There's something that's been bugging me here at At Home in Hespeler since I started this blog, and I have been trying to work out what it is.

Then I found it; it's the way I write At Home in Hespeler, with capitalized 'At', 'Home' and 'Hespeler', but a non capitalized i on the 'in.' Why would I do it that way? It's unconventional and makes sense in no rules of grammar that I know of.

But I like it. There's a stylization about it I like. Sure, I tried other stuff, including @Home In Hespeler, At Home In Hespeler, and at Home in Hespeler, but none of those seemed right. But I could never quite figure out what I liked about At Home in...

In the past month I have been re-reading (a semi-annual event) Robertson Davies' "Salterton Trilogy" novels. In them there is an elderly invalid, Mrs. Louisa Bridgetower, who has an At Home day every first Thursday.

The At Home is an Edwardian affectation, where a well to do lady, or somebody hoping to pass as well to do, would have what is basically an open house once a month, and her friends and acquaintances would come. Anybody in her society would be welcome, some would come specifically to pass along news.

These events would have certain social rules, but the gist is the same. Gossip and news would be shared, discussed and dissected over tea, cakes and cucumber sandwiches (assuming cucumbers could be had - for ready money or otherwise) cut into nice little squares.

And that's what I like about At Home in Hespeler: That is exactly what we do here. Share, discuss and dissect some news and gossip. I often write coffee in hand (latte, with a bit of cinnamon), and hopefully you come here with coffee, tea, wine, cookies, cakes and even, if you choose, cucumber sandwiches cut into nice little squares.

This place, and others like it, are the modern equivalent to the Edwardian's At Home. So enjoy, have a snack, and feel free to say your piece.

Meanwhile, I shant be having any At Home days this month, as the holiday schedule makes it difficult to see how blogging will occur, so I'm shutting it down. Enjoy, and come back in August for some teacakes and gossip.

I went out Friday and bought a portable DVD player. The kind with a flip up screen.

Cost: $120.00

On the way home it occurred to me I paid $1.20 more in GST than I would have if I waited until today to buy it.

Critics of the GST cut always bandy about small numbers, pennies on a cup of coffee, a penny on a newspaper (well, not really).

But I would have saved $1.20; not penny on a cup of coffee, the price of a cup of coffee. Thanks to Stephen Harper I can buy one more cup of coffee every time I spend $120.

How often do you, or how long does it take you, to buy $120 in GSTables? Every time you do a cup of coffee is being added back into the economy, a cup of coffee is being enjoyed by taxpayers that wasn't being enjoyed before yesterday. It sounds like a little, but it's not when you consider how many cups of coffee a year Mr. Harper just bought you.

Multiply that by how many people are getting those cups of coffee, and both the economy and taxpayers will benefit. Not as much as Tim Horton's is going to benefit I grant you, but you can't have everything.

So here I am driving home and of course I stopped for a coffee. As of today that coffee is basically free. Then I hear people complain about how little the GST cut is, and how a income tax cut is so much better, even though we haven't given you a real income tax cut in twenty years, and I think to myself:

Shut up and buy the coffee!

The Toronto Sun's Linda Leatherdale had a story today about whom is not passing on the GST saving:

Oh happy day, when the Canada Day long weekend is celebrated with a one percentage point cut in the GST -- a tax that's ripped $270 billion from our wallets since 1991.

Well, hate to rain on your parade, but we're still getting ripped off...

Bottomline is the 7% GST -- which is tax on tax at the pumps -- is included in the price of gas, and as tax accountants explain, even though the GST was cut to 6% yesterday, odds are savings are not being passed on to over-taxed motorists...

This madness doesn't stop at the gas pumps.

Go to City Hall, where Toronto Mayor David Miller was salivating over the idea of pocketing GST savings, and not passing them on to taxpayers...

One place where we're promised to see the savings from the 1 point GST cut is with new home purchases. But Toronto real estate lawyer Alan Silverstein warns the jury's still out of this one, too...

Funny thing, she missed one: My Toronto Sun has always cost $1.00, $0.94 + .06 GST. Sundays is $200. 1.88 + GST. Today, a Sunday, my Sun cost $2.00.

I guess the Sun is not passing on the GST savings either.

Doesn't seem like much, one cent a day, two in Sundays. That's a meager eight cents a week, a pittance I would say. But over a year, that amounts to $4.00, the price of four daily papers (or 2 Sundays).

We are talking thousands of dollars a week into the Suns coffers by not passing on the GST savings to their customers - which is all fine and dandy, except the Sun has been the paper to get very huffy about others not doing the same.

Hard to blame David Miller, and his cabal, for thinking about not cutting the GST when his accusers aren't either.