Locked pool empty but inspections continue
"Recently we had an Auckland City inspector (unannounced of course - hoping to catch us out) visit our property to inspect our spa pool," writes a reader from Hillsborough.
"The pool has no water in it and has ratchet tie-downs over the cover and pool and they have padlocks. He couldn't get the cover off to look at the water level so poked his camera under the cover. Apparently the fact there is no water in the pool and also that he (a grown man) couldn't get the cover off proves nothing about its safety ... We thought it was all about kids drowning but it is all about the fencing; a child could get their foot in between the trellis and climb over the rail. Then do what? No way in hell could the child get the cover off. There was never going to be a drowning as, even we know, you need some water. The same spa pool and the same trellis fencing have been there for 29 years. The pool has been empty for close to six years, exactly the same situation as when the inspector visited last time. Bet your bottom dollar the poor buggers with leaky homes wished councils had shown the same tenacity when signing their houses off, instead of being stupidly pedantic about kids' treehouses and empty spa pools with locked covers. If anybody would like a free spa pool please contact Sideswipe. Seriously."
Stork delivers huge phone bill
A Polish environmental charity was stuck with a phone bill of thousands of dollars after losing a GPS tracker placed on a stork. The tracker was found by someone who removed the SIM card, put it in their own phone, and made over 20 hours of phone calls. The EcoLogic Group in Poland attached the tracker to a white stork last year to find out about migration patterns. At first, everything went smoothly. The bird flew to North Africa, and the tracker stayed on for over 6000km before losing contact somewhere in Sudan. Whether the tracker fell off or someone removed it from the bird is impossible to say. (Source: Oddity Central)
