For some it's a dreaded time of year. The time when you wade into the morass of figures, invoices, receipts and god-knows-what and hope to come out of it with at least some of the clothes still left on your back. It's stressful...especially for small business...and I love it!
Sure, reaching into that drawer marked "Danger: Do Not Enter" and coming up with handfuls of semi-faded paperwork that constitutes a massive percentage of how you spent your life this year and then having to sort through it is no fun task. Meticulously pouring over every business win and loss and re-living the financial ups and downs of twelve months can be disheartening...but it can also be an excellent motivator.
This tax season I have continued a tradition I started my first year of business, I took stock. Distilling all of the figures down into just one: Profit...and it's what I focus on above all else, and let's face it it's the figure that every small business owner is obsessed with. Profit is an ethereal thing, you think you're on the back of a great year and then BAM! third quarter, business goes quiet and you get hit with a tonne of expenses. Profit is gone. Alternatively, you may have had a slow start but you hit a streak and business booms the last half of the year. You're well in the red.
Now is the time when you can finally get a grip on your total profit, sit back, look at the hard facts and decide without speculation how great, or how crappy, a year you've had. Now is the time you get to make realistic targets for the year to come.
This is why I love tax season. The beginning of every financial year is a rebirth, a re-invigoration of the business and a new chance for it to excel. Putting aside whatever calamities may have occurred last year, getting out there and: Making It Work.
My Own Bias
A trash receptacle for my everyday thoughts, interests, et cetera.
Sunday 5 July 2015
Sunday 28 June 2015
QandWhy?
Following the recent "uproar" on Q&A
(the show allowed terror accused and sentenced Zaky Mallah to make some mildly
inflammatory statements on-air regarding our governments anti-terror policies,
intimating that the government is forcing Muslim youths into extremism as a
result) many "proud Australians" (Read: xenophobes,
nationalists, politicians) have spoken up against the ABC. With MP's Malcolm
Turnbull and Alan Trudge both cancelling appearances on the show citing bad
precedence and even our own PM Turny About, without so much as a whiff of
irony, calling for "heads to roll" over the issue. We are however
supposed to ignore the fact that these are the same individuals who were only
too proud to display their support of free speech following the attack on
Charlie Hebdo.
The media has done it's due diligence
and over-inflated the issue, putting far too much stock into the opinions of
like-minded fools and giving a platform to the dregs of nationalism, instead of questioning the motives of a government who should at the very least be impartial towards the ABC and not aggressively trying to undermine it. What has
also been thoroughly overlooked however is that every one of these
faux-patriots are hitching their wagons to a farce. One attention seeking moron
does not a revolution make and if unwittingly giving said moron a platform is the
sole requirement for public apologies and resignations we should be inundated
with them from the house of representatives.
This is little more than misdirection. Q&A has
been a thorn in the governments side since it's introduction in 2008. Sure,
when things are going well an appearance on Q&A can be a boon to public
opinion. If however your party is on the back of a bad year, or two, it can be a
devastating blow to confidence. This witch hunt is more about drawing attention
away from a long string of blunders (budget missteps, asylum seeker
mismanagement and non-existent climate policies to name a few) as it is about
free speech and who has a right to it. In this case we are not being
"protected from extremism" we are being obscured from
incompetence.
Wednesday 3 June 2015
Who Opposes Equality?
As both sides of the
political landscape frantically scramble to lay claim to the introduction of
marriage equality to our country I have found myself struggling to see who, in
modern Australia, could be opposed to gay marriage.
In my circle of acquaintances, colleagues and
friends I would be hard pressed to find a single individual who would for a
second think it appropriate to deny marriage to same sex couples, and most
believe that the current denial is a gross overstep from the Government and
moreover a blight on our national conscience. This is in spite of the fact that
I can think of a few of them who could be characterised as homophobic or at the
very least not very homo-sensitive. So where does this opposition come from? Who
are these “brave” stalwarts in the fight against marriage equality, the ones
with their fingers in the dam?
Initially I thought
that the older generations, retirement age and onwards, would be the staunchest
opposition. They have endured the most change, the shifting of the sands, from
the days when you could expect to hear the casually-thrown-around homophobic
slur emanating from the T.V. to the first Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in Sydney
in 1978, on to the blinding, sequined, national success of Priscilla and right
up to today. Perhaps they are the ones gripping the past, holding onto the old
ways and the traditional idea of marriage…No, I don’t think so. Whilst it’s
true that “political correctness” was borderline non-existent forty years ago
Australian culture was also dramatically different. As the culture has changed
and evolved, as our people has become more diverse, it’s the older generation
that has led the way, albeit oftentimes kicking and screaming, in laying down
the foundations for acceptance. The older generation have for the most part
“seen it all” and they are not interested in interfering with other individuals
rights. There’s better things to be doing.
Obviously the various
religious groups in our country have had their share of representation in
opposition, but even the cracks there are beginning to show. As Australia
becomes increasingly secularised the percentage of the population obligated by
religion to oppose same sex marriage has continued to decline.
Liberal Senator
Concetta Fierravanti-Wells would have us believe that the “silent majority” of
Australians oppose marriage equality, and when (not if) it comes to a vote the
results will reflect so.
Putting aside the Senators
bias, there are obvious problems with the claimed existence of this silent
majority. The overall cultural shift to acceptance, the ever increasing
exposure to LGBTQI in media, precedent being set overseas, but most notable of
all is that opposition to marriage equality directly contradicts our national
culture. We are the “she’ll be right” nation, the sun loving, easy going and
laid-back friend to all. For us to be opposed to something we’d have to believe
it required debating in the first place, and in the case of gay-marriage
that’s patently untrue. It is not something that should be debated, it should
just be.
So where does that leave
the opposition to marriage equality? They are the loud minority. Stuck grasping
for relevance in a growing, changing nation they are only sporadically heard
over the din of a populace who has grown up and moved on, who knows that a
change is inevitable and have turned to welcome it.
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