Surf's up in Hawaiian high schools

The State of Hawaii has sanctioned a plan to offer competitive surfing (on the water, not the Web) as an extramural sport to all its public high school students (about 50,000 throughout the 46 public high schools) by the spring of 2013. The plan's being paid for by private money. It's about time I say, though I wonder how they'll handle the liability issue as when a surfer is hurt. When I attended Leeward Community College in the late 1960s I took bowling as my required physical education course and the taxpayers supported that.

Here's a Google News link to online stories about this.

Source: Times Colonist (Victoria), October 8, 2011

BC HST Referendum success for the Yes side

The Yes side meant scrapping the HST and returning to the PST/GST system. According to Elections BC,

The final results are:

% of valid votes voting Yes	54.73%
% of valid votes voting No	45.27%

At a news conference on August 26, 2011 after Elections BC announced the referendum results, BC Finance Minister Kevin Falcon announced that the former PST permanent exemptions would return in about 18 months time when the PST is reinstated. The PST rate will also be set at 7%, which is what it was before BC's HST fiasco.

Hated Sales Tax (HST) Poll

Here's your chance to count yourself in or out on the issue of British Columbia's proposed Hated Sales Tax (HST).

[polldaddy poll=2986128]