KEY POINTS:
Murray Gardiner reckons this is the hard way to get your Christmas tree (see picture). He says this large truck lost control just out of Tirau, drove through a fence hitting this large pine tree, which subsequently fell on to the entire length of the truck and trailer. The driver escaped unharmed.
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This week Heather Lennox of Tokoroa found a card in her letterbox from Mercury Energy to say the meter-reader had been. She writes: "But they had been unable to take a reading as my dogs presented a danger. Interesting, I thought - the meter is on the outside of my house and the dogs are locked inside and are unable to get out. I have lived in this house for 16 years, have always had dogs and have had no difficulty in having the meter read before. The explanation as to how they were a danger is that they might break the window as the meter-reader was taking a reading. At this point I am rendered speechless."
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Dave White of Ponsonby writes: "There is no such place as 'South Auckland', and has never been, as others have pointed out. Some of you people must be just plane [sic] ignorant ..."
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Cultural cringe: Murray Hunter's authoritative tale of the canned baby marketing stuff-up in yesterday's Sideswipe is an urban legend. A number of readers claimed the story about consumers across Asia thinking Heinz baby food was canned baby because the can pictured a smiling baby, not a plate of vege mush, is bogus. According to the urban legend reference pages at snopes.com, this particular style of story has been around for more than 40 years and has travelled to many different parts of the globe where the illiterate fall prey to those naughty mega corporations.
