Sideswipe

Neale Gover was most interested to hear about the garage on Ladies Mile which wanted a large sum of money for a minute's work from a mum who needed help. He writes: "That sounds like the same garage that recently wanted $20 for borrowing a spanner to undo one nut. Crikey, I thought, and left with no feeling of goodwill towards them. I didn't pay, of course, and they didn't let me use their spanner. What goes around comes around, methinks."

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Richard Thorpe suggests there might be a reason people are reluctant to stop to help strangers: "Two weeks ago in the UK, my father, who is 75, arrived in the car park at Leeds/Bradford airport in a late-model Audi. He heard, and then saw, a young lady in what appeared to be a highly distressed state screaming for help. He stopped his car and ran over to see what he could do. She then turned, ran towards his car, jumped into the passenger seat as there was now a young man in the driving seat, and off they went in his car."

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Walking out of the Auckland Fish Market last month, Alan Jermaine of Northcote tripped, stumbled and fell over a kerb. "Immediately about four people rushed to my aid and helped me to sit on a nearby seat and then took me to my car so my wife could drive me home. I think in most circumstances people want to help those in need."

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Tony Waring of Titirangi asks, "Does anyone else get pissed off when they see ads for exhibitions at Te Papa on TV that finish with the emphatic line 'only at Te Papa'? The likes of the Constable and Lord of the Rings exhibitions have been created with our tax money, and yet here is the so-called 'national museum' essentially saying 'you Aucklanders may have paid for a third of it, but there is no way we're going to let it come up there - instead, you'll have to spend at least $300 a person to take a trip down here if you want to see it.' Our place, my arse. It's their place - a massive tourism subsidy for Wellington."

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Derek Ogilvie claims to be a "baby mind-reader". He can read the minds of infants and tell desperate parents why their little darlings won't sleep, or why they're fussy about eating, or why they cry all the time. The website at badpsychics.co.uk has examined some tapes of Ogilvie in action and concludes that he's simply cold-reading (ie, throwing out random guesses in the hope that some of them will strike gold). It says: "It is bad enough to take advantage of grieving people for your own gain, but to take advantage of children and a mother's love for her children, both dead and alive, is a whole new level of evil." According to the Sunday Times, Ogilvie used to drive a Rolls-Royce and own three of Glasgow's most fashionable bars until he was declared bankrupt. Now he has reinvented himself as a psychic who claims to be able to communicate telepathically with babies. (Source: museumofhoaxes.com)