Sideswipe

Cheeky message: These t-shirts are on sale in Britain for Lions fans.

Andrew Stevenson received a text from Vodafone advising that customers can now give "cheeky Poms the wake-up call they deserve" for only 20c a text. "I was convinced it must be another hoax. So I visited their website and, sure enough, there it was again. What sort of a company starts such a potentially offensive campaign? And why do they arrogantly assume that everyone on the Vodafone network cares about rugby? (or has friends in the UK, for that matter). I wonder how well something similar will go down next time the Samoan rugby team or Indian cricket team visits. Perhaps we could have a special 'Call a Coconut' or 'SMS a Curry' promotion. And since when have Irish people been 'Poms' anyway?"

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A reader was fined $150 in Auckland for driving too slowly on the motorway at 70km/h. The fine for driving over the speed limit is $80. The moral of the story, she says, is that it's cheaper to speed than to be a cautious driver. IN March a woman had a midflight heart-attack, leading the KLM pilot to make an emergency landing at Heathrow Airport, but she died before an ambulance could arrive. Six months earlier, Heathrow officials had eliminated costly standby ambulances, so the woman's plane was met by a paramedic on a bicycle (which carried some emergency equipment but not nearly as much as an ambulance).

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The Great John Toilet Company in Texas is cashing in on the obesity problem with its size-friendly toilet, which offers 150 per cent more sitting area than a standard elongated toilet seat and 200 per cent more than a standard round toilet seat. "Our toilet construction provides additional reinforced structures for added safety and an extra-wide base with extra anchorage points, creating the most stable and widest base ever," says its website.

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While driving home from work on Monday, Phillip popped into the Shell Service Station near Auckland Airport for the best deal on petrol in town. "I entered $40 on the petrol pump. I ended up with 42 litres of petrol being put into the car and the final price of the petrol showed only $8.10. I thought the price dial wasn't working properly. I went in to pay and to my surprise I paid only $8.10, or about $0.23 a litre. One of the staff entered the wrong price for the price change. Thanks, Shell."