Our new web thing has been the talk of the town this week.

The Sun's new daily news service is off to a great start, with more readers registering every day for instant news via email and reading it fresh on the website at www.sunlive.co.nz
Check it out, if you haven't already, and join the hundreds who have registered and made it their homepage.
The SunLive news team have been bringing the Western Bay of Plenty's top news stories to you first, leaving some readers wondering why they bother buying a paper, only to find the stale news from days before.
That's one of the huge advantages of SunLive. The news is posted as it happens, so it's fresh and constantly updated.
This week our lead stories and photos have changed throughout the day, depending on events. The columns, blogs and feature stories have been popular hits, too. There's a lot more to SunLive than the hard news. Our clever web tracking shows many readers are spending time on the site as they burrow down through the menus and find a depth of quality reading and pictures.
SunLive has climbed rapidly up the Nielsen ratings of newspaper and magazine websites, from 58th after two days to about 30th - and still climbing as the Sun went to press.
Check it out today, save it as your homepage and tick the registration box to get email updates and comment on stories and columns. www.sunlive.co.nz
Novel idea on prisons
And speaking of news, thank goodness there's something else in the news other than swine flu and Bain the pain.
Whoever suggested prisoners should be jailed in shipping containers is clearly nuts. Shipping containers are far too good for them.
Let's get one thing clear: Jail is not meant to be nice. Or fun. Or luxurious.
Jail is meant to be a place you don't want to go back to. It should be done as cheap and nasty as possible.
Yet we have habitual criminals who look forward to going back to a cosy private cell every winter and get looked after much better than a lot of our elderly folk. That's simply plain wrong.
The misconception about shipping containers is they have been labelled 'inhumane.”
What nonsense. A mate of mine has a palatial apartment on Marine Parade, but hankers for the weekend when he can escape to his bach – a converted shipping container.
Sure it's got double glazed windows instead of bars and he can come and go whenever he likes, but then, he's not a criminal.
Our troops serving overseas sometimes live in converted ship containers.
The namby pamby liberal brigade need to realise the rest of us, law-abiding New Zealanders, are sick and tired of being preached to about the ‘rights' of criminals.
Those lawbreakers can choose to live lawfully, or suffer the consequences. And the key word to remember here is ‘suffer'.
Those law abiding citizens have also had a gutsful of paying the price of keeping lowlifes in luxurious abodes, while good members of society struggle to pay their heating bills and keep nutritious food on the table.
Those in jail should not only be working to pay the costs of their incarceration, the costs of their trials, plus full reparation to their victims – they should be working their sorry butts off to subsidise the living costs of the community they've wronged.
Converted shipping containers are used for baches, quirky apartment lodgings and even offices.
On the subject of jail, keen reader Bruce sent us this:

Jail vs work
IN PRISON...you spend the majority of your time in an 8x10 cell.
AT WORK ... you spend the majority of your time in a 6x8 cubicle.

IN PRISON...you get three free meals a day.
AT WORK...you only get a break for one meal and you pay for it.

IN PRISON...you get time off for good behaviour
AT WORK...you get more work for good behaviour

IN PRISON...the guard locks and unlocks all the doors for you.
AT WORK...you must carry around a security card and open all the doors for yourself.

IN PRISON...you can watch TV and play games.
AT WORK...you get fired for watching TV and playing games.

IN PRISON...you get your own toilet.
AT WORK...you have to share with some idiot who pees on the seat.

IN PRISON...they allow your family and friends to visit.
AT WORK...you can't even speak to your family.

IN PRISON...the taxpayers pay all expenses with no work required.
AT WORK...you get to pay all the expenses to go to work and then they deduct taxes from your salary to pay for prisoners.

IN PRISON...you spend most of your life inside bars wanting to get out.
AT WORK...you spend most of your time wanting to get out and go inside bars.

IN PRISON...you must deal with sadistic wardens.
AT WORK...they are called managers.

Final thought on the container for prisoners: Privatise the prison system to Telecom. Simply put the prisoners inside the containers (40-60 per box would be efficient use) and, as seen on Telecom's latest TV advertising, drop the container in the sea.
And for those who still bleat about the rights of criminals, here's a novel idea they clearly haven't considered:
Don't break the law, and it won't be an issue.