Sideswipe

Inner-city campylobacter breeding

Inner-city campylobacter breeding: Ray Bennett wonders, since there was such a fuss over people hanging their washing over their own balconies, what does the bylaw in question have to say about thawing chickens in the same way? (At last count, for two days).

* * *

Chris Murphy writes: "As a movie buff I was delighted to see the latest Telecom promotion where people can obtain two tickets for the price of one. This offer is available to Telecom mobile phone customers every Tuesday night until the end of June. I was even more delighted to find out that it was not the full-priced movie ticket ($14), and that in fact it was the usual Tuesday night discounted rate of only $8.50. This means two people could see a movie for $8.50 on a Tuesday night at any Village Sky City cinema as long as they sent a free text to Telecom and presented the autotext reply when purchasing the tickets - fantastic! I thought this was too good to be true! So I read the fine print ... 'Not valid on films marked No Complimentaries and films on Blockbuster Pricing'. Not easily deterred I assumed that this would only apply to the new releases. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that 13 out of the 17 movies now playing at Auckland Village Sky City cinemas were "No Complimentaries"! And the four left over were playing in only one location, with limited session times ... What a deal!"

* * *

A reader writes: In the 1980s we lived near Inglewood in Taranaki. We were sharemilkers. Our lawyer was called Shearer, our accountant was Shepherd. We had a good friend whose surname was Baker, who worked for Butchers the Jewellers.

* * *

Tom Hutchins of Auckland writes: "I put a question to the prestigious National Nautical Museum, London, which they couldn't answer - but they replied advising me to 'contact your own Te Papa Museum, Auckland'. So, now we know it is really "our place" - or that is how it is seen in London."

* * *

A reader writes: "Every now and then, an article in the paper lets us know the results of a survey, such as '68 per cent of teens in the UK think the Battle of Hastings was part of World War II', and we presumably all smugly feel glad that our kids have not had to put up with the British education system. I just did an impromptu survey of 10 people in the office, and four females (aged between 21 and 26) had never heard of Chernobyl. One of them thought it was a kind of animal."

* * *

A German school has come under fire after it started charging pupils for using the toilet. Students at a secondary school in Sprockhoevel can choose to use the old toilets for free or pay 10 cents to use a new luxury toilet with marble wash basins. Marcel Hafke, a member of the Young Liberals, has called for an end to the policy. He described the toilet toll as "heartless" and said: "Second-class peeing should not be allowed." (Source: Ananova).