Sideswipe

Now he's supporting Labour (if they give 'significant' tax cuts) Rodney Hide will be able to dust off the signs he used in Epsom for the 2005 poll.

A reader is getting the hard sell from Vodafone: "Okay, so I haven't had the money lately to top up my prepay mobile. Every morning for the last six days at 8.05am I get this text from Vodafone: 'Sorry, u do not have enough credit to either send a txt or receive a chargeable txt service, so why not top up to make the most of now.' Imagine if the power/petrol/gas companies tried this monopolist approach - 'Sorry, you have not used enough electricity/made enough phone calls/driven your car enough..."'

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After continual intimidation from a gang of youths, 64-year-old Welshwoman Diane Bond finally stood up to them. While she was walking her dog, the gang blocked her path, and when one boy dared her to hit him, she prodded him in the stomach. For her trouble, the 1.5m grandmother was knocked to the ground by the 15-year-old, breaking her arm. Soon after, police arrested her for assaulting a minor. (Source: Reason.com)

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Martin Hanson writes: "If Brian Edwards really thinks that disinterested and uninterested are synonymous, then he must accept that a rugby referee must be uninterested in the game in order to do his job. The usual justification for such slackness is, of course, that language is living and therefore ever-changing. Fine, so long as Edwards is prepared to use the same criterion with the vernacular use of such words as Otahu and Papatoe."

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John Norton was outside the ASB Stadium the other night dropping off his son for indoor soccer. "I noticed a young, fit-looking man parking his car in a disabled park. I was going to say something to him but as he was dressed in full martial arts uniform complete with sword, I thought better of it."