FYI The University of Auckland campus emergency phones are installed and run by University Security (UniSafe).

AUSA may still provide a freebie in the City Campus Student Union building and there's the taxi phone in the local drinking establishment. Can't speak for other campuses.

Hey Rodney,

I've got your first suggestion for cutting waste in Government.

Why are you paying researchers when you have a Parliamentary Library Service staffed with experienced qualified researchers with access to a whacking load of print resources and truckloads of electronic information you can't get freely on the internet, at your service?

Don't forget to have a good whinge about "literally", which is getting a good mauling these days. I read a vanity piece in the Herald recently where a woman sang the virtues of her Austin Mini, which "literally runs on the smell of an oily rag". Gotta get me one of those.

If someone's got the time, dig through the TVNZ site to find the clip from One News the night they were speculating that NZ First was about to oppose the Free Trade Agreement.

If I recall correctly, there's a shot of wee Ron sporting headwear reminiscent of the original 'gangsta'.

Am I alone in thinking that Finlay's speech makes an excellent blog entry, but a really inappropriate lecture for a Centre focussed on Science Communication lecture?

Yikes - get rid of that Mitt Romney link before John Key gets hold of it and starts swapping Coldplay for Metallica....

My sister who has lived in London for many moons used to call her a naughty word that I won't write here, but suffice to say many London folk seemed to be of the opinion that there wasn't ever much virginal abour Lady Di. Anyone recall the story of Gary Lineker supposedly warning Will Carling that "that woman is trouble." (And didn't she have appalling taste in men?)

I was 14 when Lady Di came on the scene. I was secretly taken by the fairy tale of it all, and I liked her for the same reason that most people did:

She was pretty. She wore pretty dresses. She was nice to the punters.

Even for someone like myself who followed Di over the years, the mythologising of Di that took place after her death was stunning; this is the woman who denied publicly for years that she had an eating disorder and only got help when her friend threatened to tell the media. I smacked the TC the night she gave girl-power a swift kick in the wossnames by declaring on international television that her husband was an arsehole and not fit to be king, but she didn't want to divorce him. Hats off to her for the good works she did, and the vicarious enjoyment we had through her, but she was just human, right?

And how must the understudy feel? Imagine if no one had turned up to see Kiri Te Kanawa as the last minute replacement in Otello at the Met in 1974.