Sideswipe

Can - O - Don: Shelves at Quay Street Foodtown have been stacked "Don-licious" and are either marked as Corned Beef or Baloney. The label asks the customer to "Please donate this can to your local foodbank - they'll need it if Brash gets in".

Reader Tim Laing on close encounters of the Hide kind: "I was bemused to pull up at the lights on Gt North Rd to see Rodney Hide next to me in his car. He was sitting by himself in a rather beaten up looking 1990 Nissan Pulsar, hardly a campaign vehicle. When I questioned him as to why he was driving this car, he mumbled that his car was being used on the campaign trail. Surely the big business backers of ACT could have lent Rodney a car. Instead he was left undercover by himself in the most important week of his political career. Still in jovial spirits he quipped, 'I've got your vote, right?'. Thankfully the lights changed."

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One rip-off reveals an even bigger one: Why are we complaining about the cost of petrol at $1.50 a litre but happily fork out even more for a litre for bottled water?

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Nice to know that our local council is keeping its eye on costs and the environment. On Wednesday a Westmere reader watched a city council Metro Waste truck have a nice wee chat with another city council Metro Waste truck for 20 minutes in our street while both trucks were left with their motors running. The diesel smell pouring in my front windows was a delight. So pleased my huge rates bill is being so well managed.

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Media balls-up: After the grabbing of his allegedly "sore crotch" for the amusement of TV3 reporter Sarah Gregory, the National candidate for Tauranga Bob Clarkson's charming vernacluar continues: Footage courtesy of TV One's Sunday programme, which aired on the channel's midday news yesterday, showed Clarkson pulling out of a park in busy central Tauranga rubber-necking a blonde passerby and saying to the Sunday crew that was filming him that he "might have to give her mouth to mouth". Shudder.

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A reader from Parliament shares another telecom spam story: "Telecom have, for quite a few years, thrown a wonderfully bacchanalian Xmas party for MP's secretaries and other support staff. I guess they think it makes it easier for them to get in the door. A year or two back, they decided to send invitations as a HTML-format email, with lots of hi-res graphics. It did look good, but each email was huge, something like 5Mb each. The effect of hundreds and hundreds of five-meg emails coming in all at once was more than even our server could cope with".