Sideswipe: Nov 9: Burying the competition

The original Nice Blocks. Photo / Supplied

Nice Blocks is an Auckland start-up that makes ice treats (in lemon, lime and bitters, chocolate fudgesical and tangelo lemonade flavours) from local produce, with half the sugar of a conventional ice-block and attractive packaging. Great idea to have an adult-friendly ice block, eh? Then along comes the Ice Bar Co ... looking all bespoke, offering similar flavours, but looking a little too slick. According to the website, "We're just a group of people who collectively thought that it was about time ice blocks grew up. Simple as that." Er, not really. Buried in the terms and conditions it says Fonterra's frozen confectionary arm Tip Top is behind the brand.

Harvest time

Spotted - an obituary headline in a small newspaper:
"Tree farm owner planted seeds in others"

Not the best choice of words..

Rates locked in

Greg's new valuation for his Manukau home is down - bugger, he says. "But then again, great. I'll get a lower rates bill," he adds. "But no. I must pay at the higher rate for another year because the valuation will not be recognised until June 1, 2012. But I bet if I improved my home they'd charge me from the day it was done, not a year or two later. How can they get away with this?"

Deliveries are within targets

A reader writes: "NZ Post says most mail arrives within three days of its target delivery. Fast Post is supposed to be one business day between main centres. If it takes three days it wouldn't even be classified as late, by NZ Post's standards."

Ten days' grace

"There isn't much about 'specified targets' on NZ Post's website," said another reader. "But I did find this: 'The delivery target time for International Air is between 3-10 working days' ... if the specified target is loose enough, of course you can say that only 0.1 per cent arrives outside it ... "

Statistics tell another story

Yet another reader writes: "If NZ Post says that in the past year 95.5 per cent of the 800 million items of mail 'arrive within the specified delivery target', then that means 36 million items of mail were lost or did not 'arrive within the specified delivery target', and that 36,000 items took more than three days to deliver. If there are 4.4 million Kiwis in NZ (Stats NZ website) and 533,451 companies (Companies Office website), that means there are around seven items of lost or late mail for every New Zealander and company in the country."