Escape to freedom
A robotic vacuum cleaner escaped from a motel near Cambridge in England, reports the BBC, and was "free" for more than a day before a gardener found it stuck in
a hedge. The automated floor cleaner failed to stop at the front door of the hotel on Thursday, and was still on the loose the following day. Staff said it just kept going and "could be anywhere" while well-wishers on social media hoped the vacuum enjoyed its travels, as "it has no natural predators" in the wild.
Fork no to that idea!
Prime Minister Scott Morrison mulled over an idea to lower the minimum age for a forklift driver's licence (currently 18) to 16 to help ease a labour shortage spurred by Covid. The leaders who'd been presented with this plan seemed taken aback by it. "Forklifts can be extremely dangerous machines to operate and we have no plans to lower the age at which a high-risk work licence can be obtained," said a rep for Ingrid Stitt, Victoria state's minister for workplace safety. A spokesperson for the Queensland branch of a construction union similarly dismissed the idea. "What next? A return to children leading pit ponies into coal mines and sweeping chimneys?" He added of Morrison's Liberal party: "This desperate brain fart should make clear their utter contempt for workers' health and safety."
How to train your dog in Grey Lynn
A tall and uncorroborated yarn
A reader writes: "In the early 1960s a man was driving on a country road in the South Island. He saw a hitchhiker and decided to stop. As the hitchhiker approached the car, the driver looked in his rearview mirror and saw a man coming out from behind nearby trees, holding a chain. The driver accelerated and heard a thump on the rear of his car. When he got to the next town he got out to check damage to his car. He found a chain wrapped around his bumper, with a thumb stuck in the end!"