Sideswipe

Lookalikes: One of Saturn’s moons (left) looking spookily like The Death Star from Star Wars.

Jean Favier of Greenhithe says the latest issue of the North Shore Times reports that " ... girls are particularly vulnerable to drug dealers pedalling from cars". At least, they're saving on petrol by using pedal cars, she quips.


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Poor old Paul Holmes' scoop on Adam Parore's effort to make a tidy profit on a Bill Hammond painting was nabbed by TV3 the following night. Parore and wife Sally Ridge bought the painting, on an umbrella, at a charity auction for a couple of grand. Then they flattened it out on to a board and listed it for sale for $75,000 through their own art company. Great story, worthy of being copied, but TV3 even used the same caption, "Art Furore".

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An email arrived from David Benson-Pope's office yesterday titled "Coddington Wrong". Two minutes later a second arrived titled "Correction to: Coddington Wrong". They had spelt her first name wrong.

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Reader Tom Pledger has an answer to rubbish bin misplacement: "If you want a serious answer to this morning's burning question about rubbish bins, here goes ... Take a stroll in the suburbs on rubbish collection day. Watch a truck in action. It usually drives forward until its claw is beside the next bin, empties it, and then puts it back in the same place. But sometimes the bin is too close to a parked car, a lamp post, or another bin. Then the driver has to get out of the truck and move it before using the claw. If I were the driver, I wouldn't want to get out again to put the bin back. There isn't much we householders can do about people parking beside our bins, but we can at least space them out a good 20cm from everything else."

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Auckland Mayor Dick Hubbard will be the not-so-impartial adjudicator for the Canon Celebrity Debate this Sunday, where the teams will abuse each other to prove or disprove that "Auckland is the true capital of New Zealand". Oscar Kightley, Jeremy Corbett and Kerre Woodham will sing Auckland's praises, and Tom Scott, Jason Gunn and Te Radar will shoot them down.