KEY POINTS:
Peter & Natalie Spackman usually don't feel compelled to pay for bottled water, believing suggested health benefits are a marketing myth. It is however, hard to ignore the aesthetic superiority of bottled water over the town supply tap water in Pukekohe. "Perhaps we should have done our white
load of laundry with the bottled stuff too," they suggest.
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The partially mummified body of a man dead for more than a year has been found in a chair in front of his television, which was still on, authorities said. Vincenzo Ricardo, 70, apparently died of natural causes. Neighbours said they had thought Ricardo was in a hospital or nursing home and never thought to check on him. (Source: MSNBC)
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Germany's Harry Hallman has had gas heating since the 1990s, and he says he doesn't need his chimney swept. But when he refused, the local chimney sweep didn't take no for an answer. He got the local police to break in, handcuff Hallman and hold him until the sweep finished his business. A 1937 law requires all chimneys to be checked four times a year, at $200 a visit, and it allows sweeps to enlist police and firefighters to break down doors if the owner resists. More than 100,000 Germans have organised to get the law changed. (Source: Reason.com)
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Peter Sergent also experienced the looping Carrington Rd "detour". "I caught a taxi from the airport to home via Carrington Rd. What got me was the lack of warning. You had to travel the length of Carrington Rd to find you have to go round the scenic route to return where you started from, to then be detoured back to Western Springs. The lack of intermediate signs and the illogical nature of it had my driver floundering. The net result was my taxi fare was $18 higher than it normally was. Surely one of those illuminated signs at the start of Carrington Rd would have saved a lot of frustration."
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Richard Pearson writes to say the Chrysler, which is a contender for the new parliamentary car fleet, was described by the Times in a headline over its road test story as: "Looks like a Bentley, drives like a duvet".