Sideswipe

The 'Buddy on Demand'. Picture / Reuters

An Australian insurance firm for women, called Sheila's Wheels, has come up with an idea for women who are afraid to drive solo at night. It's called Buddy On Demand (above), a life-size blow-up male doll "passenger" that will make it appear they're not alone ... just a little crazy.

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Minneapolis police found seven people on a street corner on Saturday wearing goth make-up, covered in fake blood. A few carried backpacks with protruding wires. The group were participating in a "zombie dance party" which is when a group of friends dress up according to the theme and congregate in public to dance to music from a beat box carried on their backs. But when the group wouldn't tell police about the mysterious wires, give their names or provide identification, they ended up arrested, held in jail until Monday afternoon on suspicion of having "simulated weapons of mass destruction".

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The Bank of America is offering a Pet Rewards Visa so your on-credit consumption will be "as rewarding as your relationship with your pet". You can put a picture of your cat or dog on the card and earn loyalty points toward veterinary services, pet food discount certificates, and shelter donations.

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Recent visitor to New Zealand Bob Geldof, former lead singer of the Boomtown Rats, poverty advocate and tut-tutter over the selfish West, , cancelled his Italian tour after only 45 fans turned up for a Milan gig at the Civic Arena (capacity: 12,000).

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Robyn Gray, of Westmere, supports the idea of a donation rather than a fee to fund our schools. She writes: "Yes, the Government does expect higher-decile schools to raise money by other means and funds lower-decile schools to a greater extent ... The decile funding differential is to ensure those children, too, are afforded a quality education regardless of their socio-economic background. My experience is that higher-decile schools have people in their communities with professional expertise/contacts in business, media and the arts and time on their hands. So the significant amounts of money our [decile 10] school raises through other means never surprises me ... And if there are some people in our community who struggle to pay all their donation - I am pleased the state education system does not penalise them or their children."

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One reader says attending a decile 10 school doesn't mean there's a decile 10 income to back it up. She writes: "Some of us are divorced, single parents and/or struggling to make ends meet while living in an area or trucking across town to give our kids the best possible chance of a good education. We contribute to the school by cooking for bake sales, sponsoring spelling bees and walkathons and donating books to the library, selling chocolate ... We also resent the constant 'reminders' that our school donations are overdue that we receive every term or more often."

(To be fair, Joanne Chaplow acknowledged that a portion of the 20 per cent in outstanding fees at Remuera Primary would have been due to affordability issues, but not all. She was simply ticking off those who can well afford to contribute, but who choose not to because it is a "donation".)