KEY POINTS:
Allegedly genuine extracts from letters sent by tenants to the British equivalent of Housing New Zealand:
1. It's the dog's mess that I find hard to swallow.
2. I want some repairs done to my cooker as it has backfired and burnt my knob off.
3. Their 18-year-old son is continually banging his balls against my fence.
4. I wish to report that tiles are missing from the outside toilet roof. I think it was bad wind the other night that blew them off.
5. I am writing on behalf of my sink, which is coming away from the wall.
6. Will you please send someone to mend the garden path. My wife tripped and fell on it yesterday and now she is pregnant.
7. I request permission to remove my drawers in the kitchen.
8. The toilet is blocked and we cannot bath the children until it is cleared.
9. Will you please send a man to look at my water, it is a funny colour and not fit to drink.
10. The man next door has a large erection in the back garden, which is unsightly and dangerous.
11. I am a single woman living in a downstairs flat and would you please do something about the noise made by the man on top of me every night. (Source: Todd's Humour Archive)
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A reader writes: "I was waiting to pay my bill at Pit Stop New Lynn when a customer drove up in his motorised wheelchair. A spina bifida sufferer, he needed his neck support/steering device adjusted. One of the staff spent well over 20 minutes patiently making adjustments as the guy, using his "head pointer" (he could not talk and had no use of his arms) painstakingly tapped out on his screen how much more it needed after each adjustment. No charge, just part of the Pit Stop service. This is a firm that will get my business and, I hope, yours."
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Poland is planning to fine people who get divorced in a bid to cut the spiralling number of failed marriages. The ruling PiS party unveiled the plan after it was revealed a third of Polish marriages end in divorce. The fines, set depending on how well off spouses are, could soar into hundreds of thousands of dollars for wealthier Poles. Says Andrzej Symanski, a PiS party MP: "It costs the same to divorce as a good pair of shoes." MPs now want to raise divorce fees, making the price dependent on the spouses' earnings and property. (Source: Ananova.com)
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Who knew Hilary Swank was so lame? "My friends ask to see my Oscars and I love that to see their excitement," Swank told a film magazine. "It's fun to share them. That's why the Oscars are travelling around with me right now, they're out there bringing a lot of joy to my mom and my agent and all those people who believed in me."
