worse as you grow older, making it impossible for both younger and older generation to communicate in any productive manner. The lack of communication brings stress to all parties and since you cannot address this in a healthy manner, it is very much a standard in Korean society for Korean males in the same company to (regularly) go on an insane drinking run.
Every Korean male is to serve the military for up to 1.5years. During these times, people will experience perhaps the most brutal and unjust power of "seniorship". Ironically, these times (both rough and joyful) are most cherished amongst most Korean male as they will always talk about their military experience over a glass of soju.
If it had ended there, it would have been no problem. However, after the military service comes being a functional member of the society. What's troublesome is that most people carry over what they had learned from army into their professional career. It would not be a gross generalization to say that most of Korean businesses are heavily influenced by the military system.
Perhaps what's even worse is that these adults take this for what it is, and they pass it on to their children. And it gets worse with every generation. Sadly, I do not see this getting better at any point in time for Korea as it's already such an important part of Korean culture.
Beyond anything else, I think it's mighty sad that two persons of different age cannot become friends and share their thoughts with one another. Although it's not an absolute, the if the two men were to become friends, the older person has to be unbelievably open minded, forgiving and accepting to the younger person.
On September 22 2010 13:50 Freezy3 wrote: New Zealand has the worst internet in the world.
Cuba has the WORST internet in the world. A country that none one knows about, full of lies and corruption. I remember when i was living there, i used to play BW by "Modem"...calling a lot of strange and cool people at the same time... so funny.
On September 13 2010 08:49 Defeat wrote: USA We use a terrible measuring system that no one else uses and for some reason we call what the rest of the world calls football, soccer.
On September 13 2010 08:49 Defeat wrote: USA We use a terrible measuring system that no one else uses and for some reason we call what the rest of the world calls football, soccer.
Japan calls it soccer as far as i know lol
ironically soccer is a word invented by the English
On February 02 2005 13:44 Frits wrote: We're too racist. We have bad leadership.
we are not racist enough, over 50% of our population is not even dutch. in my opinion a country should excist out of people with that nationality and not be overrun by a lot of foreigners that get accepted anyways because we are so damn soft.
I'd be depressed if no one else already did Sweden, but hey. Why not while I'm still here right?
Sweden
Bastards is growing Liberal, I was perfectly fine with us under an Socialist rulership. But NOOOOOOO, Liberalism and freedom just sounds too nice to pass out on apparently. (Ohh god what was I thinking? talking about Liberalism like this, I'm dead.)
Most of the media, ranging from all the free television service is owned by leaders and the government, and their advertising as well as the news are written catering to their interests. Many top journalist and news anchormen (and women) have publicly apologized or resigned their places while on air as an act of protest. Our over-70 year old premier has made himself into Italy's ideal man and rolemodel through open financial, political and personal life cheating while taking turns in advocating catholic and egoistical values, and still retains most of the country's votes and most people's support. It is not allowed for a person to build a barbecue or remove any walls in his house without the examination of the project, tax payment and subsequent approval by an authorized architect working for the town hall. A self-employed person's tax toll over anything he or she earns is 54%, that is before applying any other expenses which will in turn later be taxed. The popularity of transvestites is the only thing hampering the legalization of prostitution, a move that the media have been preparing us for years. Italy is also one of the most racist countries on earth, we can easily be compared to denmark and south korea.
Germany's middle class is full of short-sighted idiots who value comfort and seemingly low prices over anything and just hurt our whole society that way in the long run. They support jobs with low wages, they support low quality products and they pretty much kill specialized shops by going to supermarkets like Aldi. Sure there are people that benefit from such markets, but the sad truth is that our middle class has more then enough money to buy somewhere else. It's not only about food, they shop everything they can there. But they are of course the first to bitch about pretty much everything.
Everybody thinks that the gov has to do something about our problems, while we cause most of them and we are the ones that can do something about them.
Kindergarten is not free, how stupid is that? Integration starts with little children, and a fee(sometimes it's more than 200€ for a month, which is just too much for not so well off families) just supports segregation.
Temporary employment companies are ridicoulus, who allowed that? It is ok for them to force their employees to not get picked by the companies they get sent to, WTF? That is modern slavery.
Sorry that my english is not nearly good enough to elaborate those points
On February 02 2005 13:44 Frits wrote: We're too racist. We have bad leadership.
we are not racist enough, over 50% of our population is not even dutch. in my opinion a country should excist out of people with that nationality and not be overrun by a lot of foreigners that get accepted anyways because we are so damn soft.
(i'm not a racist just to be clear)
bs, wikipedia states that the ethnic dutch population is 79.71%, so I'm quite sure that over 50% of your population IS of dutch nationality.
and btw, you are racist, or at least have severe racist tendencies. You even state that the netherlands isn't racist enough because of x y z and then go on to give your opinion of why x y z is bad.
but the thing that rings the alarm bells in my head is that you can so easily fugde up facts to try and make a point on the heavily contested issue of dutch immigration policies. It makes you sound like the racist republicans in the usa who can't fathom that they have a black president so they resort to calling him anything but a nigger and still question if he really was born in america.
Living in Quebec I could go on forever on how stupid this french/english animosity goes ....
English hate the French because the French hate the English and vise versa. I hate how french people get pissed if I say "Hi / Bonjour " instead of Bonjour / Hi . (we're supposed to greet everyone first in french). Does it really make that much of a damn difference??? How sensitive can you be!! I hate how seperatist pricks in the 70ties scared away big businesses away from Montreal (biggest city in Que if you didn't know...) and now they all reside in Toronto. Thanks FLQ, you fucked your own province, at what cost???? I hate how I can't be as friendly as I really want to be because my french isn't 100% fluent, and if I was in a more forgiven province which accepted the fact not everyone speaks like a quebecois then I wouldn't be hesistant. We have really high taxes and yet our roads are still, complete SHIT. I hate how to suceed in business in Quebec your french needs to be spot on, yet when you're good enough in the business industry, you'll eventually move.
I hate how I'm 100% quebecois yet feel like outsider within my own province.
Once I pay off my debts, I'm packing up my shit and moving.
EPT
