What do Australia, Belgium and Singapore have?

tax deductibles greater than expenditure to foster r & d

Maybe, but that's not it.

The answer is:

Compulsory Voting

Trivia Sidebar: The Australian Capital Territory (Australia's version of D.C.) is seriously considering automatic enrolment at age 18 (currently enrolment is voluntaryish)

There are currently 32 countries with compulsory voting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_voting

There are 3 countries with tax systems where tax deductibles greater than expenditure are used to foster r & d

Ok my turn for some trivia

what do j o k and e have in common

no the answer is not that they spell joke

the answer is that they are all in the alphabet

* Austria gives volume-based deductions at 125 per cent and incremental deductions at 175 per cent based on the increase over a three-year rolling average along with cash rebate for companies with turnover less than $5 million.
* The UK provides that SMEs (small and medium enterprises) could claim up to 175 per cent of their R&D expenditure as a super deduction. The scheme also provides cash credit of up to 24.5 per cent of the qualifying costs for SMEs in a situation where the company has losses. The other large companies are entitled to a super deduction of 130 per cent.
* There have been recent amendments to the R&D incentives regime in Singapore, which provides for various tax deductions and incentives depending on whether the enterprise is an existing enterprise or a start-up enterprise, whether the R&D activities are undertaken by the enterprise in-house or outsourced, whether the R&D activities are conducted in Singapore or outside Singapore etc. The additional deduction ranges from 100 per cent of expenses incurred to 200 per cent (maximum).
* Hungary provides a generous 200 per cent super tax-base. China provides 150 per cent deduction on qualifying R&D expenses.
* India provides super deduction ranging from 125 per cent to 150 per cent depending on whether the expenditure is on contributions to R&D institutions or for carrying out in-house R&D activities. At present, India does not have a system of tax credits or subsidies.


They are all representable in ASCII and UTF-8

i thought you might bust me on the basis of the unverified snippet that i quoted

nonetheless thanks for the trivia question

furthermore who invented the steam engine

Harold Steam?

Heda Steam

i was somewhat surprised by the (correct?) answer and the story behind it

i knew her married sister edna steam-cloud

Oh yeah, her husband took the credit because 18th century was so misogynistic!

she was a real old boiler

But she was quick to forgive her husband, and let off Steam.

No pressure.

steam is the secret of my vapidity

as an aside, have you ever heard the song The Boiler by The Specials, in the mid 80's the sister of a girl i worked with asked me to listen to a mixtape a guy had given her because some of the songs kind of creeped her out, The Boiler was about the fourth song in on the first side, told her she might want to give him a miss


I went out walking last Saturday

I was getting some gear

And this guy offered to pay

"Who's the hun?"

I think to myself

For so many years I've been left on the shelf

An old boiler

And then we went walking

Back down the high street

And I felt really proud

'cause he looked so neat

He was a real hard man,

Tough as they come

He said I was cool but,

I still felt like

An old boiler

He bid me come out

How could I say no?

He said "Meet me at eight,

'round at my place, you know?"

With my new gear on and a blow dried hairdo

But in my mind I knew

I was still

An old boiler

We danced all night long

To a nice steady beat

But my hair went to frizz in the terrible heat

My mascara ran and so did my tights

Confirming in my sight

I must be

An old boiler

So we came out this club

Hot and sweaty

'cause we'd been dancing all night

And he says to me

"Well babe, what you doing then?"

"Well, I think I might get a cab"

I said casuallly

"Oh no, no, come back to my place, I only live just 'round the corner, you can go home in the mornin' y'hear?"

"Well, I don't think so. I mean, I've only known you a day, it's a bit soon, isn't it? Gimme a ring sometime, yeah?"

But then he start to get mad

"Listen 'ere, Girl. I bouoght that gear you got on, I paid you in here tonight bought you all them drinks and now you wanna go home I should've been feedin' you cocoa"

And then he stormed off

Well I felt alll right like,

Well you would, wouldn't you?

So I ran after him

Caught him up

There we are walking down the street 'bout

Hundred mile per hour

Arm in arm

No talking

Atmosphere you coulda' cut with a knife

There was no one about

Nothin to take your mind off it you know?

No cars, not even the occasional stray animal

It was cold and

The winds whistling through the trees

Blowin newspapers against me legs so I tripped as I tried to keep up with him

There was all of these alleyways and railway bridges

Stink of piss

Then all of a sudden

He grabbed hold of my arm

And he start dragging me up one of these alleyways

And he starts hittin me reallly hard against the face you know?

He was hittin' me

And grabbin' at me

And it was awful 'cause he was so big

Hittin' me he was

And tearin' at my clothes And there was nothing I could do I was helpless

And then

HE TRIED TO RAPE ME

And there was nothing I could do

So all I could do was scream

NOOOOOOOO!
NOO!

LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!!

NOOOOO!!

NOOOOOO!!!!

NOOOO!!!

PLEASE STOP!!!

NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!


(assorted screams, cries, and finallly, a sound resembling someone vomitting)

the girl by the way was no old boiler, she was a very beautiful 18 year old girl, this guy was about 35 and a friend of one of her older sisters, weird the things random threads will bring to mind

I'd never heard of it - I see it's only on a 2005 compilation of rarities and b-sides.

Did a woman sing it?

Oh look I found it myself! Rhoda Dakar sings it. It's actually a song from her band the Bodysnatchers.



From allmusic

Can we start a thread of disturbing music? Barry Adamson ventures into this space occasionally. And I do like a bit of weirdness.

on the plus side, the tape introduced me to this tune


it was a true mixtape i'll say that, she let me keep it, but sadly it was lost in one of many moves

might be a plan