That was you?! You arsehole! I finally wrestled it to the top of the escalator, went to get a trolley and when I got back my bag was gone and I was escorted to a small room for a prostate exam administered by a stern-faced gentleman who could have picked up two watermelons with one-hand.

I grew up in the same country as you, at the same time. On multiple occasions I left my rugby kit/tenor-horn on a crowded station platform and the worst that happened was having to collect it from lost property. I shudder to think how many unexploded devices there probably still are in BR lost-property offices.

Scan it, post it!

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On how democratic "charging" to stand is, I always thought that if someone seriously thought they'd be able to get 5% of the vote then raising £500 for the deposit should be easy, if not outright trivial. The average constituency is ~60k, so 5% of the vote is 3000. If you can get a quarter of those to give you 70p, that's your deposit with some money left over to photocopy more leaflets.

I'm also in New Zealand. I love PaperMate's gel pens. Have a set of 0.7s and they're great. Will check out the Pilot's.

Reading that information might be all they need to do. If you have a bunch of co-conspirators on the same plane, you only need one to go through the lighter-screening channel smuggling the box-cutters/drugs/microfilm or whatever; whoever has the magic barcode gets to wear the shoes with the false heels. Alternately, if you know you're not going to be waved through the less-intensive security channel you could cancel your flight or take the flight and just postpone your nefarious deeds for another day.

Not sure -- IANAL, after all -- but don't they risk some other, more nefarious, party hijacking their trademark if they don't defend it?

Not necessarily the whole thing, just the picture painted of Herb Asher living in an isolated dome on a remote planet, detached from the world and reality, obsessing over a female singer and resenting the terminally ill woman who lives in the dome next to his when she reaches out to him for help. Everything that follows is unsettling/detestable, but that image stayed with me.

"Overrated"
Not sure if this is trolling or not, but I grew up hearing this:

"Someone once asked Paul McCartney if he thought Ringo Starr was the best drummer in the world. McCartney replied: 'He's not even the best drummer in The Beatles'"

So..yeah...nah...I never thought Ringo was that good a drummer. Overrated?

Not quite anyone. You cannot be a bone marrow donor or even a blood donor in some countries, like New Zealand, if you lived in the UK during the outbreak of BSE/CJD.

You have no such right.

1989 - US invades to oust CIA-installed Panamanian government gone rouge

Ooh-la-la!

Exactly, if Steam doesn't start catering for the majority of people who rely on satellite for their internet service they risk falling by the wayside.

Explain New Zealand then? Our dollar is weaker, and we earn less than the average Australian household. And we're not just talking about retail, where you could explain away the difference as the cost of transport of physical goods to a small island country, we're also talking about Steam/Digital prices. Steam lumps us into the same region with Australia, by virtue of geographical proximity alone.

Secondly, can you explain why, with only a 20% difference between the average Australian and the average American household, rip-offs like these exist? Is it really fair that publishers are setting prices for Australia/New Zealand up to 80% higher than for America/UK?

What a peculiar example. I never thought of Usain Bolt as someone who was that bothered about what he wore on his feet. The man ran an Olympic-record-destroying time with his left shoelace untied after all...